Islanders fish. It’s one of the only career choices for those who live on isolated unbridged islands miles off the mainland.
Oh, one or two might learn plumbing or electrical wiring, most learn how to do carpentry, some house building, and a few build boats in winter, but just about all rely on fishing lobster to support themselves and their families.
Or they did before the state started limiting the number of traps allowed per license holder and establishing seven lobster fishing zones along the coast. Since then, it’s been a scramble, and by now on some islands it is taking so many years for a license to become available, it threatens the year-round population of some islands.
But islanders, concerned that their year-round communities are threatened by their young people’s need to move off-island to be able to work, need a solution that meets their needs.
One such solution would be to ask the state’s Department of Marine Resources Commissioner to establish a limited-entry program for unbridged islands, while remaining in their zones. House Speaker Hannah Pingree has submitted such a bill, L.D. 1231, “An Act to Protect the Long-term Viability of Island Lobster Fishing Communities.” The Joint Standing Committee on Marine Resources voted that the bill should pass on May 6.
Island fishermen applying for this license would necessarily have to follow all the eligibility rules. “If a zone is closed,” she explained, “an island can vote to create a separate waiting list from the rest of the zone they are in. Otherwise they stay within the zone with no new boundaries, and they are subject to any other management decisions of the zone.”
According to veteran Spruce Head Island lobster dealer William Atwood, of Atwood Lobster, this situation started in 2001, the year after the number of trap tags dropped to 800. That year, DMR Commissioner Robin Alden stated that the DMR would limit licenses to those who had had a license or who had been involved in catching lobsters and could produce verification to that end. Like many others, Atwood took action to become qualified for those 800 tags and as he recalled, “They let most everybody in! This was done for hundreds of applicants, which increased the number of licenses after the trap limit was set.” The result? Atwood claims it led to “at least a third more traps in the water.”
Although realizing it is too late now, Atwood thinks it is “Time to slam the door on entry licenses with no exceptions to the rules until they get to a pre-determined number of licenses they think the resource can support.”
But Zone B, which includes Swans Island, the Cranberry Islands, and Frenchboro, for instance, requires five fishermen to retire before a license becomes available. As it stands, the probable wait of 15 or 20 years is enough to force young men to move to the mainland to look for work. In Zone F, which encompasses Casco Bay’s many islands, 4,000 trap tags must be retired before a new license can be issued for 300 adding 100 a year to the 800 limit. This was as of January 2009, according to Chebeague fisherman and Zone F chairman Jeff Putnam.
Putnam said he thinks the bill is well thought out, well written, and on the right track. “The most important point,” he said, “the idea of keeping lobster licenses on unbridged islands is imperative to keeping island communities sustainable.” He said the bill has his full-fledged support.
Bruce Fernald, who fishes out of Islesford, on Little Cranberry Island, also supports Pingree’s bill, though he sees a problem. “It will, in some ways, slow down anybody trying to get in on the regular list,” he said.
If the bill passes, he explained that if he were to retire, his license would go to an islander rather than to the next person on his zone’s list. “I can see where some people might not like it,” he said, “but it is, for the small islands especially, getting tough.” He also noted that not all fishermen buy all 800 tags. He said, “I’m guessing 20 to 25 percent or more of [tags purchased] are never fished.” He stated, “The more the state talks about trap reduction, the more people are going to buy.”
Senator Dennis Damon, of Trenton, who represents coastal and island communities in southern Hancock and Isle au Haut in Knox county, submitted another bill, proposing that members of families living in island communities share a license; the license holder reducing the number of traps fished by 20 percent for each person sharing. But Damon also supports Pingree’s bill and agrees with Putnam on sustainability problems, saying, “I have spoken often on the peculiarities of island communities at both the Marine Resources and the Transportation committees on which I serve.”
These issues include the added costs of transportation; staying over on the mainland for meetings; ferry tolls; the increased cost of food, fuel, and utilities on an island; and the labor of lugging most things from mainland to island.
Speaking to that point, Zone C chairman Hilton Turner said, “I understand the plight of the islands, but as I told the folks on Isle au Haut and also told the commissioner, “There aren’t hundreds of people standing on the docks in Stonington wanting to move to Isle au Haut.”
A more difficult issue, determining boundaries or who fishes where, looms between Stonington and Isle au Haut, an issue that larger islands, Vinalhaven and Swans were settled with fluid boundaries, or what a fisherman referred to as Gentlemen’s Agreements, long ago.
“I think there is a huge potential for real problems,” said Stonington Co-op president and Zone C committee member Frank Gotwals, speaking of boundaries between Stonington and Isle au Haut fishermen. “I understand the issues that these islands are facing, and I think they’re looking for anything they can to make that kind of life attractive to people, but, in fact, it’s becoming less and less attractive to people because the benefits of living on those places, the economic benefits in terms of being close to fishing grounds, etc., have largely disappeared.”
Turner spoke of one of those benefits, saying, ” I would like to have a nice house on the ocean myself, but I can’t because the land’s been bought up by out-of-staters.” He spoke of a house on Isle au Haut that had just been purchased for several hundred thousand. Turner said the new owners “Are putting several million back into it.” The house had been built for his great-great uncle. But no child of the owners will attend school there. It’s a vacation house.
Turner said the DMR had called about Zone C’s vote on the matter, and Pingree said the House expects to take up the bill probably the first week in May, as, she said, “All the committees are trying to have their bills reported out by May 15th.”
“I think it has a good shot,” Pingree said. “I think it’s not a life changing, not an earth-shattering management strategy change basically to go out and allow islands to manage their waiting lists separately from the rest of the zone, which, obviously, is different.” She admitted that, “It does raise an issue for some mainland lobstermen,” but stated, “The committee understood the point that islanders face even more specific and more challenging issues when it comes to jobs on islands.”