The fishing industry may take longer to bounce back than it took to drop.

But the business will very gradually return to form, said Gilbert Linstead, general manager of the Labrador Fishermen’s Union Shrimp Company Limited (LFUSCL).

Mr. Linstead recently returned from the International Boston Seafood Show, which he has attended for the past 25 years, and said, although the numbers were down nearly 20 per cent from the previous year, the numbers were higher than anticipated.

“Within the next year, hopefully, things will start to improve,” he said.

All sectors of the fishery from around the world – roughly 15,000 people – congregated in Boston over a three-day period during the middle of March.

Mr. Linstead said the show is an opportunity to meet face-to-face with the people and businesses the LFUSCL deals with in the international market.

“Most of the time there’s a lot of business done there with the people that we’re involved with,” he said.

This year, however, the tone was “a little bit wary,” he said.

“Not as subdued as I would have thought, because there are some positive things that are happening, and maybe (the recession) won’t be as long and as drawn out as we may have anticipated in the beginning. Things are starting to look a little better.

” Crab stocks are stable", he said, "because there is a low inventory of worldwide crab at the moment".

But what will happen with shrimp and cod sales remains unclear.

“The shrimp, we still haven’t seen exactly where it’s going for the upcoming year,” Mr. Linstead said. “The main thing that we attribute it to is the ongoing recession, where people who buy those products can’t get access to money, cash, and then you have credit companies that won’t insure their receivables, so banks are nervous and loaning institutions are nervous about giving people too much money to buy too much product. They’re still buying, but they’re buying slower, they’re not buying in big volume.”

One positive remains a constant, he added: “The one thing we got going for us is that people have to eat,” he said. “The world over, people have to eat; they might not have to spend money for cars and they might not have to spend money for skidoos, but they have to eat in order to survive.”