Senate, House OK urchin bill King expected to sign new license legislation

MACHIAS – About 20 urchin fishermen who were shut out of Maine’s second most valuable commercial fishery by new state regulations are getting a new lease on fishing.

The Maine House and the Maine Senate have given final approval to a one-time program that will enable the fishermen – most of whom are from Washington County – to qualify for an urchin dragging license.

Gov. Angus King is expected to sign the bill into law this week.

Urchin draggers can make between $20,000 and $40,000 a season, and many fishermen drag urchins and scallops once lobster season ends in the fall. Urchin dragging is more accessible because urchins are found closer to shore, giving draggers the option of fishing even when the weather is bad.

The 20 fishermen who will benefit from the Legislature’s new transfer program have been unable to drag for urchins since January, when a new state law went into effect prohibiting fishing under someone else’s urchin license.

Fishing under another person’s license – which was unique to the urchin fishery – was legal until Jan. 1.

The practice – known as license leasing – was a loophole in the 1994 moratorium on new urchin licenses, said Penn Estabrook, deputy commissioner of the state Department of Marine Resources, in a recent interview.

Estabrook said some people who had licenses in 1994 continued to renew them even when they no longer wanted to drag for urchins. They would lease their license to someone else, which provided a vehicle for new people to enter a fishery that the department wanted to limit because of overfishing, Estabrook said.

The only other way for newcomers to enter the fishery was to take their chances on a license lottery, and five people had to give up their licenses before one new license could be issued.

The Legislature did away with license leasing during the last session, but tried to protect those who already were dragging by creating a window where the license they leased could be legally transferred to them.

About 30 fishermen took advantage of that opportunity last fall and some paid as much as $10,000 for one of the formerly leased licenses, according to Department of Marine Resources marine scientist Margaret Hunter.

But some fishermen who had been leasing a license couldn’t participate in the fall program.

In most of those cases, the person who formerly leased the license to them couldn’t or wouldn’t transfer it. In one case, the license holder died before the fall transfer; in several others, the leased license was held by a member of the Passamaquoddy Tribe and they couldn’t transfer it to someone who wasn’t a member of the tribe, Hunter said.

In the case of John Polk, 24, of Machiasport, it was timing. Polk bought his urchin dragger 24 days too late to take advantage of the program, which required that the boat’s name be on the license in 2000.

Polk said he would have bought the boat a month earlier if he had known the cutoff date would be 2000, but was assured several times by secretaries at the Department of Marine Resources that he would qualify for the program. The Legislature passed the law last spring, but backdated the cutoff date to 2000.

Rep. Edward Dugay, D-Cherryfield, said it was Polk’s case that convinced him to bring the issue to the attention of his fellow legislators on the Marine Resources Committee.

Dugay said he and Sen. Kevin Shorey, the Calais Republican who chairs the Business and Economic Development Committee, worked closely with Rep. William Pinkham, a Republican from Lamoine and a member of the Marine Resources Committee.

After consulting with the Department of Marine Resources and the Sea Urchin Zone Council – a 15-member advisory board of urchin divers, draggers, buyers, processors and marine biologists – the Marine Resources Committee unanimously approved a resolve, giving the Department of Marine Resources the authority to issue urchin licenses to the 20 fishermen.

The House and Senate approved the bill Thursday.

Rep. David Lemoine, the Old Orchard Beach Democrat who co-chairs the Marine Resources Committee, said members never intended last year’s legislation to put existing urchin draggers out of business.

And, from testimony submitted by the Department of Marine Resources, it appears that the urchin resource in Washington County is healthier than it is farther down the coast, Lemoine said.

Dugay and Shorey say 15 of the 20 affected fishermen are from Washington County, where the jobs are sorely needed.

“This was one of those days that we walked out of here really feeling we’d accomplished something,” Shorey said.