ON LOBSTER CUTS & MOTHER NATURE
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Kit Johnson, Winter Harbor, right, and grandson, fisherman Brandon Johnson. Kit thinks if fishing is cut to three days a week, half the lobsters on the bottom will starve because fishermen have been feeding them for the last twenty years. Johnson said the lobsters will be “eating each other and killing each other.” Johnson wonders if there could be alternate “Safe Fishing Days” in case the last day or days for fishing in any fishery would be too dangerous. Bernice Johnson photo
Whether fishermen decided on days out or closing the fishery down, one of the things the sub-committee wanted was to establish a set of triggers: what would have to happen to cut fishing to a certain number of days per week or to stop fishing altogether for a set period. But who would determine such a trigger brought up an issue of its own because what might present a problem to one part of the coast might not to another. In the end, the sub-committee recommended a measure limiting fishing to three days a week for a very short period of no longer than four weeks. This measure will be sent to the State Legislature to be voted upon.
But Drouin thinks lowering the trap limit would be more profitable. “If we went to 600 traps,” he said, “I think we would [also] have a better quality lobster.” He explained that in the fall he hears fishermen say they haven’t tended their traps in 10 days to two weeks. He said, “All they’re doing is saturating the bottom and waiting for something to move, and that’s kind of a waste of money.”
Not all fishermen, though, think something must be done. Many, among them Winter Harbor fisherman Billy Bob Faulkingham, are against making any changes.
“There should be no reason to do any conservation right now,” Faulkingham said, citing the health of the stock. As to the issue of a glut, with so many lobsters on the bottom, Faulkingham said, “You don’t want to do anything to compound that.” He said he doesn’t know that “Limiting the days we could fish would slow down the quantity, because people would just fish harder and longer on the days that were open.” This, he thinks, might also create quality problems. “Hot weather and lobsters on the deck don’t mix,” he said. “You’d be bringing in a lot of worse quality lobster. That would probably affect your price, and I don’t know if it would change the volume coming in overall.”
Faulkingham thinks a lot of the ideas people are coming up with are for conservation. “They want to try to sort of control the flow of lobsters,” he said, “but I don’t really see if that’s possible. I think the thing to do is just hope that the market gets better and expands.”
Trying to stop a glut, according to Faulkingham, is “only delaying the inevitable.” This is what he thinks happened last summer when Maine started its season right after LFAs 33 and 34 ended theirs. If limiting fishing to three days a week worked, he said, “Then who is to say that we wouldn’t run into another Canadian season on the other end and have another glut there?” He observed, “It’s better to just let everything run its course. This [past] year was an extremely early end to winter and [the shedders] came really early.” Faulkingham, therefore, thinks a lot of what’s going on is “Panic over a one-year thing.” He went on to say, “If we have a cold winter and a normal spring, I think that things will go back to normal.”
But Casco Bay, where LAC sub-committee member Elliot Thomas fishes, does not have Down East’s super-abundance of lobster. Like Casco Bay, some coastal areas caught only slightly more poundage as they had the year before. At the Portland Lobster Symposium in November, Maine’s lobster biologist Carl Wilson stated that last summer fishermen from Pemaquid east were able to make up by increased effort what they lost due to the record low boat prices, but he said fishermen from Pemaquid west were not able to make up the difference because the waters they fish do not have eastern Maine’s abundance.
Thomas is also on an advisory board working for Maine to receive Marine Stewardship Council [MSC] certification for lobster, which, if it passes, will certify that the lobster industry is sustainable. “It’s a pretty big thing,” Thomas said. He says Wal-Mart is the largest retailer of lobster in the US and stated, “Wal-Mart has said that by some date, they are going to buy only MSC certified seafood.” If this is so, Wal-Mart will be buying a whole lot of lobster, and if Maine receives certification that will help “sell” Maine lobster to the giant retailer. (“We should hear by March or April,” Thomas said.) He explained, “Money for certification has been raised by a committee with a board of advisors made up of fishermen from the down east, mid- and southwestern coasts.”
But Thomas made another point, insisting, “We need to spend money on marketing. $3 million sounds like a lot, but it’s only a small percent.”
Stonington fisherman and MLA board member John Williams agrees. “The only way we’re going to get more money,” he said, “is to create more demand. I don’t have any problem with catching over a hundred million lbs. of lobsters,” he said; “we need to create a market for that many—for more than that. It’s pretty simple.” But he added, “Nobody has any idea what’s going on. They really don’t. There’s a lot of misinformation. The MLA is not pushing anything,” Williams stated. “It’s the advisory council. And the meetings are going to be whatever YOU want.” (He mentioned that an informational meeting would be held in February, which he hopes will clear up misinformation.)
Winter Harbor fisherman Kit Johnson wants Maine’s waters left alone. He thinks if fishing is cut to three days a week, half the lobsters on the bottom will starve because fishermen have been feeding them for the last twenty years. Johnson said the lobsters will be “eating each other and killing each other.” He made a stronger point about the danger of the state telling fishermen, “what day you’ve got to go if you want a week’s pay. That’s putting people in harm’s way,” he said. “The last two days they could fish Gouldsboro Bay, it was 50- and 60-knot winds. There were 15 boats that were putting the wheelhouse right under, trying to fish.”
Johnson wonders if there could there be alternate “Safe Fishing Days” in case the last day or days for fishing in any fishery would be too dangerous. And before making any changes to the fishery, he suggested sending a questionnaire with proposed changes to all licensed fishermen to get their opinions.
Chebeague fisherman Jeff Putnam agrees with Johnson. He’s against further restrictions and said, “The best thing fishermen can do is take control of the product themselves.”
Cutler fisherman Josh Cates agrees that would be one good option, but declared, “Each fisherman has the ability to help improve his own bottom line. There’s not a ‘one-size-fits-all’ fix.”
Sunshine Island [off Deer Isle] fisherman Leroy Bridges, for one, thinks that if fishing gets cut back to three days a week, the DMR should begin checking lobster quality, continuing the three-day week fishing until it is such that the majority of the catch can be shipped. “This will only work,” he said, “if there is a limit on time fishing and number of sternmen or on the amount of gear in the water,” which Bridges thinks should be limited to 200 to 250 traps. If, despite these measures, there is still a glut, he suggests cutting that trap limit in half.
Should or shouldn’t fishermen mess with Mother Nature? Drouin agrees with the lobster scientists at the November Lobster Symposium, “The whole dynamic of the fishery is changing,” he said, “but we haven’t done anything to catch up with it.” Although fishermen held many strong opinions, as of January they lacked consensus.