He started fishing with his dad, Pat Bates, as a toddler in Main-A-Dieu , Nova Scotia in 1974 and continued through high school, getting up at 3:15 a.m. each day and hauling traps until it was time to go to school, and then hauling more traps in the evenings. As payment for his weekly work on his dads lobster boat, Pat would pay Fabian with lobster and it was up to him to sell the lobster for whatever money he could get – little did Pat know he was giving him the training he would use the rest of his life.

Fast forward to 1994, with a move across the country to look for work, Bates found the price of lobster was quite a bit higher here in BC than the price back on the east coast.  So it began – it all started with a small recirculating system in the garage of a rented house on Renfrew Street in Vancouver, then a move to the North Shore, then finally to Port Moody 20 Years later. The current location is at 3009 Murray Street Port Moody and this is where he has been using his dads training the past 7 years.  At this location he can hold up to 3000 lbs of live lobster in his recirculating tanks.  “Nothing is in my tanks for more than a week – I get it in, I move it out”.