March 29, 2024
BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE

Lobster, drag-net fishermen on collision course

BEALS — A showdown appears to be shaping up early in the new year between licensed lobster fishermen and drag-net fishermen. The latter group wants to overturn a state law that prohibits net fishermen from keeping lobsters they catch in their nets.

The call for all of Maine’s licensed lobster fishermen to form a solid wall of support for the net law was issued Monday by Herman Backman Jr., president of the Down East Lobstermen’s Association. “It is time for every licensed lobster fisherman to stand up and be counted,” the Beals resident said.

Backman spoke out against a position taken by Charles W. Redman Jr., president of the board of directors, Portland Fish Exchange. Redman contends that a repeal of the Maine Lobster Law would boost revenues for the state’s sagging economy. The law makes it illegal for Maine fishermen to hold netted lobsters. Redman, politicians and fishermen in the Portland area want the law overturned to allow drag-net fishermen to take and sell the lobsters they catch in their nets.

The newly formed lobstermen’s association, which has about 90 members in Washington and Hancock counties, will begin publishing in January a newsletter to inform lobster fishermen of any new laws or changes in laws that could affect their livlihood. “Members of our Legislature should be made aware of what could and certainly will happen if the drag-law goes though,” Backman said. “Too many foolish laws have been passed already.”

The 1961 law makes it illegal for Maine fishermen to hold netted lobsters. However, according to Portland area fishermen, some of the netters skirt the Maine law by taking their lobsters to out-of-state ports where they can be sold legally.

The fish exchange president says he has seven reasons for overturning the lobster law.

Only Maine boats are covered by the law.

The majority of lobsters caught by draggers outside the three-mile limit are landed at out-of-state ports.

Maine lobster dealers lose the lobsters and Maine fish dealers lose out on another potential million pounds of groundfish each month.

Jobs of all descriptions are lost.

Suppliers to boats suffer.

Truckers have less to truck.

The state of Maine is losing tax revenue estimated at between $1.5 million and $2 million on an annual basis.

“We are keeping a law on the books that in no way is doing what it was designed to do. If the Legislature should review the law right now, they would find all of the above to be true. Changing the law would help provide appropriations for necessary services that are apparently going to be cut,” Redman said in a statement of his position on the issue.

Backman responded to Redman’s answer to the state’s sagging revenues, by predicting that an overturn of Maine’s Lobster Law would unleash a holocaust on the lobster industry:

Drag netting, if allowed, would cause lobster fishermen to suffer gear loss that would be more than one or two million dollars.

The lobster market has proved it cannot stand large lobsters in abundance.

Offshore lobster fishermen would lose their fishing grounds to the netters.

Fish-netters have depleted their own resource and are now seeking a way to do the same to lobsters.

In a few short years there would be nothing for truckers to truck, because the lobster resource would be wiped out.

The estimated 10,000 Maine lobster fishermen would no longer need a license because there would be nothing left to catch.

Without vents in the lobster dragging nets, smaller lobsters would be netted, resulting in additional losses to the lobster resource.

Backman said lobster fishermen have been careful participants in the overall management of the lobster resource by installing lobster escape vents in their traps, and by cutting a V-notch in the tails of egg-bearing females. The DELA president said he had strong doubts that any such conservation measures would be observed by drag-netters, once they were allowed to drag for lobsters.

“Drag-netting lobsters is a proposal that is in opposition to every other good management practice that I can think of. You always give the bird, animal or fish a chance to escape, survive and reproduce its kind. Lobster dragging wouldn’t give a lobster a fair chance of survival. Even the dragger himself would soon be out of business,” he said.


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