Crab plant workers have punched their time in spades this season, and are being called heroes

Workers at seafood processing plants in Newfoundland have been working all summer long in an effort to make sure snow crab quotas for the shortened 2023 season are met, and they say they're ready for a break.

"This season has been one of the hardest seasons that we have worked here, because we had to do a lot of crab in a short period of time," Louise Power, a floor supervisor at the Quinlan Brothers Ltd. plant in Bay de Verde, told CBC News Tuesday.

She worked at the plant for 46 years, and has had four days off since May.

"We all got through it, and made the season work," she said. "Right now, [I'm] happy as a lark."

The celebrations come following a push to harvest quotas in a shortened season.

The opening of this year's harvest was delayed by six weeks following messy price negotiations between the Association of Seafood Producers and the Fish, Food and Allied Workers union that played out in the media.

The price for snow crab started at $2.20 per pound — the same price that was negotiated in April — but increased with market demand and is at $2.60 per pound as of Sunday.

Workers like Brian Rose said the shortened season made for a hectic summer, especially when workers pushed to make sure they worked enough to apply for employment insurance, but he said he's proud of what he and his colleagues have accomplished.

"It was just steady go, hours and hours of meat every day. We had no breaks and, well, that's what we had to do."

The Association of Seafood Producers thanked workers for a job well done in Tuesday's edition of the St. John's Telegram, writing that their strength and perservation during the season is "a lesson to us all."

Robin Quinlan, President of Quinlan Brothers Ltd., said the plant processed 10 million pounds of crab per week.. He called the work done inside his plant "superhuman".

"We operated 12 weeks straight this year, round the clock. We had no shutdown of the plant whatsoever," Quinlan said. 

"You had to live through it to be able to convince yourself that it became reality."

Association of Seafood Producers Executive Director Jeff Loder called the workers heroes, adding 95 per cent of the quota has been processed.