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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 35 Number 2
October 2007
ME lobstermen turnout for FEIS, sink rope meeting
ELLSWORTH, ME – At the Maine Fishermen’s Forum last March, the Maine Lobstermen’s Association (MLA) announced it was going to intervene in a federal lawsuit brought by two conservation groups to force the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) to act on getting out new whale protection rules. At that time, MLA Executive Director Patrice McCarron asked the industry for contributions to help defray the legal costs of intervening in that lawsuit.
In early September, more than 150 Downeast lobstermen gathered in Ellsworth to get an update on new amendments to the Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Plan (ALWTRP) and to find out what the MLA had done so far.
As outlined in the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) for the plan issued by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) in August, Maine lobstermen will have to start using sinking groundlines on traps set outside a nearshore “exemption line” one year after NMFS finalizes the latest version of the plan. That is expected to happen in October.
The meeting was one of three sponsored by the MLA, and the best attended. According to MLA President David Cousens, about 70-80 fishermen showed up at a meeting in Rockland the previous evening. An earlier meeting in Saco drew an audience of just 25-30.
“That’s a pretty poor turnout for this issue,” Cousens told the Downeast crowd.
Exemption line
Along the Maine coast, the exemption line described in the FEIS basically parallels the dividing line between state and federal waters three miles offshore though it comes much closer to shore, notably so in some areas.
The exemption line was first suggested by the Maine Department of Marine Resources (DMR) early in the ALWTRP process. At the time, about two years ago, the proposal drew substantial if grudging support from the lobster industry. That is no longer the case.
Trials have shown that sinking line just doesn’t work in areas with the rocky bottoms and strong tides characteristic of Midcoast and Downeast Maine. What’s more, the proposed exemption line will force fishermen to use sinking groundlines in areas where whales are virtually never seen – a requirement that makes no sense, according to Cousens.
Actual sightings
McCarron told the crowd that data compiled by the MLA and the Gulf of Maine Lobster Institute showed that between 1990 and 2005 nearly all whale sightings along the Maine coast occurred outside the 50-fathom line.
Using charts to illustrate the point, McCarron said that during the 15-year period, only a handful of endangered right or humpback whales – 14 in all – were sighted inside the 50-fathom curve.
Of those, two right whale and four humpback sightings were inside the three-mile limit. Five of those six sightings occurred in waters off the westernmost section of the Maine coast, where the bottom is sandy and fishing sinking rope is less of a problem.
That would suggest that forcing lobstermen to use sinking rope in Midcoast and Downeast would have a negligible impact on whale protection.
“How can anyone looking at those charts with any educational background, how can they say anything different?” asked Bruce Fernald, a lobsterman from Islesford in the Cranberry Isles.
Although it seems obvious that the exemption line should be set farther offshore, McCarron said persuading NMFS to change its position won’t be easy.
While “the 50-fathom curve works for probably 95% of fishermen,” Cousens said, “the consensus is we need to do a lot more science if we want the 50-fathom curve.”
Not enough rope
Beyond the issue of whether the exemption line is in the right place, an imminent problem is the implementation date for the sinking rope requirement.
As it now stands, hundreds of lobstermen will have to rig over hundreds of thousands of traps by October of next year.
That idea “is just unrealistic,” Cousens said. Based on his conversations with the companies that make sink rope, he said it is clear that there’s not enough manufacturing capacity to meet the industry’s needs in that timeframe.
Maine Department of Marine Resources (DMR) Commissioner George Lapointe, in the audience as an observer at the MLA-sponsored meeting, added that complying with an October 2008 implementation date “can’t be done logistically.”
A typical fisherman would need approximately 5,000 pounds of sink rope to comply with the rule, Lapointe said, adding up to perhaps a total of seven million pounds during the first year for fishermen who set gear outside the exemption line. In addition, he said, it could take another three million pounds of the rope or more annually to meet their gear maintenance and replacement needs.
“The rope industry doesn’t have that capacity,” he said.
Delay implementation
Cousens said “the first order of business” was to convince NMFS to delay the implementation date for the sinking rope requirement until 2010. That would give the MLA and DMR time to collect more recent whale sighting data that might persuade the federal agency to move the exemption line farther offshore. It would also allow time to gather data on the serious economic impact of the proposed rule. That could be substantial.
Cappy Sargent, a lobstermen who fishes primarily outside of the exemption line, said, “This is going to cost me $37,000 for the first round. That’s just the trawls, not end lines.”
So far, according to Cousens, the MLA had enlisted the support of the entire Maine congressional delegation– US Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins and US Reps. Tom Allen and Michael Michaud – in the effort to modify the exemption line.
Defense fund
After successfully intervening in the federal lawsuit, the MLA and its Washington. DC-based lawyers also have been in meetings with a variety of government agencies, including NMFS and the Office of Management and Budget.
All of that has cost plenty of money.
According to McCarron, by the end of August, the MLA legal defense fund had raised just $55,000. Of that, $36,000 came from 35 different businesses. The balance – about $19,000 – came from 145 individual fishermen. That equals just 3% of all holders of Maine lobster licenses.
Sink rope issues
If the industry wants NMFS to delay implementation of the sink rope requirement, Cousens said, it was critical that lobstermen submit written comments on the proposed rule to NMFS by the Sept. 17 deadline.
Those comments would have to present “new information” documenting safety-related problems or other operational difficulties encountered while testing sinking rope.
Cousens also called for the fishermen to document any increases in their operating costs that would result from the use of sinking rope.
That shouldn’t be a problem.
Kevin Beal, a lobsterman from Beals Island, displayed a length of sink rope that had chafed through after only 14 hours use in a halibut trawl.
Norbert Lemieux, a lobsterman from Cutler, said he thought that lobstermen fishing Downeast would lose twice as many traps to hang downs and other problems with sinking rope groundlines. Based on tests using low-profile rope, he said, fishermen “haven’t found anything that works. Some of it you just part off (on) the first haul.”
Research, tag fees
To persuade NMFS that the exemption line should be moved, Cousens said, the MLA needs scientific data to show that there is no scientific basis for establishing the line where it is. New research will be needed to amass that data and, Cousens said, the research needs to be ongoing.
“We don’t need research just for now,” he said. “Next December, the (Atlantic Large Whale) Take Reduction Team is going to attack floating rope on end lines,” he said.
There was substantial support for funding additional research. One Downeast fisherman proposed a 10-cent increase in the annual trap tag fee. That could be imposed by DMR without legislative approval, and the money could be dedicated to whale research.
One fisherman complained that the state should finance the necessary research out of general funds, rather than increasing the trap tag fee.
“If they raise trap tags, we’ll never get it back,” he said.
Despite that risk, another Downeast fisherman, Dwight Carver from Beals Island, summed up what seemed to be widespread support for the proposed increase in tag fees.
“Eighty-eight bucks a year isn’t a lot, even if it’s for the rest of our lives,” Carver said.
Lemieux echoed that idea when he pointed out that $88 was about equal to the cost of just one of the hundreds of coils of rope that lobstermen buy every year. He also suggested that it was a tiny amount compared with the cost of the additional traps fishermen would lose if they had to use sinking rope.
The increase in ghost traps was another issue that NMFS hadn’t considered, Cousens said. As bad as the problem is now, with sinking groundlines, in a few years there would be “millions of ghost traps” left on the ocean floor, he predicted.
Legal fees, Max
While Lapointe could approve an increase in the trap tag fee that would be dedicated to funding DMR whale research, that won’t help the MLA in its ongoing legal battle over the whale rules.
If MLA were to sue NMFS over the rules, Cousens said, a full-blown court battle could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
There is another potentially expensive legal problem on the horizon, too.
Max Strahan, the self-titled “Prince of Whales,” is back in federal court in Boston, this time suing an individual lobsterman whose legal lobster gear was found on an entangled whale (see CFN April 2007).
Strahan is suing for $1 million in damages and trying to have the Massachusetts lobsterman’s license revoked. The MLA has contributed to the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association legal fund to help cover that fisherman’s legal costs because, according to Cousens, Strahan has threatened to come after Maine lobstermen next and “take us out.”
With the possibility of huge legal expenses ahead, someone asked whether MLA would sue NMFS to block the new whale protection rules.
“We aren’t going to sue if the money’s not there,” Cousens said. He said that there were “other avenues,” the MLA could pursue, such as new federal legislation, that could eventually lead to a relocation of the exemption line but added, “we need data to get it moved.”
One young fisherman suggested that there should be plenty of money available from the industry to support the necessary research. “What’s $1,000 to fight this?” he asked. “We sacrifice (the cost of) a few traps for our future.”
Kristan Porter, another Cutler fishermen, alluded to the longtime split between the Downeast lobster fishing industry and the MLA.
“I know guys Downeast have issues with the MLA, but we’ve got to fight this,” Porter said.
Contributions to the legal defense fund were low when MLA asked in March, he continued, because “there’s no money in the spring. Everybody here can send $500 or $200, and tell your friends.”
He wasn’t alone.
“Are you taking checks tonight?” someone called out to Cousens from the back of the room.
Stephen Rappaport
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