Fall shrimp price up 20¢/lb, only most of 2021 quota has been caught

The province's fish price-setting panel has set the fall price of shrimp at $1.30/lb, That's 20¢/lb more than the summer price set in mid-June, but 99% of the quota has been taken off Labrador and eastern Newfoundland (fishing zones 2J3KL), and there's said to be little quota left in the Gulf (fishing zone 4R).

Some harvesters say the higher price is to encourage owner-operators to catch the little bit of quota that's left (there's 580,000/lbs remaining in 3K North, for example). They also say that $1.30/lb should have been the price all along (and with good reason).

In its written decision, the price-setting panel said that shrimp prices are up in primary markets like the United Kingdom and Denmark.

Canada's cold-water shrimp also has an advantage going into United Kingdom markets in that Ottawa has a UK trade agreement while Greenland is still working on a post-Brexit deal.

SEA-NL noted Market movement on shrimp price in late June.

In its decision, the panel also noted its concern that the shrimp fishery is increasingly concentrated in the summer period (95%) "which results in sub-optimal value extraction from the resource and likely adds to marketing challenges."

This year's shrimp price has been a major disappointment to harvesters. While the price of snow crab and lobster have seen prices rise dramatically in 2021, that hasn't been the case with shrimp.

DFO also went outside its own rulebook to lower Newfoundland and Labrador's 2021 shrimp quota, documents confirm

Ryan Cleary,

SEA-NL

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