Legal knot ties up lobsterman Guard may seize Canada-built boats

ROCKLAND – Colby Drisko’s boats haul bait to Vinalhaven, North Haven, Islesboro, Isle au Haut and Matinicus and return with loads of lobster, some 1.3 million pounds last year.

Not this year.

Instead, the wholesaler is fighting a legal war of words over whether he has been “transporting cargo” or working “fisheries.”

U.S. officials received a tip that the Lincolnville man uses Canadian-built boats, allegedly a violation of a landmark federal law known as the Jones Act provided the boats are transporting cargo.

So Drisko and his 15 employees are out of work because the Coast Guard has been told to impound Drisko’s watercraft if they are found shipping lobster to the markets he serves in Boston and New York.

As a federal official involved in the case says: “The Jones Act says that a foreign-hulled vessel cannot engage in coastwise trade. Is hauling lobster that somebody else caught ‘fisheries,’ or is it ‘cargo’? That’s the question.”

Drisko has run Drisko Lobster Inc. for about 12 years. On Tuesday afternoon, he was watching his boats at their moorings, knowing that if he uses them, the Coast Guard can seize them.

“They told me I’m in jeopardy of them seizing the boats if I continue to do just what I’ve been doing,” Drisko said. “It was more like a threat.”

Not wanting to risk $250,000 in assets, Drisko decided to keep the boats moored, even though it means he’s “going down about $10,000 a day,” he said.

The Jones Act limits the use of foreign-built boats, among other things, apparently as a means of protecting the U.S. boat-building industry.

Two years ago, Drisko bought the 40-foot Sarah Belle, built in Canada, from an Islesboro fisherman. A year ago, he bought the 44-foot Lobstar from Nova Scotia. Both boats are registered in Maine and are his primary boats.

Drisko believes he is within the law by using Canadian-built boats because of an amendment to the Jones Act added in the early 1930s. That amendment exempts foreign-built boats used by U.S. citizens in the fisheries industry.

Drisko believes the law makes clear that carrying shellfish from one location to another qualifies him for the fisheries exemption.

William Welte, a Camden maritime lawyer retained by Drisko, wrote a letter to U.S. Customs officials in Washington, citing earlier rulings that appear to favor Drisko’s position.

“Since the vessels here are transporting shellfish [lobster], they are engaged in fisheries and are not violating the Jones Act’s coastwise trade provisions regarding foreign-built vessels,” his lawyer said.

Senior Special Agent Phillip Riherd of the Customs Service said Tuesday he believes Drisko’s operations fall under the commercial trade category of the Jones Act and are not exempt. “That’s hauling cargo, as far as we’re concerned,” he said.

Gesturing to Rockland Harbor, Drisko said he can count 10 Canadian-built boats there, and he said thousands of such vessels operate in Maine.

But Riherd countered that as long as those boats are used by U.S. citizens for fishing, there is no problem.

The question of what “transport” and “fisheries” mean within the Jones Act has been referred to a lawyer working for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Service in Washington. That lawyer is expected to rule in the next two weeks or so, Riherd said.

“I’ll be out of business in three weeks,” Drisko said.

“It’s kind of scary, he said. “It’s Homeland Security playing God.”