FFAW president Earle McCurdy said the Newfoundland and Labrador government has all but ignored the plight of residents on Newfoundland's Northern Peninsula. (CBC)

The leader of Newfoundland and Labrador's fisheries union says his members are refusing to leave port to catch shrimp, as a pricing crisis extends to yet another catch.

Members of the Fish, Food and Allied Workers were gathering Friday at Anchor Point on the island's Northern Peninsula, to rally against low prices that have been hammered out for this year's shrimp fishery.

The protest comes on the heels of disastrous seasons so far for lobster and crab.

FFAW president Earle McCurdy said the shrimp industry is particularly important for small communities in northern Newfoundland.

"Of a total population on the Northern Peninsula in the vicinity of 10,000 people, there's a thousand who work directly in the shrimp fishery," McCurdy said.

"That's been closed down solid for [the] better part of a month, and there hasn't been a squeak," he said, referring to the Newfoundland and Labrador government's interest in the issue.

McCurdy said he wants to know why the government is not providing the fishery with the kind of assistance it has been giving to the forestry sector. He said he has been asking for a meeting with Premier Danny Williams since December, but instead has been fobbed off to Fisheries Minister Tom Hedderson.

McCurdy said half-hearted and stop-gap measures will not be enough to solve problems in the fishery, which has long been troubled by too many people chasing too few fish.

"Do they think no more highly of people in the outports than that to say that make-work projects are good enough for you?" McCurdy told CBC News.

For his part, Hedderson accused both the FFAW and seafood processors of not doing enough to turn things around.

"I don't believe that they've done the due diligence that they need in order to get the price that's required to get that fishery going," Hedderson said Thursday.

A government-appointed panel set a price of 37.1 cents per pound for the summer shrimp season.

Processors have argued that the global economic slump has undercut markets for most seafood exports, and that their problems have been compounded by a stronger Canadian dollar.

Dwight Spence, who fishes from Port au Choix, said the price is so low, it is not economically feasible to head to sea.

"We had eight or 10 big years with the crab and everything else, and all of a sudden, as you would say, the arse is falling out of everything," Spence said.

"Government [has] to intervene, you know, like everything else, and I don't know what they can do."