Helping a sinking ship > Islanders lend a hand in wake of boat vandalism

MONHEGAN ISLAND — The sinking of a lobster boat by vandals last week may be a sign of turmoil within the changing industry, but the aftermath has brought out the best in midcoast fishermen, says Sea Hag owner John Murdock.

Murdock’s 40-foot boat was found half-submerged at its mooring in Port Clyde, a mainland community several miles from Monhegan, early on the morning of May 12. The boat was spotted by the crew of the fishing vessel Scottish Pride, which radioed a distress call ashore.

Murdock raced back that morning from a Mother’s Day family gathering in Portland to find “the whole community of Port Clyde — everybody, even people I didn’t know — lending a hand. People from the island came in specially to help. It was not a happy Mother’s Day, but it was something to see all those people there, giving up their day to help.”

The boat, valued at more than $100,000, was prevented from sinking totally by an air pocket in the stern. It was hauled ashore, where it is now undergoing repairs to the heavily damaged electrical and mechanical systems. Murdock said the electrical repairs alone will cost about $13,000. It is believed the boat took on water when a hose was detached from a coupling.

It will be at least another week before the Sea Hag is ready to go back to work, but Murdock says his fellow islanders are pitching in to help him tend his 600 lobster traps.

“Just about everyone on the island is doing something. All the other lobstermen are letting me borrow their boats, anything you can think of,” Murdock said Monday. “We’re a real tightknit community out here. People look out for each other. This is a great example of that.”

Although no one has been charged with the crime, Murdock says the damage to his boat — and the trap-molesting charges of which his brother, Daniel, was acquitted in Lincoln County court two days later — may be related to increasing pressure from nonislanders to move into Monhegan’s tightly controlled lobster fishery.

“Anybody who knows my brother, or any other fisherman out here, knows we just don’t do stuff like damaging another man’s traps,” Murdock said. “We’ve been having more and more conflicts with guys from inshore and those false charges were part of it. It’s not hard to imagine what happened to my boat is part of it, too.”

For most of this century, Monhegan has regulated its own lobster fishery far more stringently than the rest of the state. The island’s long-standing 600-trap limit is half of what the Legislature allowed when it enacted Maine’s first statewide trap limit bill a year ago. Several years of record lobster harvests and the decline of other fisheries are putting pressure on Monhegan to loosen up its restrictions, Murdock said.

“We’ve always been wicked conservative out here, we’ve always felt that it’s very important to conserve the resource to keep the industry healthy,” he said. “Like a lot of small communities, we’re seeing more and more people coming into the business who just want to make a quick buck, who don’t understand the traditions — or the laws.”

Last year’s lobster bill also called for the creation of five industry-run management zones, which are now being developed.

Murdock said tension is high in advance of a public hearing June 6 on whether Monhegan will vote to be part of a larger zone or keep its own local zone, able to retain its tighter restrictions.

“Feelings are pretty strong on this,” he said. “Most of us out here want to keep our own zone, but there’s a lot of pressure from the neighboring inshore towns for us to be part of a bigger zone. We’ve been managing things ourselves since 1909. It’s important to us to keep that going. It’s a big part of what enables us to keep this island going as a place to live.”