Lobsters are scarce, boat fuel costly, and other kinds of fish so scarce they aren’t worth chasing any more.
That’s the gloomy picture facing lobstermen such as Dave Cousens of South Thomaston, who estimates lobsters are off by 30 to 40 percent this year. “I can sum it up in one word, it sucks,” he said.
As president of the 1,200-member Maine Lobstermen’s Association, Cousens hears plenty of comment on the fishery, and this year it’s unfavorable. But he said the current dearth of legal-sized lobsters is cyclical, and the population will rebound in a few years. A lot depends on survival rate of young lobsters, which are affected by cooler water temperature, predators and other factors.
Cousens is not so confident about the survival of the lobstermen. “It’s been a poor year all the way around. We are in a slump and we’re going to be there for the next year or two.” Meanwhile, he said, it costs a lobsterman $400 per day to fish, and if he or she isn’t hauling enough of them, it doesn’t pay.
Rising gas and diesel fuel prices, the cost of bait and hiring a sternman, and the expense of maintaining boat and gear combine to make hauling traps an expensive proposition. Cousens said some of the 60 lobstermen who fish from South Thomaston may decide to get out of the business and look for a job ashore.
He acknowledged lobstering is better at nearby Spruce Head, although he believes that’s because there are fewer lobstermen there.
Bob Bayer, executive director at the University of Maine’s Lobster Institute, is more optimistic about this year’s total catch. Although landings are down from previous years, he said the situation is not that bad, and the number of lobsters taken by Maine’s 2,000 licensed lobstermen varies considerably from place to place.
Cousens, who has fished lobster for 27 years, believes the catch is not just down, it’s way down. He said it peaked in an extraordinary catch in 1999, when more than 100 million pounds of lobsters were taken.
George Lapointe, commissioner for the Department of Marine Resources, said lobstermen anticipated good fishing but it didn’t happen. “People have had a really spotty year,” he said, with some lobstermen feeling the pinch more than others.
Lapointe said there is no shortage of undersize lobsters, so biologically the species is strong. Last year, he said, lobstermen landed 72 million pounds for an estimated dockside value of $300 million.
That kind of money makes the impact of lobstering a billion-dollar business in Maine, he said.
Cousens said the health of the industry is also threatened by proposed federal rules to protect whales. Those rules restrict areas and numbers of lobsters caught, and require certain gear.
Lobstering, clamming and mussel harvesting continue along the coast, but other fisheries are in tough shape. “The fishing’s done. There’s no scallops any more. Urchins are gone,” Cousens asserted. “I don’t know where we’re going to go.”
Lobstermen see themselves as independent. At the same time, most are highly dependent on petroleum products, from engine fuel to coated traps, ropes and the boat itself. The price is going up and profits are down.
“If we don’t have high volume [of lobsters] we’re going out of business,” he said. It’s not easy to find consensus among fishermen. “Lobstermen agree that something’s got to be done, but they just can’t agree on what to do.”
Meanwhile, a lobster hatchery project is continuing at Penobscot East Resource Center in Stonington. The center’s executive director, Robin Alden, said it’s too early to draw conclusions from the experimental seeding of young lobsters in depleted areas.
The resource center aims to build more sustainable fishing communities through local management, as well as through diversifying, on the premise that coastal communities are too dependent on lobstering.
In another development, John Driscoll, a student at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia is studying the entire environmental impact of lobstering, with help from Professor Peter Tydemers of the School for Resource and Environmental Studies at Dalhousie. Maine’s Lobster Institute is a partner in the study.