“Hello, are you Sean?”
“Yes.”
“Are you Sean the lobsterman?”
“No.”
“Do you know a ‘Sean the lobsterman?'”
“Yes. I know Séanie Johnson.”
“No, I am looking for Sean O’Connor.”
“I’m Séan O’Connor.”
“Were you Sean the lobsterman?”
“Yes. I quit, though.”
So went my introductory conversation with an Irish lobsterman, Sean O’Connor, who had come to Maine 12 years ago to learn about Maine lobstering. He stayed on Long Island, where I live, and Marcy Train, an island resident, found his address and telephone number for me when I told her my plans to visit Ireland. Three days after calling him, I was on a flight to Dublin to discover the mystifying world of Irish lobstering. Sean would not be around, but I was given the name of the other local lobsterman, Séanie Johnson.
A lobsterman myself, I thought this would be a great opportunity to learn more about our neighbors across the sea. There were rumors I had heard on Long Island about Irish lobstering: that nobody cared about the industry, that seeders and snappers were landed, that catches were pitiful, and the price was too high for their own good. I learned that there is a grain of truth in every stereotype, but there is always more than expected.
Steeped in my own naïveté, I arrived in Ballydavid, on the Dingle Peninsula in southwest Ireland after a few hours of hitchhiking, and found Séanie in the pub. I introduced myself and began to talk with him about our common fishery. Within minutes, politics wedged their way into the conversation: the faults of the European Union due to trade agreements with America and the lack of respect for fishermen.
All goods produced and sold in Ireland have a VAT (Value Added Tax, comparable to sales tax). This includes the lobsters caught in Ireland, Hommarus Grammarus, which are sold in Ireland and on the Continent with the VAT of 21 percent. Irish lobstermen will get 10 euro per kilo, or roughly, $6.50 per pound as boat price for their lobsters. Add in a price hike from the middleman, plus the VAT, and you can expect to pay a great deal for Irish lobsters in restaurants.
It is not the same for imported American lobsters. Due to a trade agreement between the EU and the United States, American lobsters sold in Ireland only have VAT of 5 percent, making them considerably cheaper and thus more sought after. American companies have flooded the market, and the Irish lobster will only get 10 euro per kilo off the boat when a few years ago the price was at least 16 euro. Since nobody wants their lobsters, the price for the Irish lobster falls. The fishermen can barely scrape by.
At nine the next morning, I accompanied Séanie and his helper, Miuirce Crhillane, out hauling traps baited for lobsters, though our quarry this time of year was crab. His boat, REALT NA MARA (Star of the Sea), was 37 feet long and 13 feet wide, with a high bow to batter the high seas. We could not leave the eight-square-mile harbor due to the building ground swell that was topping at ten feet, but we still were able to haul two stringers inside. The massive 14-foot tide ripped out to sea and we bounced around the mouth of Smerwick Harbor.
These fishermen use the same traps for crabs as lobsters, but with different bait for each, scad (a fish similar to herring) for lobsters and dogfish for crab. The small, half round traps were two feet long, and were rigged as 40-trap stringers. They had to be piled on the deck as they came aboard. The kitchen and parlor are combined; there is one head on each side of the trap, both going into the same compartment, and there are no escape vents. Every few traps held a three-foot long conger eel; commonly they had brown crabs, though rarely lobsters. Compared to ours, the lobsters are identically shaped, and look to be the same anatomically speaking, though they are bluish-black on top and white on the bottom. White speckles dot the sides of the carapace and tail. Those that we landed averaged about two pounds.
Séanie stuck his head out the door of the house and peered into the dismal bounty of 40 traps on a two-week set (prolonged due to the weather): three lobster and a tote of crabs. With classic Irish optimism, he remarked, “No money from that one, ha – we need about twenty bucks a crab to break even.”
Miuirce set back the traps, tossing them over one at a time as the ground line went out. He sighed and lit another cigarette and was happy to answer any questions; his rendition of English could have been a hindrance or nuisance in another circumstance, but here it was a delight that made the morning more authentic. In this Irish-speaking region, English is learned via television between the ages of eight and ten, nowadays. However, for those of the older generation, English was picked up in scraps here and there, with little formal instruction.
With the next stringer, we caught a seeder. This was put off to the side to be kept aboard. In this rumored lawless land as far as regulations go, I was in for a big surprise. When I inquired in the car that afternoon about the fate of the seeder, Séanie answered with a lecture.
All seeders, by law, are supposed to be kept in a crate and once a week an official from the Bord Iascaigh Mhara (BIM), which is the Irish version of the Department of Marine Resources (DMR), would stop by the pier at Ballydavid to log who caught seeders, to notch them and return them to the sea. Every lobsterman is encouraged to get a quota of 1,000 kilos of seeders per year. The BIM pays the fishermen for them, through a special fund to pay market price to the lobstermen for protecting their resource. The lobsters are also tagged to monitor growth. The legal size for lobsters in Ireland is 87 millimeters, slightly larger than ours at 3.43 inches.
When I asked Séanie about trap limits, he sounded distraught. Each permit, which can be bought for 3,000 euro ($4,000) per ton, on average, with a boat from another fisherman, is entitled to 500 traps, though Séany only has 400 due to finances. “Most fisherman have between 1,000 and 1,200, which is fuckin’ ridiculous. They are killing the industry.” There is nothing comparable to the Marine Patrol, no on-the-water police force at all, except for the not-interested Coast Guard. Anyone can fish as many traps as they can afford to put over, and illegal fishing accounts for 50-75 percent of the entire Irish lobster fishery. Séanie regularly speaks to the County Kerry Council on this issue to no avail, as they care, he says, only about farmers.
When we had quit hauling due to the seas, we returned to the mooring to have a cup of coffee and talk some more. I inquired if Miuirce were paid a percentage, as we do for helpers in Maine. A smile came over the faces of both men as they let out a little chuckle. “Our health is our wealth.” For 80 traps, we had two totes of crabs and seven lobsters. Séanie at the pub that night remarked on efforts to rebuild the industry. “Over 150,000 larval lobsters were put into Smerwick Harbor last summer. But they won’t be legal for six or seven years, and who will be fishing in six or seven years? Not me.” I asked what he would do if he quit fishing. I caught him off guard by the question and disdainfully and slowly answered that “What would I do if I quit fishing? I’d quit smoking, I’d quit drinking…” and then he was at a loss for words. Their industry is on the verge of collapse, and he, among others, believes that a moratorium for a few years is their only hope for the rebuilding of stocks.
He also fishes for salmon during the spring, and that is an even sadder story than the lobstering. Salmon accounts for 75 percent of his income, and this year instead of the average 1,500 fish caught, he, along with others found the nets virtually empty at 300 fish landed.
“The regulations come down on us. Our season is shorter now than ever. Fishermen are the [scapegoats]. Why don’t they blame the 100,00 Gray Seals off Scotland for low stocks? The poor water quality, the Greenland Effect [a term coined to describe the recent trend of smaller and smaller fish returning from migrations to Greenland before the trip past Scotland to Irish waters]? Or the Donnegal crabbers that have 80 footers and five to six thousand traps? What do you suppose they do to the crab stocks?” This season’s only comfort was the relatively high salmon prices.
Ever since childhood, Séanie has never has been out of the fishing line of work, and now he is looking ahead into the darkness.
Any sort of a “state of emergency” that could bring government aid? Not a chance, as it has all gone to the farmers. While EU subsidies came in the form of checks to farmers “who didn’t even know what they were for,” according to Séanie, and Ireland received 10 billion euro from the EU, the Irish fishing industry lost 30 billion euro. The dying inshore fishery aside, Ireland has lost most of its offshore grounds as well. Due to negotiations with the EU, Ireland effectively auctioned its offshore fishing rights to the Scandinavians and Spanish. The average Irish fisherman has nowhere to turn. The noose tightens and the bank calls. As Miuirce put it, “that’s the fisherman’s game.”
Across Maine this past summer, everyone has remarked on the low catch rates. Put in perspective, we have one of the best fisheries in the world. Our brethren across the sea, meanwhile, are the very edge of the abyss. In the face of that example, we must continue the management of our industry and enforcement of regulations to an optimum.
I left Ireland after a very short eight days, but left with a sort of pride and yet a sort of shame. Proud to know that our management worked, and proud to know that we have a sustainable fishery; shamed to know that at less than half his age, and a first generation fisherman, I had greater financial security than a man who was the last in a line of six fisherman, a fisherman who will leave the business broken, not as his own fault, but due to the fact that he was let down by the EU, the Irish government, the County Kerry Council and his fellow fishermen. That might explain the charm of Ballydavid, a village with a population of 20 that boasts two pubs.