State lobstermen oppose changes to fishery rules Public hearing held in Ellsworth

ELLSWORTH – If the opinions of 15 or so lobster fishermen who attended a public hearing Wednesday reflect those of others throughout the state, Maine fishermen are not keen on changing the rules that they say have helped make their regional fishery healthy.

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission is considering changes to its 11-state lobster fishery management plan and this past week has been gathering input from fishermen at public hearings held along the Maine coast. George Lapointe, commissioner of Maine’s Department of Marine Resources, conducted the public hearing Wednesday night at Ellsworth Middle School.

The practice of v-notching – a mark fishermen put in the tails of egg-bearing females to identify them – is something the local fishermen said they want to see unchanged in Maine. V-notching began in Maine, where any female bearing a semblance of such a mark must be thrown back into the ocean, but in recent years more lenient versions of it have spread to other states.

“It amazes me these other states have a problem with this zero-tolerance thing,” Jack Merrill, an Islesford fisherman, said of Maine’s v-notching policy in its in-shore waters. “It’s going to pay us back in the long run and I’d like to see it everywhere.”

There are seven lobster fishery management areas along the coast from Maine to North Carolina and each one has separate rules for how lobsters can be caught and what kind can be kept. Because the western shore of Cape Cod is part of the same management area that includes New Hampshire and Maine, it has a different standard for v-notch compliance than the cape’s eastern shore, which is part of a separate management area.

Lapointe said the varying rules for v-notching, size and trap limits and other practices are one of the reasons the multi-state commission is considering the changes.

There are four different management areas off Massachusetts, for example, which means regulators have to enforce four different sets of rules for how lobster can be fished in those waters, he said. There are only two management areas in the Gulf of Maine, with most Maine fishermen sticking to the area closer to shore.

Lapointe said there also are competitive reasons fishermen in other states are interested in making changes to the overall management plan. Maine’s minimum allowable size for lobster is smaller than it is in other states, which means Maine fishermen can keep lobsters that other fishermen cannot.

But fishermen at the hearing pointed out that Maine’s lobster fishery is the healthiest in the country. Maine fishermen should not be worried about comparing their productivity with other fisheries farther south, they said.

“Canada is our competition,” Bar Harbor fisherman Jon Carter said. “There’s no biological benefit” to raising the minimum size limit.

Other changes being considered are moving the boundaries of management areas to make them more consistent with lobster stock assessment areas, increasing restrictions on the issuance or transferal of fishing permits, and placing weight limits on the amount of lobster that trawlers can catch.

The process for making changes to the overall management plan, which will include more opportunities for public comment next summer, is expected to be completed in the fall of 2007.

The monetary value of annual lobster landings in Maine, which alone makes up the largest portion of the United States’ Atlantic lobster industry, hit a record high in 2005 with an estimated sales total of $290 million.