As the state reviews the
rules for lobstering, local fishermen bemoan a system that has them on the
outside looking in
SCARBOROUGH — When the officials from the
Department of Marine Resources roll into Scarborough next Wednesday on its
16-town listening tour on the state of the Maine lobster industry, two local,
lifelong lobstermen won’t be there.
Two weeks ago, Robert
“Skip” Carter sold his boat and quit the industry after 41 years.
“I sold out,” he said last
week. “I’m done. I have had it. I can’t take any more.”
Meanwhile, fifth-generation
fisherman Charlie Gray, forced to forego lobstering because state rules forbid
him from hauling traps without his 77-year-old father at the wheel, will be out
on the water for the first day of shrimp season instead.
“I almost wonder if they
scheduled the meeting here for that day on purpose,” said Gray on Friday. “But
I don’t really have a choice. My father has a bad hip and he’s lost his
hearing, which is bad for equilibrium out on the boat. He can’t go out anymore.
So, right now, I have no income at all.
“As an independent
contractor, I can’t get unemployment,” said Gray. “Right now, I’m just sitting
here twiddling my thumbs.”
Both Carter and Gray have
been caught by the rules of Maine’s “limited entry licensing system” in fishing
Zone G, which covers the waters from Kittery to Cape Elizabeth. Under the
latest iteration of those rules, anyone who completes the state’s apprentice
program under a student license before age 18 automatically gets a commercial
fishing license. Everyone else goes on a waiting list, which turns over at a
glacial pace given the teenage fast track and the limited number of traps
allowed in the state.
A yearlong evaluation of
the limited entry system, prepared by the Gulf of Maine Research Institute and
delivered to the Department of Marine Resources Nov. 30, is the reason for the
series of public hearings, which began Jan. 7.
“It has been quite a year in the lobster
fishery,” said Marine Resources Commissioner Patrick Keliher, referring to last
summer’s headline making glut. “Our goal is to engage the industry in
discussions about all of the issues as well as the topic of the limited entry
system.
“These meetings will inform the development of a
department proposal for discussion with the Legislature,” said Keliher. In
other words, he may have the governor submit an emergency bill sometime during
the session of the Legislature now under way.
But Gray, who actually got
the LePage on the phone over the issues –
“My father and I each talked to him for five minutes,” he said,
"and my father sat with his wife at a campaign dinner" – says the
governor needn’t wait for Keliher.
“If the governor really
cared about creating jobs like he says, he could put me to work tomorrow just
by signing his name” said Gray. “The commissioner could issue a license just
like that on his authority.”
Still, the listening tour
is meant to capture information on more than just how long it can take to get a
commercial license. For example, Gray and Carter disagree on the owner/operator
rule. Despite being unable to fish without his father aboard, and only having
15-20 years left himself, Gray agrees the owner should be on board, to keep
large industrial concerns from buying up all the licenses. Carter, on the other
hand, says he’d like to be able to keep a hand in the industry when he gets
older by hiring out his boat and license.
Gray, 55, got out of the
industry for a few years in the late 1990s to try driving a truck instead. When
he decided lobstering was his true calling, good times or bad, he swallowed his
pride and went through the apprenticeship program. He’s been on the waiting
list for a commercial license since January 2006.
“If the rules had remained
the same as they were then, when they let one person in for every two who gave
up a license, or even if they’d grandfather those of us on the list at that
time, I’d have been back to it years ago,” said Gray. “But they’ve changed the
rules three times since then.”
One of those rule changes
was the automatic licensing of teens, a program meant to maintain heritage in
fishing families – somewhat ironic given Gray’s family history.
“I feel like I’m being
punished, even though I’ve done nothing wrong,” said Gray. “It’s age
discrimination is what it is, really. I’d sue the state if I could afford a
lawyer.”
Jeffrey Quirk, also of
Scarborough, is in a similar boat, so to speak. He left the lobstering industry
in the 1980s to go work for Central Maine Power. Unlike Gray, Quirk loves his
land job, but bought a boat and reapplied for his commercial license in 2009.
He’s No. 40 of 59 on the waiting list.
Quirk has one son who is
No. 34 on the list, although he’s since moved on to a career in the Coast
Guard. However, another son, now 15, is likely in the apprentice program and
likely to complete it before his 18th birthday. Unlike Gray, who was
able to fish a set number of traps while his father was on board, Quirk
contents himself at the five traps allowed at the hobbyist level.
Still, if his son gets a
commercial license, Quirk could find himself in the odd situation of being
apprenticed to his son as captain of the boat.
“The whole thing is kind of
backward when you think about it,” he said.
“That’s why I’m probably
going to go mow lawns,” said Carter.
His struggles in the
industry date to 1999, when new limits cut his take 46 percent, from more than
1,400 traps to 800. At that time, he got out of the industry for a year, but
then came back just in time to keep from losing his license. Fearing further
trap reductions in his home waters, Carter moved his operations up the coast,
although he continued to fish in the area where zones overlap, just north of
Cape Elizabeth.
Because he lives in
Scarborough, Carter soon longed for a return. Before quitting, he had waited
since November 2005 to regain his commercial fishing license in Zone G.
“I just couldn’t take it
anymore. The whole system is an abortion,” he said. “There are actually more
traps in the water now than there were in 1999. They just socialized the thing
– they took my traps away from me and gave them to somebody else is all
they accomplished.”
The report Keliher
is shopping acknowledges that landings doubled from 57 million pounds in 2000
to 105 million pounds in 2011. A more recent report shows that landings jumped
another 18 percent in 2012, to 123 million pounds. Last year’s market glut
actually saw a decrease into total value of the catch, down $3.7 million, to a
total of $331 million.
Despite more lobster than
ever reaching the dinner table, the Gulf of Maine report says, “the stock is healthy and fishing is occurring at a
sustainable level.”
Gray says he could tell
anyone that much, as he chafes over sustainability as a supposed reason for his
inability to regain his commercial license. Even more galling, he says, are the
number of licenses that are renewed each year, but never used.
According to the Gulf of
Maine Institute, of 4,933 commercial licenses issued across the state in 2011,
22 percent went unused. Of 2.88 million traps authorized by the state, 14
percent never touched the water.
This so-called “latent
effort” does pose a risk to the fishery, says the institute report, given that
1.2 million lobster traps “could be actively fished right away,” between unused
tags and new traps that could be “issued immediately to eligible fisherman.”
On average, 60 new
commercial lobster licenses are issues each year, of which all but 14 go to
graduating students. Only about 14 per year go to people like Gray, Carter and
Quirk.
Statewide there are 296
adult applicants up and down the Maine coast waiting for a commercial license.
At the current rate, it will take “20 years or more” for the most recent
applicant to get a license. At the head of the list for Zone G is a person from
Kennebunkport, who’s been waiting since Sept. 16, 2005.
