![\"Fish](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1781193251_321_default.jpg\")
Niqitaq Fisheries sold about 680 kilograms of turbot to Skipper Otto, a Vancouver-based business that offers customers subscription-based access to Canadian seafood, earlier this year. (Submitted by Loomis Loder)<\/p>\nJustin Kautuq was part of a small team that had a fruitful fishing trip 100 kilometres north of Clyde River, Nunavut, in late April.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The crew, organized by fishing company Niqitaq Fisheries, brought home 432 turbot.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Kautuq described it as the best trip he\u2019s been on, by the numbers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt went well,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The total catch weighed about 1,400 kilograms \u2014 enough that some of the turbot could be distributed in the Arctic community while about 680 kilograms could be sold to Skipper Otto, a Vancouver-based company that runs a subscription-style program for Canadian seafood.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Nunalik Fisheries, which helps Nunavut harvesters and communities find markets for their fish, connected the two enterprises. Skipper Otto has bought Arctic char from other Nunavut communities \u2013 but this was the first time it was able to offer turbot to its customers.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey want[ed] 4,000 pounds of fish right away. And I thought, my God, that\u2019s a big sale for us,\u201d said Loomis Loder, the inshore fishing manager for Baffin Fisheries. He described Niqitaq Fisheries as a \u201cside arm\u201d of Baffin Fisheries Coalition.<\/p>\n
Niqitaq Fisheries sold about 680 kilograms of turbot to Skipper Otto, a Vancouver-based business that offers customers subscription-based access to Canadian seafood, earlier this year. (Submitted by Loomis Loder)<\/p>\n
Loder said they sent about 680 kilograms of turbot by plane to Ottawa, where it was then put on a truck to Vancouver for further processing. He said Niqitaq was paid $7.50 per pound, minus the cost of freight.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Gabriel Paniloo, who has been working on fishing trips with Loder for two years and was on that trip in late April as well, said selling fish to distributors in the South is good for him and his community.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know that there\u2019s a lot of fish up there,\u201d he said. \u201cWe could get money if we start to sell fish, since there\u2019s barely any job[s] in town.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Nunalik does ‘everything but fishing’ <\/p>\n
Will Hyndman, the director of the Nunalik Fisheries, said his organization got going around 2019. It\u2019s been working with harvesters in Naujaat, Taloyoak, Igloolik and Qikiqtarjuaq, as well as Clyde River.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He said going out on the land, catching fish, and bringing it back to their community is a \u201chugely important\u201d skill set among Nunavut harvesters. Being able to get that fish to new markets, he said, requires another set of skills \u2013 which he said involves a lot of desk work.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Hyndman said Nunalik Fisheries, which is a two-person team including himself, reads Canadian Food Inspection Agency regulations, coordinates food-safe packaging, talks to customers,\u00a0 troubleshoots logistics, and does marketing as well.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe try to do everything but the fishing, so that when hunters come back to their community, they can make one phone call and ship out their fish, and they get to go back out on the land,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Preserving a fishing way of life<\/p>\n
Sonia Strobel, Skipper Otto\u2019s co-founder and CEO, said her business has been working with Nunavut communities for five or six years now.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The fish from Nunavut is frozen outside once it’s caught, and then flown to either Winnipeg or Ottawa before it’s trucked to Skipper Otto\u2019s fish-cutting facility in Vancouver. From there, it\u2019s packaged and shipped to pick-up locations across Canada.\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1781193252_736_default.jpg\")
A turbot fillet after it’s been completely processed and is ready for packaging. (Olivia Sari-Goerlach)<\/p>\n
The company has been in business for 18 years and has 10 full-time staff as well as about a dozen part-time employees. Strobel said the company has about 7,000 customers.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that the work that fishing families do in Nunavut is so incredibly important,\u201d she said. She hopes partnerships between Skipper Otto and Nunavut communities \u201chelp preserve a fishing way of life.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Hopes for the future<\/p>\n
Loder said he\u2019d like to sell more turbot to Skipper Otto next winter. Paniloo wants the relationship to continue too \u2013 and hopes it\u2019ll help his community make its case for building a fish processing plant in the future.<\/p>\n
Hyndman would like Nunavut to have a \u201cthriving harvesting economy,\u201d where fish are sustainably caught and Inuit are able to make a career out of catching fish for their communities and for southern markets.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThey recognize that they have amazing fish, they eat amazing fish all around their community,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And that was plain when talking to Loder\u2019s crew.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Kautuq said people in his community react quickly when he\u2019s giving out smoked turbot.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThey start running to get some,\u201d he said with a laugh. \u201cThey like it.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1781193252_347_default.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Harvesters haul line of turbot from below the ice north of Clyde River, Nunavut<\/p>\n
A small team had a fruitful fishing trip north of Clyde River, Nunavut earlier this year, and were able to sell some of their catch to a southern distributor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Justin Kautuq was part of a small team that had a fruitful fishing trip 100 kilometres north of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":730052,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,295,66],"class_list":["post-730051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=730051"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730051\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/730052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=730051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=730051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=730051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}