Newfoundland’s cod fishery, the mainstay of the province’s fishermen, collapsed in 1992. The following year, lobster harvesters on its Eastport Peninsula experienced their worst year of landings ever. Chilled by the possibility of losing another fishery, they decided to do whatever it took to save their stocks.
“Before the moratorium on cod, we had 248 lobster licenses [in the entire fisheries area] but only between 120 and 140 were usually fished,” said George Feltham, a longtime multispecies fisherman. “After the moratorium, the licenses were fished to the max.”
Prior to the cod collapse, some of the harvesters who didn’t go lobstering for the whole season might put in their pots for two or three weeks, but Feltham said they had little impact on the fishery overall. Unlike most Maine lobster harvesters, who have no season and may fish until the weather drives them ashore, Canada’s lobster fishery is managed by seasons – most of them short – and by regions. But when multispecies fishermen in Area 5, the region that includes Eastport, were deprived of their cod, they dusted off their dormant licenses for the 9- to 10-week lobster fishery.
Also, some harvesters from nearby parts of the region moved traps into the small bay that had historically been fished only by the 48 license holders living in the seven-community Eastport area.
“Lobster is not prosecuted as a primary fishery, so the government had never paid much attention to us,” said Feltham. “Our fishery is not big compared to Maine or Nova Scotia’s, but the fishery is very important to our communities, contributing between $600,000 and $800,000 (Canadian) annually. So it contributes as much to our local economy as the bigger ones do to theirs.”
The lack of enforcement scrutiny meant that many harvesters had long ignored the minimum size regulation and regularly landed undersized lobsters.
“We knew we wouldn’t exist if we didn’t do something to save our lobsters,” said Feltham. “We live in a fairly law-abiding area, but when we saw encroachment from other areas, and the lowest landings ever, we decided in 1993 to do something, but it took two years.”
During the two years, Feltham organized the four dozen lobster license holders, who met and educated themselves about lobster conservation. The landing of undersized lobsters stopped as harvesters changed their attitudes to realize “you have to put back the small lobsters for the next guy.”
They formed a committee, contacted the Canadian federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) and asked for help. “In 1995, the Fisheries Resource Conservation Council (FRCC) issued a report saying lobster egg production had to increase by something like 30 percent in order to stabilize the industry,” said Feltham. “We asked the DFO to partner with us, and give us an area to be fished just by us.”
The DFO agreed and carved a zone in the bay exclusive to the Eastport license holders. In exchange, the lobstermen gave up their right to fish any other part of the larger fisheries region of Bonavista Bay. Dr. Gerry Ennis of DFO and Dr. Jack Larsen of Memorial University in St. John’s, Newfoundland, became part of the Eastport team.
“They didn’t offer dictatorial support, they gave us a real working partnership,” said Feltham. “We signed a co-management agreement to control our lobster area.” By 1995, they had formed the Eastport Peninsula Lobster Protection Committee, chaired by Feltham. The team decided the best way to increase egg production to meet the terms of Canada’s FRCC report would be to close two small areas totaling around 1.2 square miles within their designated exclusive zone.
Historical fishing knowledge suggested the areas, and the cooperating scientists’ research affirmed the harvesters’ choices. Soon they saw a 12 percent increase in egg production. “We also started V-notching, an idea we got from Maine,” said Feltham.
About 60 years ago, Maine harvesters began the practice of cutting a V-shaped notch in the tails of egg-bearing female lobsters and throwing them back in. When Maine harvesters catch lobsters with V-notched tails, they return them to the sea, even if they are not ‘berried.’ The practice has been adopted throughout most of the range of the U.S. East Coast resource, and has spread to Ireland, parts of Canada and is being considered by harvesters in Australia and New Zealand.
“We increased egg production by another seven percent,” said Feltham. “But we still weren’t there.” DFO also increased the minimum lobster landing size, which added another eight percent. “We saw no drop in landings when the minimum was increased.
“Since 1993, our lobster landings have doubled, we’ve seen a steady increase,” Feltham reported. “I think we will continue to see a steady increase, while lobster landings in areas on either side of us have steadily declined.”
Eastporters are getting inquiries now about their program from fishermen in other areas. Lobster landings rose steadily in Eastport until 1998 when they leveled off, but Feltham says they may soon see another rise.
“We are the point where V-notching should be paying off,” he said. “It takes roughly eight years for our lobsters to go from larvae to commercial size, and we started V-notching in 1996.” V-notching is voluntary for Eastport harvesters, but most do it and all have agreed to throw V-notched lobsters back. Feltham said the committee estimates more than 5,000 lobsters have been notched. For all his efforts, Feltham was one of the first fishermen to be awarded the prestigious national Romeo LeBlanc Medal for Responsible Fishing in 2000, the highest distinction given to Canadian fishermen by the federal government. Besides lobster, Feltham fishes for crab, capelin, lumpfish and turbot from his inshore boat, F/V JAMIE & MICHAEL, just under 35 feet. Besides chairing the lobster protection council, Feltham serves on several advisory committees to the DFO. Recently he served on two panels at the Maine Fishermen’s Forum in Rockport at seminars on the subjects of community-based management and marine protected areas.
In Eastport, the committee has not finished its work. The two closed areas remain closed, and the committee is working to have them designated as marine protected areas.
“They’re not just closed to lobster fishing now, but to all commercial and recreational fishing,” said Feltham. Instead, the committee instituted a tagging program to record lobsters’ travel movements in and out of the closed area, and to compare sizes of lobsters inside and out. So far, they’ve learned their lobsters apparently don’t move very far, proving the closures do protect the resource. “If they had been open all this time, all the lobsters in them would be gone now.”
Income from their efforts may not look big to Maine harvesters, but Feltham says the earnings from increased lobster landings have given local lobstermen an average jump from between $6,000 and $8,000 (Canadian) to between $10,000 and $14,000 annually. “That’s one-third of our income, so while it’s not seen as important by the government, it’s important to the individuals.”
Since education has helped these harvesters improve their resource, they have invested in education for the future. “We obtained funding and hired a consultant to develop an education module for the schools on fishery,” Feltham reported. Last year one school district accepted the module as a pilot project, held a two-and-a-half day in-service to train teachers, and made harvesters available to the schools as a teacher resource.
The module is designed to fit into varied courses, from science and social studies to business. Students are now entering data from lobstermen’s logbooks into a computer program that will allow them to generate useful information. “We don’t have anything else in our education system on the fishery in Newfoundland,” said Feltham. “That’s what drove us to do the education module.”