I was telling my friend Sonya that I’m working on a show about Tuna and she forwarded me the following article she wrote 10 years ago. Thought I would pass it along for those people who are not aware of the history behind the Tuna Fishery in Nova Scotia.
by Sonja Englund
For my assignment, I decided that I wanted to do the bluefin tuna and my first stop towards that end was to contact my cousin Lisa’s husband Mike. Mike is doing his PhD in marine biology, he is doing his thesis on the salmon fishery but he has a lot of contacts in other realms as well. In fact, Mike was the only relative to visit me here on the island last year. Unfortunately, this was not a visit for my fantastic company, rather because he was working on a tuna study and needed a place to crash.
The study he was working on is actually very interesting and was the reason that I decided to do the bluefin. Apparently, although the scientists and fishermen know where the tuna can be caught at particular times of the year, they have never figured out their migration patterns and don’t know where exactly they go for the winter months. The idea behind the study was to catch tuna, attach satellite tags to them and release them. After awhile, these tags, which had a GPS tracking device in them, would detach themselves from the tuna, float to the surface and the satellites could pick them up and figure out where the tuna had gone. A wonderful idea in theory but apparently flawed in reality. Only one of the tags was recovered and that just off the Grand Banks. They figure that the tuna may have been caught and the fishermen just discarded the tags, or possibly that the fish themselves just went too deep. The tags they used could only stand up to so much pressure, so if the tuna went deeper than whatever thousand feet the tags were probably crushed. So, back to the drawing board to design a new tag that can handle the pressure. Mike will be traveling to California in the fall to tag some pacific tuna with the new tags.
Luckily, for me, Mike and Lisa had been planning to come to the island for a visit and I managed to talk Mike into taking me out to see the tuna boats and see if we could find a fisherman to talk to. But, I get ahead of myself. After partying all night, and eating a lovely salmon coulibiac, I sat Mike down and he filled me in on what he knew of the fishery, which off the top of his head was actually very impressive.
This is basically what he had to say. “Well, what they catch is whole tuna, caught with a rod and reel. Then they want to cool down the meat as much as they can. Because it’s a very powerful fish, all muscle and it builds up a lot of lactic acid and that can ruin the meat. They catch it for the Japanese to be sent to the sushi and sashimi market, we don’t really get it here. They cool the meat because the fishermen get a better price for better meat and the fattier the meat the better the price too. They can catch a 1000 lb. fish worth between 2 dollars a lb. and 40 dollars a lb., there’s a lot of variation in the meat.
It’s generally caught on a rod using bait like herring. Fighting the fish can take between 45 minutes and 2 hours. Then, while its still alive they revive it in the water to let it cool down naturally. They pull it behind the boat, then cut and bleed it. They cut the lateral arteries, which are down the lateral lines of the fish, and it will bleed out. They do this all while it is still in the water and this also cools the meat down. Here in PEI, they then bring the fish in to shore to take it out of the water, eviscerate it, saw off the head and tail (see picture on last page of assignment). They then put a piece of monofiliament, which is a heavy gauge fishing wire, down the backbone. This kills all the nerves so the fish won’t flop around and bruise the meat. Out somewhere, like the Grand Banks, the fishermen would do this all on the boat and then pack the fish in ice until they can get it to shore to a buyer.
Buyers generally gather on the docks, take a plug and tell the fisherman what they will pay for the fish. They then take the fish and put rice paper over the skin, to prevent grating and damage, fill the cavity with ice and pack it with ice in a big box and ship it, usually from Halifax to Boston. It is then flown directly to Japan and sold on the open market there within 24 hours of being caught.
Sushi markets in Montreal and New York do buy some tuna but the market is so small it’s almost negligible. Sometimes, when there is a Japanese holiday and the markets will be closed, people here don’t even bother fishing.
It always used to be Japanese buyers who bought the fish here but now they have some representatives. The Japanese were also very closed about what they were looking for and for years they wouldn’t even tell the fishermen what they were looking for. They’d just take a plug and stand there and talk in Japanese, decide what they’d give the fisherman and then give him whatever and the fishermen didn’t even know what they were looking for. Over time, however they kind of figured out that they wanted fattier fish.
There are 3 ways to catch tuna in this fishery:
1) Chumming – They go out to a place called Fisherman’s bank offshore, anchor and cut up pieces of chum fish like herring and mackerel and throw it over the side. It makes a line of chum through the water and the tuna follow along that and eat it. Then you have bait on the end of a rod and reel, which is in the chum, and when they take that they get hooked. The fish is then brought in with the rod.
2) Trolling – Sometimes, as Mike says, when they get bored, they use outriggers which are tall poles from which they trail bait, usually mackerel or squid, on spreader poles. They motor along slowly and the tuna takes the bait and they reel it in with the rod.
3) Kite flying – They can fly a kite, which Mike thinks may actually be illegal here, although nobody really cares. This seems to be the cruelest method, in my opinion. They take a live mackerel and put a hook through the top of its back, keeping it alive. Then they run a kite up from it in the water. The kite keeps the mackerel right on the surface and he’s swimming around, but can’t dive and that attracts the tuna. The tuna takes the mackerel and then the kite pops off and he’s on your line. Apparently, the deal for the mackerel is that if he makes it through the whole day you have to release him alive.”
That, generally paraphrased, is what Mike told me. Some of this, the stuff about the three types of fishing he relayed while we were looking at the tuna boats in Murray harbour. Both Lisa and I were horrified at the kite technique. The night before, while were partying, Mike called one of the tuna fishermen and asked him about where they were running. He was told that they had caught a few “up Murray Harbour way”, so the next day we piled in the car and took a drive to see what we could see. We arrived to find a deserted dock at Murray harbour, but there were a few boats rigged up for tuna fishing, so we looked at those and Mike explained the rigging. I wish I had a picture I could put in here, the rod and reel’s that they use for tuna fishing aren’t really all that big although the fishing line is pretty hefty. Mike say’s its 4 to 6 hundred pound test. The rods are hooked up around the edges of the boat, attached to the sides, some boats had up to 8, others only 3. The taller poles that they use for trolling stand straight up from the boat and extend probably 15 to 20 feet. Fortunately I saw no kites lying around. Not many boats were rigged up for tuna yet, apparently the season is just getting started.
Eventually, a guy came along and told us that there were some guys up at another bay, which unfortunately I cannot remember the name of (Island something), who were rigged up for tuna and we should try there. We arrived at another dock, deserted except for one old guy puttering around. He was near a boat that Mike recognized as one of the ones he’d been out tagging on last year and he asked the old guy if John MacKay was around. The answer we got, as can only happen in the Maritimes, was “He’s my son.” We talked a bit and explained what we were doing. He let Mike and I climb around on the boats and inspect the gear. The tubs that they fill with ice for the tuna are huge, about the size of a large chesterfield. The boats we looked at belonged to John MacKay and his father and were named “Glass Tiger II” and “Spray Maker” respectively.
I didn’t catch the old guy’s name and Mike was heavy into conversation about the sunfish they had seen on their last trip, so I didn’t like to ask. He had just returned from an expedition to the “Hellhole,” an area off George’s Bank. I asked him what the average catch for a tuna fisherman would be over a season and was surprised at how much it varied. He said that on average maybe 10 to 12 tuna in a season, some boats get up to 20 but lots get none. “Some young guys fish 5 years before they get one bite…one old guy tuna fished as a hobby and was 70 years old before he caught his first tuna, he fished for 25 years before he got his first bite. When they asked him what he’d like to do before he died he said, “I’d like to catch another tuna.”
On their last trip out, out of 30 boats, only three boats caught a tuna the rest didn’t have any bites at all. One of those fish had been totally useless, they sold the bellies but the lactic acid that the fish builds up when fighting can burn the meat if it’s not cooled down again, and the meat essentially turns to mush. Apparently the bellies are the most prized, and sometimes a bad spot can simply be cut out of the fish and the rest sold but other times it’s all burned and the fish is worth nothing.
We talked on the dock for awhile and then this guy said “Well, John came in this morning, he’s home, I’ll take you up and see him.” We protested that we didn’t want to bother him, but he insisted that he’d like to see Mike so we got back in the car and went on to invade the poor unsuspecting fisherman’s home. He was incredibly friendly and invited us all in. I’m sure his wife was not too impressed, they had 2 children, one a toddler and the other a baby with hip displaysia in a full body cast. We went in to the living room and he proceeded to tell us his theories of tuna psychology and about the tuna fishery. He gave me a lot of information so I’ll paraphrase it in basically the order we discussed it.
One thing that was very interesting was how well he and Mike got along. A lot of fishermen don’t really have much respect for the scientists and they discussed that as we were leaving, the problems with the fishery and quotas etcetera. He did understand their perspective and, I guess, since Mike had actually been out on the boat, he had a level of confidence in him.
John MacKay is a very funny guy, extremely friendly and very smart. I don’t know how much education he has but he has thought a lot about what he does and has some fun theories. He’s like a big kid and gets very excited and animated when he talks about the fish. He jumps up, waving his arms when describing the fighting fish and sits up very straight when he’s trying to really put his point across. It’s really nice to see someone who likes what they do so much and he was a great person to talk to about the industry.
So, down to business, the quota for the home area for tuna is 35 tons. John has a license for tuna fishing, they are all taken now but he said you could probably purchase one from a fisherman for approximately $35,000. In addition to having a license you must have a tag for every tuna you catch, before you catch it. Each tag costs $150 and you cannot redeem it if you do not catch a tuna. Here off PEI you can fish with only one tag at a time, but if you travel to an area like the Hellhole you are required to have 2 tags just to enter the zone. Because it is a seasonal fishery, John also has several other licenses even though he may not use all the licenses every year. This year he did not use his herring license. He fishes lobster from May to June, scallops in the late fall, and has a groundfish license but since the moratorium and small quotas he probably won’t use it. This year the flounder fishery may only last two days. What determines the length of the fishery is often the quotas, the fishery stops when the quota is reached or in the case of tuna they usually wrap it up around Halloween even if the quota isn’t caught – most of the fish have migrated by then.
They produce whole tuna, as Mike told me, and his operation consists of him and a hired man. Most of the tuna boats run with only 2 people but as soon as they “hook-up” if they are close to anyone, another boat will usually put another person on board to help. The bigger fish need 3 people; one to run the boat, one on the pole, and one to dart it. As soon as they can get a tuna beside the boat they usually put a harpoon in them, just as a back up in case the hook falls out. Then they put a swimming gaff or a rope in the fish’s jaw and out the gill and start towing it. If you force the water through the mouth you can bring them right back to life. Then they just tow them along behind the boat. This brings the fishes body temperature back down after the fight he has just gone through. John is not convinced that this always works. Sometimes, he says, they swim them and you get them back to the wharf and they’re still hot. He says it all depends on the fish, if it’s a skinny fish it doesn’t heat up. “The three or four hundred pounders aren’t as bad to heat up as the 1000 pounders in the bay here.”
The fish that are found in the bay here in PEI are the biggest. John says 1 out of 200 fish in the Hellhole weighs 600 pounds or more, here 1 out of 50 is below 600. The fish in the bay are generally 800 to 1000 pounds. John said that the bigger ones seem to come further north every summer and Mike chimed in that the bigger ones are older and have more temperature tolerance so they can come further north to the good feeding grounds. Length doesn’t make up a lot of the weight of the tuna once it gets into the 500 to 1000 pound range. A heavier fish will be a bit longer but most of its weight is made up in thickness, it starts puffing up like a barrel or a football.
John said that “they” say that the tuna pack on at least 150 pounds before they migrate. If he catches a tuna and he’s long and skinny, he knows right away that the fish just arrived here. They call these fish “racers.” The fish “eat hard” for 3 or 4 weeks and then once they get ready to migrate in late October “you can do whatever you want but they won’t bite.” “When they’re on route to wherever they’re headed, Gulf of Mexico or across the Atlantic, we don’t know really where they all winterize yet, they’re done eating.”
The weight of a tuna fluctuates; a 1000-pound fish is probably 25 or more years old. Mike also put in here that there is a learning curve with tuna, the smaller they are the easier they are to catch. “If you’ve spent 25 years with everyone in the ocean trying to catch you, you learn something…older and wiser.” John also notices that over the years the fish that they get are almost the “lazy fish.” The fish that take the bait on a chum line “almost don’t want to go out and catch live mackerel for themselves.” “Trollers don’t get as many fish on average as the chummers do but they get a better fish. Chummers pick a lot of the diseased fish, the lazy and sick ones out of the school…the healthier fish are the least likely to hook.” He sees himself as part of the food chain weeding the weak out of a herd. “Don’t get me wrong we’re gonna get good fish, but the hook and line fishery is almost like deer hunting, it weeds the school, it’s almost good for it cause we’ll get a lot of the ones with cancer in them or different diseases, yami or white cloud. The sick ones are at the end of the school. When the main school leaves in October, the last few fish caught are sick ones. They have plastic bags in their stomachs or garbage, some have ABS pipe.”
John’s theory on trolling is even more interesting: “Trollers use them plastic squid and they don’t bite cause they’re hungry its more or less aggravation, I think. Tuna all their life, when a mackerel is in their area, they go up to a mackerel and that mackerel takes off. Here’s 8 or 15 squid and they’re swimming up to the surface and the squid aren’t going away, they’re just going at the speed the boat’s towing them. I think the tuna gets mad, you know “Why aren’t you intimidated by me?” and you see them jump on the squid. A lot of trolled tuna are caught on their side cause they swim up and jump on the squid and try to kill them.” That was another thing that was interesting, that the tuna often rather than biting a fish will use their sheer size to attack a school and crash into them killing a few to make themselves a nice meal.
John does give the tuna a lot of credit for being thinking fish, and not just the tuna, he was talking about using sonar to detect the schools and said that they will avoid the sonar. You might mark one or two but six or eight will be swimming just out of range. He also says that the fish know long before the sonar picks up anything when a tuna is in the area. When they are chumming, they have grinders that put lots of bait out into the water and they will get other fish coming to feed, usually they get a lot of mackerel but they disappear very suddenly before a tuna shows up. He also talked about the kite fishing and said that you could have your poor mackerel swimming along quietly all day “but if all of a sudden he’s like a hydro. He’s panicking and you’re all, ‘What’s he all worked up about?’ Before you know it a tuna will grab him. Or sometimes he’ll be swimming and the next minute he’ll be playing dead and it’s cause the tuna’s around.”
He says the tuna know the line too. They’ll follow along and eat everything but the one with the hook in it. “You think oh it’s getting dark, I’ll sucker him into biting but I’ve chummed, had them till midnight in pitch black and they still know the one with the line. You can have one single fish around your bait line for hours but you’re in a better position if another tuna shows up, competition helps. One fish will have you figured out but when two move in its like 2 year olds after a cookie.”
So that’s how John’s operation works, if they are fishing in the bay 80% of the fishermen swim their fish into the harbour and let the processors handle the sawing off of the head and tail and eviscerating; away (outside the bay) this is done on the boat. John says though, that if you take the fish aboard here you can also keep fishing the rest of the day and have a chance of getting a second one, if you have ice. He says if you’re on anchor and marking 2 or 3 tuna and you catch one, 80% of the time when you come back to that anchor those other tuna will still be there (this, I think, is kind of sad – as Lisa said “Where’s Mom?”). John works with his father and if one of them “hook’s-up” they’ll take the fish to shore while the other gets on their anchor.
They sell their tuna from here sometimes, but more often from Canso, Sambro, or Port Hood since they are so close to Nova Scotia. On their last trip they went out to the Hellhole and then to Sambro to sell the fish. The Sambro fisheries plant unloads all the fish and handles the meat for them when they get to shore, packing the fish in ice etcetera. Then they called the buyers and held an auction for them, 5 or 6 buyers showed up that day.
There are two ways to sell tuna:
1) Consignment – Where a fisherman picks a buyer who will ship the fish directly to
Japan and sell them on the Japanese open market. Then you get what the fish is actually worth, but you have to wait for your money.
2) Auction – The buyers come to the docks and make offers to buy the fish right there. The nice part about auctioning your fish is that you know right there what you made and how your trip went. This is also called the “shore price”.
The prices at auction that day ranged from 6 to 21 dollars per pound. There are pros and cons to each way of selling your fish. At the market in Japan there is apparently, something like a 24-hour window in which buyers can return the fish and get their money back. If this happens the fishermen shipping on consignment, or the buyer who has already purchased the fish, gets burned.
John said that if he was shipping on consignment, on average he would probably get more for his tuna, but if one happened to be diseased, he’d be running the risk and lose out. That’s why so many take the sure thing at the wharf. If you don’t mind waiting a couple of weeks for your money and you like gambling, over ten years that would probably be the best way to go. “But its hard to do that with your first fish or two for the year, you’ve got bills adding up at home and your wife is saying, ‘John, how did you do in your tuna?’” We called this “domestic pressure.”
He sent a couple of tuna on consignment and on one he got 42 dollars per pound when he was only offered 20 dollars at the wharf. One week later, he got another – it was a fattier looking fish, the colour was even better and he was offered 18 dollars at the wharf. He turned that down, sent the fish on consignment and only got 14 dollars a pound. On a big fish like a tuna a dollar this way or that can make a huge difference in overall profit.
Another thing that can affect the price of the fish is completely uncontrollable. His buyer told him that the 42 dollar fish probably hit the market when not a lot of other fish were there and the second fish could have hit the market when 200 fish from New Zealand came in.
Every country in the world is sending to Japan and the Japanese market is interesting. John’s theory was that the Japanese like the big fish and they think that if they eat a big strong fish, they’ll get big and strong. So when a fish comes on the market, they all bid on the biggest fish driving up the price; and even if another fish is great quality they’ll ignore it, because they all want the big fish. So everyone tries to outbid on the biggest fish and the others go for mediocre prices.
In Sambro, on their last trip, there were 6 buyers who showed up. Here in PEI there are only a couple who show up later on in the fall. Most of the local fishermen sell their tuna in Port Hood. The buyers gather and there are always 3 or 4 new guys, as he called them “fly-by-nighters,” who will pay big prices but aren’t around the next year. One of the big problems that a fisherman faces is economics. He says you fish all month and you’ve finally got your 1 fish but you’ve probably got about 4 or 5 thousand dollars of expenses. Everyday you use a couple hundred liters of fuel and a hundred dollars of chum. “It’s about 3 or 4 hundred dollars a day, just to chase the stupid thing. So you take your fish to the auction block and you get 20 dollars a pound but if you’ve got a buyer that you’ve never seen before the question becomes, Can you trust his money?’“ John never has, but some fishermen have sold their fish to a guy and the next thing they know the buyer is gone, he’s disconnected his Canadian cell phone and the check bounces. Sometimes they’re better off not taking the biggest price and going with the guy they know.
He does give the buyers credit too, because they are working behind on every load they buy. They may only buy one fish from him, but could buy 10 fish in a day laying out over $100,000 in an afternoon; and they don’t get any money until after the fish is sold in Japan. If the buyer takes a loss it can really set him back. John says, “A lot of fishermen are down on the buyer cause they don’t give the best prices but, with the few I’ve shipped myself, you’ve gotta be considerate of them cause they are running a gamble.”
Of course the main market for tuna is Japan. The American domestic market is growing and John said that if they get a mediocre fish it is more likely to go there because it costs so much for air-freight to Japan. The bluefin is not marketed locally and John speculated that if the Japanese stopped buying tuna the fishery would collapse. Even the domestic prices would drop, as the only reason they pay half as much as they do is that everything would go to Japan if they didn’t. John has also heard that tuna isn’t that healthy for North Americans to eat, because it has so much mercury in it. He’s not sure about this but has been told that because the Japanese have so much fish in their diets they can handle the high mercury but it wouldn’t be good for us.
All in all, I have to say I learned a lot from this assignment. I never would have sat down and listened as intently to the fishtales of Mike or a local fisherman if I hadn’t had to, but I’m glad I did. John and his whole family were so friendly, helpful, and really wonderful people. It’s not often you can barge in on the middle of a stranger’s Sunday afternoon and be so welcomed. As you can see, I learned a lot about how they fish the tuna (the 3 methods), how it is sold (the 2 methods and pros and cons), whom it is sold to, and a bit of tuna psychology. Not a bad return for an afternoon investment, but as John said I really should see when all the buyers come in and start looking over the tuna. I never would have thought I would be interested in that but now it is something that I would really like to see.
Sonja Englund
I was booked to fly fish for Tarpon along the more isolated park areas and flats. These magnificent large eyed, aerial fish can grow between 5-8 feet long, weighing in at between 80-280lbs. I stood at the Elephant Dock as the sun made its appearance, but my captain did not. I found another charter captain who was able to take me out, but it was jig fishing in the pass. Fishing jigs has been documented virtually throughout Boca Pass fishing history, but it isn’t without its controversy. The Pass is a bucket nearly 80 feet deep. An underwater highway for fish, bait and “mother” big sharks. So many fish gather here that they create a false bottom. While from above, it’s a highway of a different sort. A lot of boat traffic from every direction in a contained area called the Boca Grande Pass; Spanish for Big Mouth. I did hear a lot of yelling as huge Tarpon on the line from neighboring boats erupted up out of the water next to us. We throttled into reverse to ensure clear passage as its bulk came crashing back down next to our small boat. All the while, the bikini-clad first mate readied the gear. The physicality of her job and the lack of support from her outfit meant that there was a “whole lot a movin’ goin’ on”. 
John 
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Any man living with women has the added social disability of a brain wired for “other” tasks related to females. Advertisers have long taken advantage of this visual pertinacity because they know sex sells by association. The older I get the less it matters but I’m still just a man creature and heeding the call of nature is engrained behavior.
I couldn’t agree with you more! I’m from a cold area so I don’t see too many woman fishing in bikinis, but when I see them do it on TV or see pictures in magazines I always wonder what they are thinking. Beyond the objectification aspect, how can that be a comfortable way to fish? From sitting on a hot boat seat to bending over to grab a fish, proper attire is a must. I’ve had hooks in my clothes too many times to want to bare so much skin!