NATIONAL NEWS
By Kevin Cox, Atlantic Bureau, Halifax
The Globe and Mail, Saturday, March 16, 1996
Certainly Brian Tobin, and probably the St. John's lawyers who specialize in the international fishery. But maybe not the fish.
The gunboats and the over-heated rhetoric of piracy and plundering that a year ago rallied Canadian to the aid of an odd-looking flatfish have left the Grand Banks, but the debate continues over who won the turbot war.
Even critics of the exercise agree that former federal fisheries minister Brian Tobin, nicknamed "Turbotnator"× and "Captain Canada" for his aggressive leadership in ordering patrol boats to harass and arrest Spanish trawlers in March of 1995, emerged as the big winner in the month-long tussle over the turbot.
Mr. Tobin managed to convert his carefullly cultivated image as a tough negotiator and defender of Newfoundland into a landslide provincial electoral victory last month as he bacame Premier of his home province.
But for all the talk about confrontations on the high seas, only one Spanish trawler, the Estai, was arrested and charged with illegal fishing. The charges were subsequently dropped, the cargo of fish was returned and the federal government paid $41.000 to return the fish to its owners.
Others who will probably emerge as winners are those St. John's lawyers specializing in international fishery law. The owners of the Estai and the Spanish government are now taking Canada to court in separate cases claiming the Canadian government acted illegally in arresting the boat and should compensate the owners of the vessel.
The government of Spain has asked the International Court of Justice in The Hague for leave to bring a case claiming Canada had no legal right to arrest the Estai in international waters.
As well, the owners of the Estai, José Pereira e Hijos and the captain of the boat, Enrique Davila González, have started a civil action against the Canadian Government in the federal Court for the arrest of the Estai.
The suit calls for general damages for trespass and endangerment on the high seas. It also accuses the Canadian officials of "piracy, unlawful seizure, unlawful arrest of the Estai, unlawful arrest of Captan Davila, negligence, unlawful detention and interference of the plaintiff's servants and agents".
While many Canadians remember the arrest of the Estai with a certain amount of national pride, it is obvious from the statement of claim that Captain Davila does not have warm memories of St-John's. The claim states that after he was removed from his ship in St-John's, Captain Davila was forced to walk a "gantlet of hostile demonstrators" to reach a court room.
"During the journey the plaintiff Enrique Davila Gonzalez was abused, jostled and subjected to obscenities and an assault was committed when eggs were thrown at Enrique Davila Gonzalez and Spanish, French, German and European Community diplomats accompanying him", the statement of claim said.
The major losers in the so-called turbot war would appear to be the Spanish and Portuguese fishermen. Hampered by poor catches, recently introduced quotas and the watchful eye of international fisheries inspectors who are now on every boat, they apppear to be abandoning the chase for turbot.
There are now about 20 European vessels, most of them from Spain, fishing for turbot and redfish in the international waters known as the nose and tail of the Grand Banks, compared with the 50 boats that worked in the area prior to the launching over the Canadian offensive last year, according to the Federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans.
Under fishing agreements that followed the High Sea confrontation last year, the European fishermen are only allowed to catch 11.000 tons of turbot in 1996, a far cry from the more than 40.000 tons they had been catching annually in the early part of this decade.
Canadian fishermen, who in early 1995 had hoped that cutting the European fishing effort would allow them to dramatically increase their turbot catches off the Grand Banks, have settled for a catch limit of about 3.000 tons since 1996. Another 6.000 tons of turbot will be divided up between several other countries, including Japan and Russia.
However, Canadians will also have the opportunity to catch up to 7.000 tons of turbot off Labrador.
Many of the European fishermen are staying home because they can't make any money catching turbot under the new regime, Earl Wiseman, acting director-general of the international directorate of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, said in an interview earlier this week.
"There is less fish out there and the reality is that it just is not economical for a lot of vessels to come out there anymore", Mr. Wiseman said, adding that the observers try to ensure that all fish catches are properly reported and that the boats aren't deliberately catching small fish using nets with fine mesh.
Mr. Wiseman said that despite the bitter feelings over the arrest of the Estai last year, Spain and other members of the European Union have been cooperating with Canada to regulate the Grand Banks fishery. Only one major violation of the North-West Atlantic Fisheries Organization's regulations was cited last year, compared with about 25 in 1994, he said.
But what of the turbot, the unloved flatfish that Mr. Tobin told the United Nations were clinging to survival by their fingernails in the face of the marauding Spanish trawlers?
Mr. Wiseman said the fish are the major winners of the turbot tastle because catches are now restricted and monitored, offering some hope for a recovery not only of the turbot but also of the cod and other flatfish on the Grand Banks.
But international and Canadian Fisheries scientists have outlined a negative prognosis for the turbot.
In a scenario that immediately calls to mind the plight of northern cod before they became so depleted that a moratorium had to be declared in 1992, the scientific Council of NAFO stated in June of last year that excessive amounts of young turbots (also known as Greenland halibut) well below the spawning age are being caught and this is "a major impediment to stock rebuilding".
The Canadian Fisheries Resource Conservation Council, which provides advice to the federal government on fishing allocations, expressed alarm about the poor state of turbot stocks in Canadian and international waters and urged that steps be taken to minimize the catching of small turbot.
John Cummins, a Reform MP who was his party's critic on the turbot issue, insisted the turbot war did nothing to save the fish stock but resulted in Canada giving up a major share of the stock to the Europeans and appearing to flout international fisheries law.
"It doesn't appear to me that there were any gains made. It was a hell of a media event but I don't think the resource is protected any better".
But Earle McCurdy, head of the Fishermen, Food and Allied Workers Union in Newfoundland, scoffed at the Reform MP's suggestion that the turbot war failed to advance the cause of conservation.
Mr. McCurdy said in an interview that without the arrest of the Estai, Canada would have continued to be frustrated in its efforts to persuade the Europeans to curb foreign overfishing and the use of such things as illegal fine-meshed nets.