Newfoundlanders Power Up With Cummins KTA19 For New Shrimp Fishery

The fishermen of Newfoundland are a determined bunch and none more so than those from the tiny outport of Wild Cove in White Bay on the island province's northeast coast. With only about 120 people, the community has survived the loss of the cod fishery by developing other fisheries more completely. Not only are they getting by, but fishermen like, Mark Small are building new boats. Mark keeps up the spring seal hunt, sets pots for crab, gillnets turbot, and trawls shrimp.

It was primarily for the newly developed northern shrimp fishery that he built the new more powerful boat. "Last fall, when I decided to build a new boat one of the key things that I looked for was an engine that had a good record," says Mark Small, "I talked to various skippers that had various models of engine and I came to the conclusion that the K19 was the engine for that boat."

Mark has owned a variety of marine engines, but with the trawl fishery he needed a powerful engine. He has now found that the 500 hp KTA19-M1 swinging a 61X54-inch prop on a 4.5-inch shaft through a Z-F BW161-1 gear with a deep 5:1 reduction handles his 1300 mesh bottom trawl very well. Fishing up to 200 miles off shore, reliability was a real concern for Mark. "A lot of people said that they had no problems getting 25,000 to 35,000 hours without doing any real maintenance, "continues Mark, "And its a fairly powerful engine for that boat so after doing a lot of research I decided that Cummins was the engine for me and when I go down to the engine room now and see her performing I know I made the right choice."

The boat, a 60X23-foot fibreglass from T.W.L. Enterprises Ltd. in Trinity Bay is build extra heavy and ice strengthened to equip her for the annual seal hunt. Mark takes her out to the ice flows in February. "When she come out of the mold, we bolted timbers through the hull and then put 24 layers of glass over each timber inside," explains Mark, "I put 25 extra layers of glass outside as an ice belt. The ice belt extends about three feet above and four feet below the waterline, but up front, where she hits the ice, it goes right down to the keel."

In addition to shrimp and seals, Mark and his three boys work crab pots and 350 50-fathom turbot gillnets which are fished in depths from 500 to 600 fathoms. In spite of the diverse gear employed, they can keep virtually all the rigging on the boat when they go from one fishery to another. The weather in the North Atlantic can be tough and Mark has built a boat to match it. "She is real good in a sea," he says, "We've been out now in some heavy weather and she performs excellent. I've been towing in a nice breeze of wind and against the tide and she's got no problems at all."

For more information:

Mr. Mark Small
Wild Cove, White Bay
Newfoundland, Canada
Phone: 709 329-3211

Harris M. Mosdell
Cummins Eastern Canada Inc.
122 Clyde Ave.
Mount Pearl, NF A1N 4S3

T.W.L. Enterprises Ltd..
Boat builder
Trinity, Trinity Bay, NF.
Phone: 709 464 3507

A number of other Newfoundland fishermen have recently repowered with Cummins KT19M engines with deeper reductions in order to take advantage of the new shrimp fishery. They include:

Mr. Les Hann of Valley Field, Nfld.
Phone: 709 536-5840

Mr. Derrick Bath of Twillingate, Nfld.
Phone: 709 884-2331

Mr.Harold Butler of Brigus, Nfld.
Phone: 709 683-2399

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