Wait-listed: “We Want Our Licenses”

by Laurie Schreiber

“Come out and fish where we fish. It isn’t about 3:1 or 5:1. It’s about the 70,000 tags that are being let into a closed zone.” – fisherman at Zone B meeting. Fishermen’s Voice photo

BAR HARBOR—Folks who have been waiting for years for a lobster-fishing license in Zone B can now hope to shave off some future wait-time.

That’s because the Zone B Lobster Council changed the exit-to-entry ratio from 5:1 to 3:1, at their Sept. 21 meeting. The vote went contrary to the general sentiment of the zone’s membership.

There are currently 53 people on the Zone B waiting list.

Earlier this summer, surveys were mailed to 511 lobster fishermen in Zone B, asking whether the ratio should kept at 5:1 or changed to 3:1. Of the 217 respondents, 120 favored 5:1 and 84 wanted 3:1. But the council indicated that they were not bound by the referendum. Zone B currently has 519 commercial license-holders, down from 646 when the state instituted limited entry in 1997. But Zone B now has far more tags than it once did—322,745 in 2015, compared with 235,982 in 1997.

“I’ve been five years on the list,” said Josh Kane of Bar Harbor, who is No. 39 on the list. “We’re not asking anything unreasonable, going to 3:1. There was no reason for it to ever be this restrictive.”

Kane added, “We have no position in this industry. I’m basically a non-entity in a business I’ve devoted my entire adult life to, since I was a teenager. I just want a shot.”

About five years ago, Zone B opted to count tags out rather than licenses retired. At that point, said another wait-listed fisherman, Holly Masterson of Bar Harbor, there were two years when no one in Zone B got a commercial license, other than student fishermen.

“Basically, in the last five years, we’ve had no movement on the list,” said Masterson. “And there are people like myself who went on the list 10 years ago and, as of now, I’m No. 24. So at 5:1, I’m looking at least at another two decades, for a career I’ve been in for over 12 years now.” Changing to 3:1 would be a fair compromise, she said. “There are those of us who have put in our time and we want our licenses.”

Islesford fisherman Jack Merrill also urged the council to vote for 3:1.

“It was never intended by anyone that people would have to wait 20 years to get a license,” Merrill said. “There have been some steps taken to move it a little bit. But 5:1…hasn’t fixed the logjam.”

Jon Carter, a former Zone B Council chairman, said the entry system got its start because the science at the time indicated there were too many traps in the water.

“We were supposed to get the numbers down,” Carter said. “That’s why this started. The scientists told us we had to bring the numbers down.”

However, said Carter, once the number of licenses dropped to 500-some in Zone B, the ratio was intended to go to 1:1.

“So somehow that got thrown out because we went to tags from people. Now we’re back to people again,” Carter said.

Carter noted it was the zone’s membership that favored the 5:1 ratio in the first place.

Part of the discussion revolved around Zone C’s participation in Zone B, due to the rule that allows fishermen to place 49 percent of their traps in another zone. That rule has elevated the number of traps in Zone B to unsustainable numbers, said some fishermen.

“Zone B is already grossly overfished,” said one man. “Come out and fish where we fish. It isn’t about 3:1 or 5:1. It’s about the 70,000 tags that are being let into a closed zone. You take those away, and the waiting list goes away.”

The 49/51 rule was instituted to grandfather fishermen accustomed to fishing where they wanted to, before the zone management system went into effect. Some on the council wanted to know if a rule could be made to say that new Zone C fishermen wouldn’t be allowed to get Zone B tags. But Department of Marine Resources lobster council liaison Sarah Cotnoir said a similar discussion, in the form of a bill under consideration a couple of years ago to change the 49/51 rule to 25 percent, drew little interest from the industry.