“We saw a real expansion of local sales of both live and frozen prawn tails that effectively saved many harvesters in terms of their (financial) viability last year,” said Emily Orr, lead representative for the Prawn Industry Caucus. The industry has spent years working with the provincial Ministry of Agriculture, Food, and Fisheries to bolster local sales, but the effort really took off last year. “For DFO to turn around and say, ‘No, you cannot freeze prawn tails’ … it’s a real disservice to all the work that’s been done — but much bigger than that is the damage to people’s profitability,” she said.