P.E.I.’s snow crab season wrapping up as right whale protection begins [Video]

An early start to the season is paying off for many P.E.I. snow crab fishers, with good catches and better prices than last year. 

An added bonus: for the second straight year, most will have caught their quota before endangered North Atlantic right whales move in to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, prompting protective measures to prevent entanglement in fishing gear.

The fishery opened April 1, thanks to the lack of ice cover this winter.

Last year, the season started on April 13, and on April 3 the year before. Unlike the lobster fishery, there is no set opening day. 

“The objective is to get on the water early because the right whales are going to show up, and so that’s why we got on the water April 1,” said Carter Hutt, who fishes out of Northport, P.E.I.

“It’s great because we do lobsters too. So we don’t have to …