THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, December 28, 1995 TAG: 9512280312
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY SCOTT HARPER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BOOTHBAY HARBOR, MAINE LENGTH: Long : 173 lines
Here amid the many rustic fishing villages that cling to a rocky coast, the American lobster dominates the culture and economy much like the blue crab does along the Chesapeake Bay.
Lobsters, like the stoic Mainers who catch them, are quietly tenacious creatures that thrive in cold, unpredictable weather. Similarly, Virginians draw parallels to their prized crab: feisty, productive, crafty.
But both states find their signature species in trouble, and for many of the same reasons. Lobsters and crabs are both highly sought-after for their sweet, white meat by a sophisticated army of watermen - to the point where stocks are slowly declining.
To some marine biologists, government regulators and seafood merchants here in rugged lobster country, a begrudging recognition is taking hold that something must be done to preserve the future.
But, as in Virginia, there also are sneers from salty fishermen who believe stocks are just fine, if only Mother Nature and their own hard-boiled instincts are left alone.
The National Marine Fisheries Service calls the lobster ``overexploited'' on the Atlantic coast, from Canada to Cape Hatteras. The biggest problem, the service concludes, is that too many lobstermen are capturing too many young lobsters, mostly because there are so few other species to catch in the North Atlantic.
The crab, on the other hand, faces a dilemma of too many watermen catching too many adults - again, because other species, most notably the oyster, have undergone their own biological crises.
Either way, harvests are outpacing reproduction, according to most scientific estimates. And government officials in New England and along the Chesapeake Bay are painstakingly deciding what to do about it.
As with crabs, public debate has been fierce over proposed recovery strategies for lobsters, the most lucrative seafood source in New England, valued at $101 million in 1994.
``We have a tremendous amount at stake,'' said Robin Alden, director of the Maine Department of Natural Resources, noting that her state supplies almost 75 percent of the lobsters in the United States.
``Needless to say, we're in a very delicate process,'' added Alden, a former journalist who wrote about the commercial fishing industry. ``We're really at a turning point with this incredibly important resource.''
Dave Norton is one Mainer not swayed by such talk. A commercial lobsterman since 1971, Norton believes there are plenty of lobsters in the chilly waters off Maine. After all, he notes correctly, Maine has led the nation in lobster landings for 13 consecutive years, with 1995 setting a record harvest of more than 40 million pounds.
So how can there be a problem?
``There's lobster traps everywhere; you can practically walk across the water on traps in some areas,'' answered Teri Frady, with the Northeast Fisheries Science Center, a government research lab in Woods Hole, Mass.
``You just can't keep up that type of effort for long. When you finally hit a bad year, you can get in trouble very fast. We're trying to protect against that,'' Frady said.
Pulling out from the weathered docks at Boothbay Harbor before dawn recently, Norton, dressed in yellow rain gear and a thermal undershirt, shrugged off scientific data that show lobsters in trouble.
``I'll be the first to admit they're unpredictable,'' he said. ``But you know, I'd like to think we're smarter than them. But sometimes, I'm not so sure.''
This year's record harvest is roughly 25 percent higher than just two years ago, according to statistics from the U.S. Commerce Department, which manages ocean fisheries. Annual lobster hauls from the Gulf of Maine, the most prolific lobster grounds in the world, have been climbing steadily since 1962, statistics show.
But to Norton and other lobstermen, Maine is different from the rest of New England, where ground-fishermen off Cape Cod nearly depleted their own signature species - cod, haddock and yellowtail flounder - despite warnings to slow down.
``There's a different ethic here,'' said Norton, who also served on a regional lobster advisory committee for eight years. ``We've passed tough conservation laws, and we follow them. I think you're really talking apples and oranges if you're trying to say we could have the same kind of trouble they've had'' off Cape Cod.
His comments echo those in meeting halls across Virginia. In debating crab policy, many state watermen say there are too many laws already. Adding new regulations is not the answer, they say, and politicians and conservationists should let rules enacted just last fall take hold.
Norton believes the biggest threat to Maine lobsters today is not from overfishing but from a federal government intent on helping New Eng-land ground-fishermen get back on their feet.
They need work, he reasons, and they have boats and equipment that could grab tons of bottom-dwelling lobsters in no time. All they need is government approval to take their equipment north and drag for lobsters.
Maine bans such bottom-trawling, fearful that dragging heavy nets along the bottom of the sea would ruin unique, rocky habitat that lobsters love in state waters and the Gulf of Maine.
``If the government lets them come up here and start tearing up the bottom, we'll have some big, big problems,'' Norton said. ``If you write anything, write that.''
Unlike other Atlantic fisheries, lobstering has not gone high-tech. Catching lobsters still is done with traps, raised and lowered with the aid of a motor-driven winch.
There are few of the fish-finding radars and computers that now dominate the rest of the commercial fleet. Indeed, the biggest technology boost in recent years for lobstermen was a switch from wood to metal traps.
Norton jokes that his leap into the future came this year in the form of new traps painted bright yellow instead of the standard dark green. But as Norton and his mate, Steve Burt, made their rounds through a choppy Boothbay Harbor, checking and baiting 375 of their traps, not everything was so funny.
For one, the per-pound price a lobster fetches at the docks has not changed much since Norton left the merchant marine fleet 24 years ago, bought a work boat and started catching lobsters.
In 1971, he said, the price was about $1.50 per pound; these days, he gets about $2.25 per pound from his buyer.
``I made more money 10 or 15 years ago than I do now,'' said Norton, 53. ``It's a buyers' market now; there's more guys on the water bringing in more lobsters. So the price stays low.''
Asked if he wants his 16-year-old son to follow in his footsteps, Norton narrowed his steely blue eyes, stared off at a pine-covered island coming into view, and sighed. ``No,'' he finally said, ``it's too unpredictable out here. You never know when the bottom may drop out. Really, I'd like to see him get into physical therapy. I know someone coming out of college making $48,000 a year doing that. Can you imagine?''
The most recent federal lobster assessment, completed in 1993, recommended that harvests from the Gulf of Maine be reduced by at least 20 percent.
In inshore areas, such as Boothbay Harbor, ``a significant proportion'' of captured females were not sexually mature - meaning they were caught before ever giving birth, the assessment said.
Federal scientists suggest a six-step protection plan, including: a 1,200-trap limit, a requirement that all traps be tagged, a higher minimum-size restriction, no lobstering on Sundays and a four-week ban on catching females.
That compares to a plan recently endorsed by the Virginia Marine Resources Commission for crabs: a 300-trap limit, a tagging requirement, a ban on catching extremely pregnant females with brown or black egg sacs on their bodies.
The plan is expected to be voted on next month in Newport News.
The New England Fishery Management Council has been debating what strategy to adopt for more than two years. At a meeting in Massachusetts in August, the council decided that mandatory trap tags were a good idea, and agreed to hold public hearings. Little has changed since then, however.
Norton shook his head when asked about the proposal.
``Logistically, it's impossible to enforce,'' he said. ``You can't limit traps without limiting the number of people in the fishery. And that's a completely foreign idea here.
``It's like, if you live in Maine, you have a right to go lobstering. It's like public waters,'' he said.
Norton and Burt are lucky on this day. Working from dawn until 4 p.m. the two have caught 450 pounds of lobsters.
The haul earns them about $1,000. Fuel, food and insurance run about $200 a trip, and Norton pays his first mate $200 a day. So the captain has made about $600.
Afterward, over a cold beer, Norton and Burt agree to meet Monday morning for yet another unpredictable day around the harbor. On Sunday, they rest.
They talk about setting their traps farther out in the ocean, hopefully to catch those lobsters running for colder, deeper water in the winter months. And they talk about how long they can keep up the pace and, conversely, how long the lobsters can keep up with them.
``I imagine they'll always be some form of what we're doing,'' said Burt, the first mate, a quiet, bearded man with a college degree in astronomy. ``Maine was just meant for lobsters.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photos by Bill Tiernan\The Virginian Pilot
Steve Burt of Edgecomb, Maine, rejects an undersized lobster. The
National Marine Fisheries Service says too many lobstermen are
capturing too many young lobsters.
Dave Norton, left, a commercial lobsterman since 1971, thinks there
are plenty of lobsters off Maine, which leads the nation in lobster
landings.
KEYWORDS: LOBSTER CRAB SHORTAGE by CNB