NORTHPORT, P.E.I. - Ice had started its normal regression from the Gulf of St. Lawrence, but a change in the wind recently brought it back and packed it in so solid that snow crab fishermen can’t start their season.
Fishermen started to launch their boats but shore-fast ice (sea ice that’s fastened to the coastline or to the sea floor) is still denying them access to the fishing grounds.
Once the ports are free and the fast ice has moved off, buoys to mark the channels will still have to be placed before the crab fishery can open, said Trevor Hodgson, acting superintendent of the Canadian Coast Guard’s Ice Operations Atlantic.
“We don’t really have a set (opening) day. We’re basically working with the weather to go day-by-day.”
He acknowledged near gale force winds out of the east on Tuesday helped clear some of the fast ice, however, the Coast Guard still has about five to seven days of ice-breaking around New Brunswick’s Acadian Peninsula.
“It hit the gulf pretty hard. It essentially took all the ice that was in the gulf and compacted it into three big piles.”
Ice started to move from the gulf by early March, but a few days of northeasterly winds in mid-March reversed that trend.
“It hit the gulf pretty hard, he said.
“It essentially took all the ice that was in the gulf and compacted it into three big piles,” he said of how it pushed the ice against Prince Edward Island’s North Shore and some into the eastern and western entrances to the Northumberland Strait.
Because the ice was so compressed by the pressure, it has taken longer for it to decompress and move out. However, Hodgson said it is starting to break up now, and cargo ships have been able to make it into port in Summerside and Charlottetown without ice-breaker assistance.
While P.E.I. is breaking free of winter’s grasp on its own, Hodgson said several days of ice-breaking operations are still necessary in northern New Brunswick. Of particular concern are the Acadian Peninsula ports of Shippagan, Caraquet and Lemèque, where many of the region’s crab boats are based.
There was so much pack ice that the Coast Guard’s hovercraft could not get into port, and the 83-meter ice-breaker, the Sir William Alexander, had to be called in to conduct four break-outs in Chaleur Bay and Shippagan Bay.
The hovercraft has since taken over and has logged four days in Shippagan Bay and around Shippagan wharf.
