Arctic communities align to enter Nunavut turbot fishery

Three High Arctic communities want to enter Nunavut's growing turbot fishery, joining forces with another community to create a new fisheries alliance.

Hunters and trappers associations (HTAs) in Grise Fiord, Resolute Bay and Arctic Bay signed a deal Tuesday with the Nattivak HTA in Qikiqtarjuaq to form the Arctic Fisheries Alliance.

In 2004, the Nattivak hunters and trappers association broke away from the Baffin Fisheries Coalition, Nunavut's not-for-profit fishery development organization, in order to start its own fishing business.

Now joined by three other communities as partners, Nattivak hopes the new alliance which currently has no assets or funding can secure a piece of Nunavut's turbot fishing quota as early as 2009.

"I think it's going to be very beneficial to the high unemployment communities such as Grise Fiord and Resolute [Bay] and Arctic Bay," Quttiktuq MLA Levi Barnabas said Tuesday night, at the announcement of the new alliance in Iqaluit.

"I'm very optimistic and I'm gonna help them out as much as I can," he said. "Because if a small community in Nunavut is not eligible to have quota in their adjacent waters I mean, why?"

The alliance plans to ask for a share of Nunavut's turbot quota this June from the Baffin Fisheries Coalition or Qikiqtaaluk Corp., an Inuit-owned development corporation that is involved in offshore shrimp and turbot fishing.

Under the alliance's agreement, the community of Qikiqtarjuaq's Masiilit Corp. would fish up to the quota the group receives, as well as hire people from all four communities to work on their boats.

The four communities also pledged to work together to develop inshore fisheries in their communities, where fishermen and fisherwomen can sell their catches to the local HTAs. The associations would then sell and deliver the fish to markets in southern Canada.

Lydia Noah, who chairs the Iviq HTA in Grise Fiord, said the alliance could make a big difference in her remote community.

"I think income will be the biggest impact," she said. "There's about 80 to 90 per cent hunters, so it will help some of the people that are unemployed."