Cover
story
Prawn
jewel
Fisherman-owned
Vancouver company
flourishes with
British Columbia’s
spot prawn fishery
By Rick Crosby
The Spot Prawn Festival, held on
Granville Island in Vancouver, is the
brainchild of restaurateur Robert
Clark and fisherman Steve Johansen.
24 NATIONAL FISHERMAN • JUNE 2011
Steve Johansen (left) and Frank Keitsch sort trap-caught keepers from egg-bearing
prawns and bycatch aboard the Organic Ocean One off Vancouver, British Columbia.
“I remember Steve and I walking
around Granville Island with a plate of
prawns that we cooked, just giving out
prawns,” says Frank Keitsch, 44, who
runs the 27-foot Organic Ocean One
for Organic Ocean Seafood.
The spot prawn fishery has been active
for 30 or 40 years off the B.C. coast. But
in the 1990s, the Japanese market made
the fishery lucrative for newcomers. In
the beginning Johansen and Keitsch lost
gear on snags and in rockslides.
Rick Crosby photos
O
n Saturday, May 8, 2010,
a row of white tents is set
up on one jetty at Fisherman’s Wharf near Vancouver’s Granville Island. A group of
seafood chefs stand out in their starch
white uniforms in the growing crowd
of visitors at British Columbia’s fourth
annual Spot Prawn Festival. The gathering is the brainchild of Vancouver prawn
fisherman Steve Johansen, 43, and restaurateur Robert Clark, 47, who believe
spot prawns are the poster child for sustainable fisheries. In the early 1990s spot
prawns were relatively unknown to consumers in British Columbia.
“You go out there and set the gear,
and it’s 50-50 whether there are prawns
in the area you’re working,” recounts
Keitsch, who began fishing with his father on summer holidays.
Sometimes they’d set in 50 fathoms
and get nothing; and then set in 70
fathoms, and boom — there were the
prawns.
At 6:45 a.m., on June 22, six weeks
after the Spot Prawn Festival, the Organic Ocean One departs Fisherman’s
Wharf. This is its 47th consecutive day
fishing, and the crew is starting to feel it.
“Do we really have to go out?” Johansen jokes good-naturedly when he
arrives at the dock.
Yes, they do. With the market teeming for sustainably harvested spot prawns
they’d be crazy not to.
In the last four years Organic Ocean
Seafood, co-owned by Johansen and
Dane Chauvel, has served the domestic market exclusively supplying spot
prawns to restaurants across Canada.
They recently began supplying prawns
to chefs in Las Vegas.
At 7:50 a.m., we’re 15 feet offshore in
350 feet of water up Indian Arm, a fjord
east of Vancouver. Keitsch fills the live
hatch with deep seawater.
“Surface water has some fresh water
For updated news, visit www.nationalfisherman.com
THE FACTS: British columbia spot prawn fishing
•N
umber of participating
boats: About 250 licenses in
British Columbia; half a dozen out
of False Creek in Vancouver.
• Size of participating boats:
20 to 45 feet
• Crew size: Two to five
• Typical fishing areas: From
Victoria on Vancouver Island up
to the Alaska border.
• Depth: 30 to 100 fathoms
• Gear: 300 traps, each 30 to 37
inches with a minimum mesh size
of 1 1/2 inches.
• Capital investment: The
boat, gear and license is about
$700,000 Canadian. Threehundred traps cost $100 each.
Ground lines and bait chips
bring the cost up to $40,000 or
$50,000 a year for gear. Tying up
at a government wharf is about
$1,000 a year.
•S
pot prawn landings: The annual harvest is 5 million to 6 million pounds, an average 20,000
pounds per permit.
• Licenses and permits: A onetime purchase of a prawn license
costs $500,000, Canadian, and
renewed annually for $4,300.
•G
eneral regulations: Canada’s
Department of Fisheries and
Oceans manages the fishery.
• Season length: Fishing is open
from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. for six to
eight weeks in May and June.
•Ex-vessel prices: The average
price paid by restaurant chefs is
$10 a pound. A public market
pays $7 or $8 a pound to the
fishermen. Direct retail sales yield
about $12 a pound.
•M
arkets: The main market for
spot prawns is independently
owned restaurants in Canada.
in it that can kill prawns,” Keitsch explains.
A computerized chilling system lowers the seawater temperature in the hold
to 35 degrees Fahrenheit. The crew har-
vests three strings a day and leaves three
strings to soak. The traps are set within
a 50-mile radius of Vancouver in Howe
Sound and up off the Sechelt Peninsula.
The spot prawn fishery covers the coast
of British Columbia from Vancouver up
to Prince Rupert and off Alaska.
“It tends to be a homesteader’s fishery, where the guys operate in the same
regions each year,” says Chauvel, 52.
FISHING AREA
British Columbia
DETAIL
AREA
Howe Sound
.o
St
eo
fG
Indian Arm
Vancouver
ia
rg
Washington
St.
of
Juan
de Fuca
N
0
30 mi.
Transform Your Stuffing Box Into A High Tech Shaft Seal Solution.
This new high performance compression packing was specifically engineered to meet
the demands of marine propulsion. It is never consumed in use. Ultra-X® is self-lubricating,
needs virtually no water for lubrication, and keeps bilge dry and clean of contaminants.
It lasts over 5x longer than flax or PTFE packing.
Transfers heat to stuffing
box away from shaft
5x more thermally
conductive than flax or PTFE
(BTU in/h ft2 °F)
Heat Dispersion Rates
14
Johnson Cutless® DuraCooler®
Duramax®
Water-Lubricated Keel Cooler
Commercial
Shaft Bearings
Heat Exchangers Fendering
1
To Ultra-X_NFisherman7x4875_ad.indd
subscribe, call 1-800-959-5073
Duramax
12
Virtually eliminates
shaft damage
11.9
THERMAL
CONDUCTIVITY
COMPARISONS
10
8
Call Duramax Marine®
440-834-5400
6
2.4
4
2
0
DURAMAX®
ULTRA-X®
FLAX
PACKING
Johnson®
Heavy Duty
Stuffing Boxes
1.7
PTFE
PACKING
300% less friction than flax
Requires no grease, stays
pliable, will never harden,
swell or become brittle
Flax causes scoring and
excessive wear
w w w. D u r a m a x M a r i n e . c o m
Ultra-X: NatioNal FishermaN 7 x 4.875
17990 Great Lakes Parkway
Hiram, Ohio 44234 U.S.A.
FAX 800.497.9283 USA & Canada
or 440.834.4950
[email protected]
9/16/10 11:14:03 AM
JUNE 2011 • NATIONAL
FISHERMAN 25
Cover
story
Spot prawns: a profitable harvest
There are about 250 license holders
on the B.C. coast. Each permit allows
300 traps, which fishermen set in six
strings of 50 traps in 30 to 100 fathoms.
“If you lease a license from somebody
who’s not going to actively fish, you
are then able to fish an additional 200
traps,” Chauvel explains. “A stacker license takes advantage of the economics
to fish more traps with fewer boats.”
The fishery opens on the first week
in May and tends to be a six- to eightweek season, closing sometime between
the end of June and early July, based on
the closely watched spawner index to
protect the breeding class. It’s a competitive business.
“On opening day fishermen are hollering and swearing at each other because one guy’s laid down his string of
traps in an area that’s traditionally been
held by another guy,” Chauvel says.
Spot prawns have become a valuable shellfish fishery with a gross value
of $30 million to $40 million in British Columbia on an average 5.5 million
pounds landed. The fleet caught a high
F
isherman’s Wharf has been a prominent fixture in British Columbia’s
commercial fishing industry for decades. But 10 years ago competition
from farmed salmon caused a decline in the mainstay wild salmon fishing.
“Investors like us said if we’re going to stay in this business we’re going to have to re-invent ourselves,” explains Dane Chauvel, co-owner of
Organic Ocean Seafood with fellow fisherman Steve Johansen.
“[Restaurateur] Robert Clark has been a captain of sustainability when
it comes to local seafood,” Johansen says. “Five years ago he was out
fishing with us and he said, ‘I want these prawns. Where are they?’”
The two men got together that winter and came up with the idea for
the Spot Prawn Festival.
“General society wanted a better connection with where their food
came from,” Johansen says. “They wanted the connection between the
fisherman and the plate. That’s what’s so successful for us. The chefs can
talk to the boat that’s harvesting their prawns that are going to be in their
kitchens that night.”
— R.C.
7.7 million pounds in 2009 and dipped
to 4.4 million pounds in 2010.
The prawns are graded from medium
with 2-inch tails to jumbos with 4-inchlong tails. When the catch is delivered
to the dock they’re unloaded to a processing distribution facility and put in
cold storage until shipment. Fisherman’s
Wharf is Organic Ocean Seafood’s main
operation center for their domestic distribution business. The company outsources processing, transportation and
cold storage for their product.
“This enables us to be fully integrated
and fully resourced without a large capital investment,” Chauvel explains.
Winches and Capstans
Designed for Outstanding
Performance and Dependability
Best Value in Hydraulic
Marine Cable Winches
BLOOM Mfg. Inc.
Winch Division
1443 220th Street, Independence, Iowa 50644
FAX 319-827-1140 PHONE 319-827-1139
www.bloommfg.com
1-800-394-1139 Ext. 164
"Custom Engineered Solutions
26 NATIONAL FISHERMAN • JUNE 2011
For updated news, visit www.nationalfisherman.com
O
n the Organic Ocean One,
Keitsch mans the hauler while
deckhand Trevor White, 22, gets ready
to stack the traps.
The first string of 50 traps comes up.
“Not much,” Keitsch remarks.
Spot prawns have a four-year cycle.
They are born male and transform into
female two years into their cycle during
a 10-month period from spring to fall.
“Last year was an absolute record
catch for the entire fleet on the B.C.
coast,” Keitsch says. “This year was
probably one of the slowest years on
record.”
Cold weather could have been a factor.
“Prawns do their spawning in winter, and come April or May they’ve laid
their eggs and done their molt,” Keitsch
explains. “This year we noticed that
right until the last day of the season we
were still catching a lot of prawns with
eggs in ’em.’”
While Keitsch mans the hauler, Johansen deftly separates the male prawns
from the females, throwing the females
and any bycatch back into the water.
“We release our egg-bearing prawns,”
Chauvel explains. “The design of the
traps enables us to release almost all of
the bycatch alive.”
“Forty-five fathoms!” Johansen yells.
But the first three traps yield slim
pickings.
“In the beginning of the prawn season
every trap is full,” Keitsch informs me.
The third set also yields few prawns,
and we move down Indian Arm. Johansen slows the boat and positions just
offshore. The crew puts out the traps
for tomorrow morning. Then we head
back to Fisherman’s Wharf.
Commercial spot prawn fishermen
can live with a slow season because of
cold weather. They’re more dismayed
about the recreational fishery that uses
an unregulated mesh size and is not required to release egg-bearing prawns.
“You can’t regulate one sector and
leave another sector unregulated,”
Chauvel says adamantly.
Johansen is equally concerned.
“It makes no sense for us to be involved in one of the most sustainable
fisheries in the world if there’s a recreational fleet out there 12 months a year
doing the complete opposite,” he says.
On Saturday, May 8, when the OrTo subscribe, call 1-800-959-5073
ganic Ocean One pulled up to the dock
at Fisherman’s Wharf, people lined up
to buy prawns.
“Sold 500 pounds of prawns in about
two hours,” Chauvel says proudly.
At 12 dollars a pound in the retail
market, that’s a good catch. The season
started out well and the boat worked
hard. Johansen and his crew talked
about taking a day off.
“But we can’t,” Johansen says.
Organic Ocean Seafood’s business has
evolved to include liaisons with tourism
groups and talking with chefs on television shows about sustainable fishing.
“We’re very proud of it and looking
forward,” Keitsch says.
Rick Crosby is a freelance writer living in
British Columbia.
JUNE 2011 • NATIONAL FISHERMAN 27