The present economic recession has affected all big and small industry. Even at lobster fishing area 34, a region that has around 970 lobster licences, the effect of bad economy visible when a majority of fishermen stood in solidarity and on solid ground Monday to protest low prices for their catches. It is informed that the fishermen at Digby’s ferry terminal on early Monday afternoon approached refrigerated trucks arriving in the parking lot to prevent trucks carrying lobster from boarding the ferry. Fishermen said there were also men stopping trucks leaving Digby by the highway.
Wylie Walker of Rossway said at $3.25 per pound, fishermen just aren’t making enough to pay their bills. He added that they are being told that the economy worldwide is suffering and people aren’t prepared to pay high prices for lobster. He also said that the low prices they are getting aren’t being passed along to the consumer and there rise the problem
Across southwestern Nova Scotia, hundreds of boats returned to port in spontaneous action fishermen were calling a strike, and there were reported calls for wider civil disobedience. Ashton Spinney, chairman of the management board for LFA34, said fishermen began talking on their radios early in the day about a strike and estimated that at least three-quarters of the licence holders in the region were refusing to fish by.
