“The playing field is not level,” stated Harlan Billings, of Stonington, referring to an off-island lobster buyer who has parked his truck on the town’s Commercial Fish Pier
and has been buying lobster from fishermen since July 4, paying 50 cents per lb. more than the co-op. “He sits there all day monopolizing a shaded area with a loading platform and a winch, power, and water, and a roof over his head,” Billings said. “I think every lobster buyer in town should have that right, too.”
For the yearly fee of $1,000, Billings, too, could park one of his trucks on the pier and buy lobster. He doesn’t, of course. He and most other island lobster dealers have their own waterfront buying stations, for which they pay whopping property taxes. His real gripe is the higher price the off-island dealer can afford to pay because he does not have taxable waterfront property. According to Hugh Reynolds, of Stonington’s Greenhead Lobster, that thousand dollars is ten percent of his property tax.
The Deer Isle (Stonington is a town on Deer Isle) lobster dealers claim the higher prices being paid could put them out of business and that once they’re gone, their working waterfront properties will be lost forever, sold to non-working waterfront buyers for condominiums or other real estate development.
The fishermen, on the other hand, like having another buyer for their lobster. They feel the off-island dealer presents real competition to island dealers, whom they perceive as working together to arrive at an agreed-upon price for lobster, which they then offer fishermen as a take-it-or-leave-it proposition. Deer Isle fisherman Leroy Bridges stated the fisherman’s prevailing attitude, saying, “They’ve been held captive since the beginning of time.”
Lobster buyers invading other dealers’ territories happens every so often, but in the last three or four years, it’s become more prevalent. In addition to Stonington, it’s also happening at Bass Harbor and Machiasport, at Rockland and on islands. At gravy time on Matinicus, a smack boat shows up, buys the lobster, services a couple of boats, but only in good weather, not in winter. At Bass Harbor, local dealer Michael Radcliffe, of F. W. Thurston Co., in Bernard, complains that out-of-town buyer Ron Doane, of Down East Lobster Co., in Trenton, is “taking advantage of the situation” by purchasing a permit from the town to buy lobster on the town wharf. Because Doane does not own and pay taxes on waterfront property, this allows him to pay more than the local dealers can afford to pay. Radcliffe says the permit Doane bought is, “Ten percent of my property taxes.”
Doane says that neither he nor Anthony Pettegrow, of Trenton’s Trenton Bridge Lobster Pound, has waterfront access and that both have a perfect right to buy lobster from independent lobstermen. Of the current Stonington brouhaha, Doane said, “It’s the only wharf in the state of Maine where they seem to think they have the right to keep everybody off of it. It’s not right. There’s federal money on that wharf, and when you have federal money, you cannot discriminate.”
Now, many think Stonington’s current lobster buying situation is due to dealers invading each other’s territory. One of the largest lobster dealers on the Eastern Seaboard is Garbo Lobster, Inc., of Groton, Connecticut. Garbo also owns a facility in Hancock, Maine.
Last year, Pettegrow said Garbo’s trucks “took over” buying at a wharf where Trenton Bridge had bought for 15 years. Garbo Lobster offered more than the going rate per lb. for the lobster; consequently, fishermen sold to Garbo’s buyer at the higher price.
Pete Daley, Manager of Garbo’s Hancock business, said the story of Garbo’s trucks moving in on Trenton Bridge’s was “not true at all.” He said Garbo does not buy directly from individual fishermen. Rather, he said, “We buy from dealers, such as Dana Rice, of D. B. Fisheries [in Gouldsboro], and from co-ops, such as Stonington, Spruce Head and Vinalhaven,”
Daley further cleared up the misconception by stating that Trenton Bridge didn’t buy at Prospect Harbor. He said, “Dana buys in Prospect Harbor, along with Inland Seafood. In Bunker’s Harbor, Dana buys. That’s also where Trenton Bridge used to buy.
“Dana Rice used to sell to Trenton Bridge,” Daley explained. “He now sells to Garbo.” He said Rice buys some lobster from Prospect Harbor (where Pettegrow used to buy) and some from Bunker’s Harbor, where Pettegrow also used to buy. Daley added, “Dealers and fishermen are free to sell to whomever they choose, and I find that whoever provides the better service, ends up with the customer.”
Pettegrow explained why his truck was on Stonington’s Commercial Fish Pier, saying that some Stonington fishermen approached his son, Warren, and asked him to invite Trenton Bridge to come to Stonington to buy their product.
On July 2, Pettegrow purchased and was issued a “Transport” Permit and on July 4 he started sending Trenton Bridge trucks to buy lobster at the pier, offering the price he paid to all the independent lobstermen from whom he buys, which was more than the Stonington Co-op and local dealers were offering. This started a short-lived price war and brought the wrath of the Stonington Lobster Co-op and Stonington’s other lobster dealers upon Pettegrow.
Reynolds; Billings, of Billings Diesel and Marine; Wallace Fifield, of Fifield Lobster; James Eaton, of Sunshine Seafood, Inc.; Stephen Robbins, III, Manager, Stonington Lobster Co-operative; and Douglas Hardy, of Deer Isle’s Island Lobster, in addition to other times, met to discuss the situation on Monday, August 6. Deer Isle dealers Basil Heanssler, of Conary Cove Lobster; Bruce Heanssler, of Bruce C. Heanssler Lobster; and Stephen Clausen, Of Little Bay Lobster, did not attend, but support the other local dealers.
Eaton said that the state money for the fish pier came with strings attached. “Under the Economic Development Act,” he said it reads that, “these funds shall not be used for competition with local businessmen.” (According to an State Inter-Departmental Memorandum on the Stonington Fish Pier project dated 1-15-82, “Section 702 of the Economic Development Act prohibits financial assistance to any project that would result in direct competition to existing commercial or industrial enterprises when there is not sufficient demand to employ the efficient capacity of all.”)
“We’re not opposed to fair competition,” Eaton explained; “Among ourselves, we compete all the time.” All those present agreed they’d have no argument with the truck if it set up business X number of feet from the pier. It is hogging the facility on the pier that they find unfair, they said. As they understand it, at the time the pier was built, it was made for gillnetters to offload fish. Since then, the gillnet fleet went under, and the only successful fishery that remains is lobster. They explained that a fisherman might use the pier to on-load or offload his lobster. Then he must leave the pier rather than stay there, as does the Trenton Bridge truck.
Further exacerbating the situation, Stonington dealers and fishermen came together at a volatile meeting of the Harbor Committee on Aug. 14. Augusta Attorney James Billings (no relation), representing Reynolds, presented the dealers’ position. A number of speakers, representing the 40 or so fishermen and women attending, angrily refuted Billings and the dealers, charged the dealers with price fixing, and corroborated Pettegrow’s contention that he came to Stonington at their request. Veteran fisherman Dick Bridges suggested the matter be voted on at Town Meeting and was told it would have to be put on the Warrant.
When he felt the fishermen had made their points sufficiently, committee chairman Hilton Turner accepted a motion to take the matter under advisement for a later day and suggested that unless they had further business to discuss, they leave so the committee could finish its meeting.