Once, scientists and lobster harvesters were like the Hatfields and McCoys. They hardly talked to each other at all, and discussions quickly became heated. The same might have been said of lobstermen themselves.
But change has come. The hallmark of the First Lobster Town Meeting held in Portland in April (WWF May ’04) was the high level of discourse as scientists listened to U.S. and Canadian fishermen, and fishermen exchanged wildly opposing views in a reasonable and friendly manner.
Weeks after the event, the executive director of the Lobster Conservancy in Friendship, Maine, reported that Massachusetts lobstermen were still praising it. Sara Ellis said, “I was in Massachusetts, training lobstermen in techniques of collecting juvenile lobsters, and they were saying how they really enjoyed it, that it felt good to have some many lobstermen from so many places, speaking their minds.”
At the meeting, lobstermen shared their concerns about their fishery with each other – everything from changing shell colors, early molts, food availability for lobsters and gauge sizes.
Water quality, surprisingly, emerged as one of the dominant issues for fishermen from Long Island to Nova Scotia. Long Island Sound harvesters, who experienced a massive die-off of lobsters that destroyed their fishery a few years ago, expressed a belief that their fishery can come back, but not without a lot of work.
Some said the lobster industry in some places might have been better off when untreated sewage outfall was pumped directly into harbors, instead of today’s heavily chlorinated sewage. After Boston renovated its sewage system “they ran the pipe out a lot further and a decline in fisheries coincided,” said Peter Mahoney, lobsterman from Hull, MA. “A connection? It’s an observation.”
“The alewives disappeared when the sewage treatment plants got going. Did the alewives disappearing affect the cod?” asked Downeast lobsterman John Carter. “Maybe they were better off dumping sewage in the water than chlorine.”
A Massachusetts lobsterman said sewage treatment plants don’t remove hormones from waste. He recommended a book by two scientists and an environmental reporter, Our Stolen Future, (see June ’04 review) which explores the little-known effects of “endocrine interrupters” – the various chemicals that have entered the water supply and now mimic natural hormones, disrupting reproductive patterns in many organisms from fish to human beings.
Ken Campbell from Prince Edward Island said some observers there are seeing sex change problems with eels and salmon due, they believe, to hormones, as well as lobster molting problems they feel may be caused by pesticide runoff from their heavily agricultural island province. Others pointed out that fish farms routinely treat pens with pesticides to kill sea lice.
“We’re all to blame,” said a Maine harvester. “The pesticides used on lawns in Maine are increasing. It’s not just spraying for mosquitoes, but all of us who want green lawns.”
Another laughed, saying, “I’ve been lobstering since 1970. Did you ever think you’d see a bunch of lobstermen sitting in a room talking about environmental issues? Where will we be tomorrow?”
Sherman Hoyt, marine extension agent with the Knox Lincoln Cooperative Extension, helped moderate some of the sessions. He said everyone was surprised that environmental water quality “jumped out” as such an issue for harvesters, but called it “the Achilles heel of lobstering. Most of our lobsters come from inshore and we’re seeing major crises inshore, such as those in Nova Scotia and Long Island Sound.”
The meeting was “very dynamic,” said Hoyt, a former lobsterman. If it lacked anything, “it was more government scientists from other jurisdictions. It’s an important piece of lobster management needs, between these competing and overlapping jurisdictions in management. But everything’s in place now. Maybe next time they’ll be there.”