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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 33 Number 7
March 2006
GOMLF partnership focuses on lobster research
KENNEBUNK, ME - The Gulf of Maine Lobster Foundation (GOMLF), a small organization that involves lobstermen in collaborative research with scientists, has chugged along steadily, shepherding projects with familiar names but operating almost under the radar.
That level of visibility will be changing soon, however. GOMLF expects to receive $2 million in federal money sometime this summer, which will fund the startup of a rope exchange program for Maine lobstermen.
“This grant is bigger than any funding we have had before,” said Erin Pelletier, science director and project coordinator for GOMLF since 2002. “It means we can grow.”
She believes the fledgling foundation is right on track towards its goal to help improve the lobster industry over the long term by giving more and better information to managers making lobster decisions.
The new grant will provide money to help Maine lobstermen replace their floating groundline. The foundation proposed the “Groundline Exchange Program” in anticipation of new requirements in the Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Plan that could ban the use of poly for groundline.
Separate from MLA
Launched by the Maine Lobstermen’s Association (MLA) in 2000, GOMLF shares office space and staff with MLA. Patrice McCarron is the executive director of both groups and, in addition to her GOMLF role, Pelletier handles MLA membership and administrative duties.
But the foundation is also totally separate and different in fundamental ways.
MLA is a not-for-profit membership organization, funded entirely by dues. GOMLF is a 501 (c) (3) nonprofit foundation, able to accept public or private grant money and financed, like all nonprofit foundations, by taking a small percentage of the grant to pay for overhead, such as office and staff.
A primary MLA function is to support the lobster industry through lobbying and political action. GOMLF, in contrast, has no political function, just research.
Another significant difference is the area served. MLA works on behalf of Maine lobstermen, while the focus of GOMLF is the entire Gulf of Maine region
“At the beginning there was a strong connection between MLA and GOMLF because MLA built it,” said McCarron, “Now we’re more of a stand-alone operation.”
The foundation’s first executive director was David McCarron, now married to his former associate director and the current executive director, Patrice.
How it works
The mission statement calls GOMLF a “partnership among fishermen, scientists and other industry stakeholders who cooperate to gather scientific information on American lobster and the Gulf of Maine ecosystem in order to improve management decisions, ensure healthy fisheries and sustainable resources.”
In addition to McCarron and Pelletier, who are currently the only paid staff, the foundation also has a 10-member board of directors and an advisory board of eight scientists.
The board, whose members are drawn from all Gulf of Maine jurisdictions, works with McCarron and Pelletier to determine research needs of the industry. It also helps decide where to seek money to fund the projects.
“The board of directors meets three or four times a year, and we bounce ideas off them for proposals,” explained Pelletier. “They help decide which road we want to go down, our general direction.”
Those areas of focus, however, can only become foundation projects if funding can be found, which usually means applying for grants.
“We’re a 501 (c) (3),” said Pelletier. “We’re always chasing money.”
The two staff people keep an eye on requests for proposals (RFPs) advertised in the region. Board members do the same, and also tap into networks in their own areas. Final decisions on projects are usually made by Pelletier and McCarron.
“We run proposals by the board, but we don’t need a vote on every proposal,” said Pelletier. “We put out three or four proposals, hoping to get one.”
Low overhead
Pelletier and McCarron, both only part-time with the foundation, are now fully occupied with the work of acquiring grants and managing the projects.
“We’re tiny,” said Pelletier. “Our overhead is only around $40,000 a year.”
Lobsterman Pat White, former executive director of the MLA and a current Maine commissioner of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, is the president of the GOMLF board.
“Our overhead is so low, we can get more bang for the buck with a lot of projects,” he said. “I think that’s why we’ve been funded for some of them.”
White believes the small, lean foundation has an easier time tackling some kinds of projects than would a more scientific or university-based organization with more red tape and overhead.
But the foundation also has to grow and secure its future. It hopes to add at least one staff person to concentrate on making sure all the GOMLF data reach all the right places.
“We have a lot of information,” said Pelletier. “We don’t know where all of it will go yet or how it will be used, because we’re still new and we’re thinking long-term.”
White added, “We’ve been operating on a real shoestring. When our name gets out as a result of the whale rope (exchange) project, we’ll get even more opportunities.”
Besides its own projects, McCarron said GOMLF can also serve as a central agency for ideas presented by those who don’t have 501 (c) (3) status if their ideas match the foundation’s focus areas.
“They can run grants through us,” said McCarron since she and Pelletier can do the paperwork.
Pelletier described an example of a couple of lobstermen who wondered about the water quality in Casco Bay because the lobsters weren’t moving. The foundation wrote a grant proposal, which, unfortunately, didn’t get funded.
“This is a way to get fishermen involved in research because they have a lot of great ideas about the resource,” said Pelletier. “We have a lot of fishermen participating in a hands-on manner, using their special knowledge.”
Volunteers
The foundation relies on volunteers for nearly all of its projects, dozens of volunteers for some the field testing.
“Our projects are open to all interested lobstermen,” Pelletier said, emphasizing that MLA membership has no connection to being involved. “We went around to all the (Maine) lobster zone meetings and got a lot of new guys through word of mouth from other participants.”
She said the board members are also helpful in finding and communicating with lobstermen throughout the Gulf of Maine area. But having enough volunteers is always a concern.
“We’re always preaching to the choir. We go to science meetings and see the same faces, the same people who volunteer,” Pelletier said.
Environmental Monitors on Lobster Traps (eMOLT), a project that GOMLF has helped to administer since its start in 2001, is an example of the importance of volunteers. Funded with federal money through the Northeast Consortium, eMOLT’s success has been aided greatly by the unpaid help of nearly 100 lobstermen from all along the New England coast.
The fishermen record data from probes they’ve placed in their lobster traps to measure bottom temperature and salinity and surface drifters to show circulation patterns. Jim Manning, oceanographer from NOAA Fisheries Northeast Fisheries Science Center leads the project, which also involves several other groups and lobster industry associations. This data is analyzed at the Northeast center and is available to anyone who needs it at the web site <www.emolt.org> and through the Gulf of Maine Ocean Observing System (GoMOOS) at <www.gomoos.org/emolt>.
When funding for eMOLT ran out recently, volunteers offered to keep the probes on their traps to keep recording the information. Manning has several years of data, Pelletier said and “he wants to keep going with it. We will maintain all the volunteers. We have no more money, but the guys want to maintain the data for long-term use.”
Projects
So far, GOMLF has lead projects funded by well known sources such as the Northeast Consortium, National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, and the Maine Department of Marine Resources (DMR).
In addition to eMOLT, projects currently administered by GOMLF include the v-notch survey, community sea sampling, electronic logbooks, the ventless trap survey, and groundline rope research.
“Our projects help management by giving pieces of the puzzle that no one had before,” Pelletier said.
The v-notch survey was already well established when GOMLF took it over in 2001. The MLA started the annual survey in 1982, to document the number of v-notched lobsters on bottom. GOMLF has since expanded the suvey to include New Hampshire and Massachusetts fishermen.
In an effort funded by DMR, GOMLF places trained observers onto lobster boats as part of the department’s sea sampling program. Lobstermen volunteer to take out a community sampler who collects catch and effort information and biological data on the day’s fishing activity.
In 2005, the foundation acquired a series of Thistle Marine HMS electronic logbooks. Through a partnership with the DMR, the electronic logbooks were successfully used in a lobster trap saturation study on Monhegan Island in the fall of 2005.
Ventless traps
GOMLF has been managing a “ventless trap” survey since 2001, which was designed to collect information about the population of sublegal sized lobsters. Thirty-five Maine lobstermen participate in the survey fill, and recently 10 Massachusetts fishermen joined.
The volunteers fish three traps as a triple – one regular trap, one ventless, and one standardized ventless trap with a temperature recorder. They are asked to record data twice a month, but preferably as often as once a week.
“This gives us the size and sex distribution over the course of a fishing year,” said White, who is a participant. The project will indicate if the numbers of sublegal lobsters in various areas are increasing or decreasing over time, as well as the impact of different trap types, baits, bottom type, temperature and depth on the small lobsters’ abundance.
The lobstermen fill in logsheets that are turned over to Pelletier. She gives the data to the DMR, where it is used by biologist Carl Wilson, a member of the GOMLF board of advisers.
A new regional aspect of the ventless trap project has been added for 2006. Lobstermen will be contracted for a three-month period, June through August, for this program. DMR, in cooperation with GOMLF, is seeking participants.
“We’re building traps for this study for New Jersey, New York, New Hampshire, and Maine, so far,” said White. “And we’re talking to Rhode Island.”
This funding comes through ASMFC. White said the trap-building has been sent out to bid.
“We got this project because ASMFC had budget cuts, so they lost some administrative people,” said White. “They have no budget to administer the project and we can do it cheaper.”
Anyone interested in participating in the new ventless trap program can contact the foundation or Carl Wilson at (207) 633-9538 for more information.
Whale friendly line
GOMLF is working with lobstermen on rope research aimed at developing blends of line that can meet new requirements in the federal whale plan while still allowing Maine lobstermen to fish their varied bottom conditions.
NMFS is expected to ban the use of float rope for groundlines in the new rules and could require that only sinking and neutrally buoyant groundlines replace it. Maine is hopeful that the rules will provide for emerging rope technologies since sink rope doesn’t work well on some of the coast’s rough bottom.
The foundation, as well as the DMR in its own project, rope manufacturers, and many volunteer lobstermen are working to come up with that technology – a new kind of line that has a low profile when used as groundline.
GOMLF also obtained mini data loggers (temperature and depth recorders) to measure and document the profile of the line lobstermen are field-testing.
“We’re trying to test all types of rope, and we’re working with different vendors,” said Pelletier. “We’re just now learning what works and what doesn’t.”
GOMLF’s project works closely with Stevie Robbins III, the whale gear specialist for DMR, and his identical project.
“We use the same logbooks, the same probes,” said Pelletier. “We’re doubling the effort” to find alternative (to sinking rope) lines for lobstermen. “We’re all doing the same thing, working together on this.”
A preliminary report on the pilot rope projects was scheduled to be presented at a Maine Fishermen’s Forum seminar on March 3.
More detailed information about GOMLF and its projects is available on the foundation web site at <www.gomlf.org>.
Nancy Griffin
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