Standing on his float overlooking Barters Island, Ted Christie pounds at the ice that has accumulated from the last storm. As he swings a heavy maul, large football-sized chunks break off and float away, drifting down the waters of the Sheepscot River. Tied up beside him and covered in six inches of new snow is his lobster boat, the ABSOLUT.
Christie is a Zone E lobsterman who fishes the waters in and around Westport Island. His home is tucked away on a wooded plot with views of the water. When Christie entered the fishery as a sternman back in 1986, lobsters were abundant, and the catch appeared to be increasing. In 1991 he fished around 400 traps. By 1995 that number was well over 1,200. As the number of traps he fished increased, so did the success of his business.
“I got in at a good time,” he admits.
Then, in 1995, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) declared the entire U.S. lobster fishery “over fished.” Under this classification, efforts needed to be taken to preserve the health of the fishery. Management responsibilities were transferred from NMFS to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) in an effort to create more regional control. The Maine Department of Marine Resources (DMR), feeling pressure from federal authorities, felt it necessary to take action or face potentially stiffer, imposed restrictions.
Once taboo in the Maine lobster fishery, state trap limits were becoming part of the discussion. By 1996, the Maine Legislature, under the direction of the DMR, implemented a limit of 1,200 traps. In 1997, the ASMFC lobster management plan known as Amendment 3 proposed a total trap limit of 1,200, with a reduction to 1,000 in 1999 and 800 in 2000.
It was during this time that the state established the Lobster Zones and Zone Councils. The Zone Councils were formed partly in the name of local control, but also as a vehicle for implementing new regulations. Ultimately, though, the councils were given power in only three specific areas: trawl limits, regulation of time and days to be fished, and trap limits. And even these powers had to be presented to the state for final approval — whether the DMR Commissioner deemed them “fair and equitable.”
Despite some vocal opposition, Zone Councils soon adopted the proposed stricter trap limits, with Zone E adopting an even stricter limit of 600 traps. Effort reduction was viewed as a means for achieving resource conservation. Here was a measurable way to show that there was less pressure being put on the lobster population.
Some estimates suggest that approximately ten percent of the lobstermen in the state were affected by these measures. These were fishermen who were actively fishing gangs of gear in excess of 1,200 traps, many as high as 2,000.
“I didn’t mind giving something up,” Christie says, “but it just didn’t achieve what it set out to do.”
Diversifying
Matt Parkhurst, a Boothbay Region lobsterman who fishes in Zone E, is one of the ten percent. He has worked in the industry his entire life, lobstering full-time since the mid-1980s. At one point Parkhurst was fishing nearly 1,400 traps. Trap limits reduced his effort by over 50 percent.
“With two kids in college, I was forced to do something else,” says Parkhurst.
That “something else” has taken the form of shrimping and crabbing. “I now go scalloping and tuna fishing,” says Ron Lapointe, a Zone F lobsterman from Harpswell. Lapointe, who lobsters out of a 40-foot boat, once fished 1,600 traps. Many others have had to look outside fisheries to supplement their income.
The impact on these lobstermen has been more than economic. Like many full-time lobstermen, Christie and Parkhurst used to fish a schedule of four days on and one day off. Each day they fished, they might work through a few hundred traps, allowing the balance of their gear to remain on bottom for a few days in order to attract lobsters. Now, with the ability to work through their entire gang of gear in a much shorter time, they are relegated to working for two days, and taking two days off to allow their traps to set.
“I don’t like being told how hard I can work,” says Parkhurst.
With a greatly reduced amount of gear, lobstermen have been forced to alter long established habits. In the past, lobstermen were able to dedicate a portion of their gear to what Christie called “feeler traps.” These traps were used to test new ground or were set outside fishing areas, serving as indicators that the lobsters were moving. With fewer traps, lobstermen no longer have that ability. In some cases, they are now forced to pick up gear that is fishing well, and move it in order to target lobsters as they retreat to deeper waters in the fall.
Jim Merryman, who fishes in Zone A, concurs, “Since trap limits, I haven’t been able to spread out as much. At one time I could put traps in areas that didn’t fish as well, but were less congested. Those traps might set for an extra day, but they weren’t set over other people. Now I can only target the `hot spots’ like everyone else.”
Merryman has fished since he was eight years old, and at one time had 1,600 traps. He has seen his income decrease, but he doesn’t want to get a second job.
“This is what I love to do,” he laments. “During the summertime I don’t work as hard as I used to — I put in a much shorter day. But now I’m forced to fish year-round to make up for lost volume.”
Unintended Consequences
In spite of the fact that fishermen like Christie, Parkhurst, Lapointe and Merryman were forced to drastically reduce the amount of gear they had been fishing, the end result of trap limits has been just the opposite of what was intended. Today, there is more gear in the water then ever.
“We know it’s more crowded now than it used to be,” said George Lapointe, DMR Commissioner, at a recent Zone Council meeting. “We didn’t control the overall effort. We capped [the trap limit] at the upper level, and let it build from the bottom up.”
Despite the goal of reducing effort to 30 percent below 1997 levels, the state has experienced a small explosion in build-up. Fishermen who had traditionally fished 300 to 350 traps ramped up to the 800 (or 600 in Zone E) trap limit. Perhaps this was done in anticipation of a “use it or lose it” policy — or perhaps fishermen saw empty territory left by the “high-liners” as an opportunity to claim new bottom. Either way, the effects have been dramatic.
“The problem,” says Patrice McCarron, executive director of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association, “was when this went through the state legislature, there was a plan to freeze effort at current levels, but the state backed off. And what we experienced was just a reshuffling of the deck chairs.”
“Fishermen have said from day one that all we’ve done is a reallocation instead of an effort reduction,” says Terry Stockwell, a Resource Coordinator with DMR.
When trap limits were first being discussed, many lobstermen had advocated a “trap freeze.” While DMR says that it supported this action, the legislature ultimately rejected it.
“I’ve been with this process since day one,” said Lyman Kennedy, Chair of Zone Council F, during a recent meeting. “Where we lose our battles is not with George [Lapointe] or DMR, but with the legislature. The legislature just didn’t see the problems we saw.” And with these problems came unexpected results.
With the current trap tag program, the state can better track the amount of gear each lobsterman has. Tags are purchased from the state by lobstermen, with each tag representing one trap. While there has been an 8 percent reduction in Class I, II, and III lobster licenses since 1997, statewide there has been an increase to 3.1 million tags in 2003 — a 21 percent increase during the same period, according to the DMR.
Tags do not directly translate into effort. A lobsterman possessing tags may not necessarily be fishing all that gear. Based upon some informal surveys, DMR estimates that approximately two-thirds of the total represents actual traps in the water. Still, DMR is quick to point out that were all license holders to build to their maximum capacity, the state could see a total effort of 4.8 million traps in the water.
Lyman Kennedy concurs. “All this latent effort is coming to life,” he says. “We’re seeing it changing from held tags to fished tags.”
Recently, the DMR Commissioner has been quietly making the rounds, attending Zone Council meetings in order to raise the topic of reducing effort. The goal of these discussions has simply been to get people talking. One of the concerns that have prompted these talks is that the ASMFC stock assessment is close to completion — and effort plays a part in that equation.
Weekend Warriors
The increase in the number of traps has come not only from existing lobstermen building up, but from some other unexpected sources. The recreational fishery has had an impact.
“I did the math — right now there are 2,200 or 2,300 recreational licenses. [Based on recent historical increases] we could see as many as 20,000 by 2007. This is something we need to be concerned about,” says Clive Farrin, Zone E Vice-Chair. Farrin goes on to talk about the impact of the influx of students into the fishery. “At the same time Maine lobstermen reduced from 1,000 to 800 to 600 traps, we allowed all students to get in at 300 traps with an increase of 100 per year until reaching the zone limit.”
While many zones implemented an entry-exit ratio of 1:3 or even 1:5 for incoming fishermen, in an effort to be “fair and equitable” the state excluded students from this equation and let them enter at will.
In 2003 there were 946 student licenses in the state, holding approximately 90,000 tags. This number has the potential to increase to 142,000, DMR believes, and because the student category isn’t restricted, there is an unlimited potential for this category to grow.
So what is fair and equitable now? The health of the lobster fishery notwithstanding, there clearly remains the problem, particularly during the summer months, of trap overcrowding in coastal waters. And given the fact that effort reduction was unsuccessful before, how does the industry prevent the problem from perpetuating itself?
At times acting as a liaison between the DMR and fishing communities, Terry Stockwell has the unique perspective of having been a fisherman himself.
“We now have a dialogue and collaboration between fisheries and science that didn’t exist ten years ago,” said Stockwell. “If we decide to go before the legislature again, these measures will be proposed as a package that has as much support behind it as possible. It will be well thought out [and] hopefully we will learn from our mistakes.”
The larger, big-gang fishermen were asked to make the sacrifice once, which they did. Since then, they have adapted to circumstances while altering the way they approach their business. The days of large gangs of traps are gone.
As the discussion begins again, and there is talk of further reductions, who will bear the burden? Jim Merryman remains bitter. “Trap limits don’t sit well with me because of what happened the first time,” he says. “You want to try and fix something you broke ten years ago. I had to adjust from 1,600 traps to 800, and you just don’t catch more lobsters with fewer traps.”