Critics: Lobster fishing ban in 2013 would only hurt lobstermen
Will next year’s looming ban on taking lobster from Long Island Sound help bolster local lobster numbers and revive the faltering fishery that was once worth $100 million to the local economy?
Nobody really knows, but some think it will certainly put the hurt on already suffering lobstermen, whose numbers have dwindled from several hundred down to about 50 over the past decade.
Adrienne Esposito of the Citizen’s Campaign for the Environment is one of the program’s critics.
“We have less lobstermen in the Sound than ever in the history of our state,” Ms. Esposito said. “Putting them out of business for three months in just plain cold.”
In February, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission — a 15-state body that regulates the American lobster and other fisheries — approved an 11-week closure to take place in the fall of 2013. Commission spokeswoman Toni Kerns said the closure is part of a management plan intended to reduce lobster exploitation by 10 percent. She said she has not yet received official word from New York or Connecticut about specific dates the Sound will be closed to lobster fishing.
“They told us in February they’ll do a seasonal closure that will likely be in the fall and as far as I know, they’ll go to a closure,” Ms. Kerns said. She added, however, that “at any time a state can propose a conservation equivalency that will have the same effect” as closure of the fishery.
This means the states can decide at any time whether an outright a ban is the right way to reduce fishing efforts by 10 percent or whether to go another route.
It had yet to be determined this week what month next year closures would begin, Ms. Kerns said.
Southold Town Trustee and longtime lobsterman Jimmy King said he was unsure things would even play out as planned next year, at least not when it comes to the time the closure will take place.
“I don’t think they’re going to do a closure between September and December,” he said.
Mr. King said he’s been fishing the Sound for lobster for more than 50 years out of Mattituck Inlet, and that he and a nephew, Matt DeMaula, are the only ones left who still do. Most other lobstermen have switched over to conch, he said.
Mr. King believes a ban would be ineffective, in a “too little, too late” kind of way.
The commission should have been reining in catches before the die-off in the late ‘90s, he said.
“When the die-off occurred due to things like high water temperatures, pesticides and [harsh storms], the resource was already stressed from how much we were taking,” Mr. King said. “We raised the minimum size, they were talking about a complete moratorium and now they’re talking about a seasonal closure. We’re doing things now we should have done 20 years ago.”
He added that something that should be included with the seasonal ban is setting trap limits for those fishing the resource, as Maine does.
“Maine has strict trap limits while we went crazy out here,” he said. “There’s guys out here that were trapping 1,000, 1,200 traps a day and a lot of them just left their gear out there that we’ve had to use grant money to go out and collect. These guys just walked away and the taxpayers are now paying for someone to go out and get this gear back. It’s ridiculous.”
Ms. Esposito and Emerson Hasbrouck, marine director at the Cornell Cooperative Extension research group in Riverhead, agree that the diminished numbers of lobsters found in the Sound is not strictly the result of over-fishing, but rather the combination of higher water temperatures, pesticide run-off, salt water quality and unregulated fishing, which together caused an extreme die-off of the crustaceans in 1998 and 1999.
“Environmental and anthropogenic activities that don’t include fishing are suspects for that die-off,” Mr. Hasbrouck said. “The resource has not recovered from that.”
He said the results of a probable seasonal ban, part of a lobster management plan aimed to have a positive effect on the resource, are uncertain as of now.
“It’s possible it will work; we’ll have to see,” Mr. Hasbrouck said.
He’s also sure it will have a negative effect on already exasperated area fishermen.
“When the fishery was at its height in the mid- to late 1990’s, it was worth somewhere between 20 and 25 million dollars in landed value and up to $100 million to the economy,” Mr. Hasbrouck said. “That value is down to about $1 million. It’s been a significant drop-off and has had a similarly significant impact on people’s livelihoods, who have diversified their fishing in order to survive.”
Published reports put Long Island’s lobster catch peak at 8.8 million pounds in 1996 versus the roughly one million pounds caught in 1999.
Ms. Esposito said the coalition has been working hard with U.S. congressmen and senators to pass the Long Island Restoration Act, which seeks to secure funds to improve the welfare of local waters and bring back the prized crustacean.
“We’re asking for seven to 10 million dollars to implement restoration efforts,” she said. “That means restoring wetlands and sea grass populations, as well as reducing the amount of nitrogen going into the water. We have to look at the Sound holistically and restore the health of the water body.
“That will bring back the lobster. This is the fault of plastics and pesticides, not the lobstermen,” she said.
To Mr. King, the seasonal lobster ban won’t have much effect on North Fork lobstermen because, well, there just aren’t many left. “Most everyone,” he said, has already stopped fishing for lobster.
“I just brought in the last of my gear because there’s so little to catch. It can’t even pay for my fuel,” he said. “Lately it’s been near to nothing, 30 or 40 pounds a day.”
