Department of Marine Resources
Lobster Advisory Council Meeting Minutes
Department of Human Services
442 Civic Center Drive, Augusta
August 27, 2008 –5:00 PM
Department of Marine Resources
Lobster Advisory Council Meeting Minutes
Department of Human Services
442 Civic Center Drive, Augusta
August 27, 2008 5:00 pm
A meeting of the Department of Marine Resources’ Lobster Advisory Council (Council) was held on this date at the Department of Human Services, 442 Civic Center Drive, Augusta. Council members attending this meeting included: Chair Bob Baines (Non-Zone Lobsterman), John Drouin (Zone A), Dan MacDonald (Zone C), Ted Hoskins (General Public Member), Gerry Cushman (Zone D), Jeff Putnam (Zone F), Elliott Thomas (Non-Zone Lobsterman), Jim Henderson (Zone G), and Jon Carter (Zone B). Council members not present included: Peter McAleney (Western Dealer Member), Larry Knapp (Zone E) and Cappy Sargent (Non-Zone Lobsterman). Commissioner George Lapointe, Deputy Commissioner David Etnier, Deirdre Gilbert, Sarah Cotnoir, Kathleen Reardon, Carl Wilson and Donna Hall of the Department of Marine Resources were also present. Others present were: David Cousens, Patrice McCarron, Jeff Eaton, William Smith, Richard Larrabee, Jr., Steve Robbins, Sheila Dassatt, Gina LeDuc-Kunty, Meredith Mendelson, Annie Tselikis and Rep. Bruce MacDonald.
The meeting convened at 5:10 p.m.
1. Welcome and Review of Agenda
2. Approval of Minutes (July 30, 2008)
MOTION: (J. Henderson and E. Thomas) To accept the minutes of the July 30, 2008 meeting as written. Unanimous.
3. New Business
a. Discussion on Trap Tag Fees
Sarah Cotnoir explained the trap tag fee budget that was handed out to the Lobster Advisory Council Members and pointed out several key elements of the budget. Elliott Thomas asked based on Title 12, Section 6431C how the Department of Marine Resources could use trap tag fees. Deputy Commissioner David Etnier explained Section 6431C and said that whale research would come under the cost of management. Patrice McCarron asked if the DMR could give a little more information of the funding from NMFS – what part of the research does the tag money rescue? Sarah said the habitat monitoring, CTD (Conductivity Temperature Depth Meter), Plankton Survey are larger scale versions of projects started and no longer funded under National Fish and Wildlife grants (NFWF) and the D-Tagging is a very small piece of a large grant currently funded under Section 6. The prey and right whale forecasting, laser optical plankton counter and acoustic work are all new elements. We have a grant submitted to Section 6 for some program maintenance costs as well as a humpback and fin whale entanglement scarification rate study but if we don’t get it we will need to draw further funding for program costs from the trap tag money. Patrice asked what Federal money is traditional for whale research. Sarah said there are very few funding options available right now. Patrice said she thought that we had a core program and we were just adding to it with the tag money. Sarah said that was the case but historically available grants that used to support this program including NMFS/NFWF right whale grants and the NFWF Whale Fund are no longer available. Currently, for whale research Section 6 is the only funding source we can pursue right now, which we are doing.
John Drouin said when we approved this as a council last year fishermen were looking at it as short term gains; down my way in Zone A they didn’t feel like they got anything from it and they want to repeal the .10 increase. Commissioner George Lapointe said he was at that meeting and asked if people think the whale issue is going away. Jeff Putnam said Zone F wants to keep is as long as the money is dedicated to whale research. Gerry Cushman said he agreed; we need all the weapons we can get, everything is going toward whale research; why would we want to get rid of it now.
MOTION: (G. Cushman and J. Putnam) To keep the additional .10 trap tag fee in place. 7 in favor, 2 opposed.
b. Update from Zone Council Representatives on Lobster Effort Questionnaire
Gerry Cushman said Zone D discussed and voted to freeze licenses and tags for two years until we can get a handle on it; we don’t think it’s going to be a great stock assessment. Jon Carter said Zone B had a very well attended meeting and also voted for the 5:1 ratio with tags. Everyone in Zone B is scared to death about a trap reduction; I made the statement that we equate people to traps. We had a long discussion about skimmers or part timers; we call this a public resource but we have taken away from every fishery. Zone B thinks we should take care of the full timers and get rid of the part timers. Sarah asked how you get rid of the part timers. Jon said we have talked about a tiered license system and I’d like to see a questionnaire sent out about that. Jon said all other countries are going to systems where if you supplement your income you get a trap reduction, season and trap limit; Florida has done it in their fishery. Gerry said so don’t you think it will take time. Jon said he agreed with a freeze; every time we see a trap reduction it hurts the full timers, I am not in favor of reducing traps. Sarah said this is a tough thing about a public meeting. Jon said he wished people would speak their minds; I have no other job.
John Drouin said in Zone A it was unanimous that they want to leave things alone; we have things in place to address these things and it still leaves the fishery with some sense of historical things. Now with what there is there are tremendous amounts of hoops to jump through; we are discussing the lower limit of licenses, trap tags are coming down. I don’t think that, just because I’m one of the lucky ones; when you start freezing things we are not managing the resource, we are managing people, whatever we do right now it’s not going to help the resource, my personal feelings are we need to see growth; we need to pay attention to our students. We have also discussed that we increased by 300,000 tags; buoys come and go, that’s the way that the fishery is, before we start cutting/freezing, we need to have a good discussion on a tiered system, the council supported it years ago but the State didn’t go far with it. David Etnier said that is not true; we spent two years working on it and I resent it when people say an effort was not made to explore ideas that were brought forward. Gerry said I agree with David, the LAC went round and round with it; we as an LAC moved on. John said it’s the way I remember it; we have the tool in the toolbox, it doesn’t need to be done statewide.
Jeff Putnam said the Zone F meeting was lightly attended and that they discussed that those who were new licensees would only ever get 600 trap tags; eventually everyone’s limit would be 600. Some people in Zone F think economics would take care of it on its own; there was really no consensus. Jeff said he thinks that we should freeze everything except the students; pretty much everyone in Zone F has 800 tags. I don’t understand why there is a discrepancy in the way Zone F voted.
Jim Henderson said that Zone G doesn’t want to see any changes; Zone G has a lot of part timers. Dan MacDonald said that Zone C had a very well attended council meeting and Zone C doesn’t want to do anything right now; the old topic did come up about new people only getting 600 tags. Sarah said Zone C will be discussing a 5 – year apprentice program at their next meeting.
Sarah Cotnoir said that the Zone E council met on August 25th, they have a few new council members. Some members thought the questions were very broad; one person wanted to see tags frozen, but there was really no consensus. They will be meeting again in September and will discuss other ideas; they are the 1st zone to send out a survey on a student waiting list.
George said that a 35% return on a questionnaire is huge; there is a lot of information in there. We received many comments and of some of those comments folks thought we should get rid of the non-commercial fishermen, but 10,000 tags is not going to make or break us. This is a public resource; the lobster industry needs to take into account that there are full timers and part timers; people do different jobs across the State. A 50% reduction is what we should keep in mind; we are concerned if you move on a 600 trap limit, it would take a lot of work politically. Effort reduction is needed to take in all operators; we need to look more broadly than that.
George said that one of the next steps the Department will take is; the trap limit is not 880 and next year we will not be automatically be issuing the extra 10%. We are not sure yet how we will be administering replacement tags. We are inclined to support a trap tag freeze for one year anyway; it will give you time between now and your next meeting to see what it will look like. There has been a ½ century of talks; what are we going to do different, we want to control effort but we need to have something in place. My thought is we are not going to spend a lot of time on latent effort; my thought is this is not an element as serious as others. We need to figure out what our next steps are; all the issues are on the table.
Elliott said everything we are looking at is social economics; if we look at it for biology it will help us more in the future. George it is social economics and biological as well. Bob Baines said I agree with George we have to move forward with a freeze and look at a tiered license system; look at things historically and that would take care of the latent effort. We will see a trap reduction with the whale rules; I don’t want to see anything done this winter until we have a tiered license system in place. George said we have all kinds of ideas; if we advance a trap tag proposal you make that the best that you can; it’s a short term before the Legislature.
Jon Carter said I’m not going to say I didn’t know this was coming; I still say the results are skewed. We’ve had trap limits; I’ve seen everyone who had between 200 and 800 traps. If we asked these questions again and people thought they were really going to get a trap cut; the answers would look different. Most of us are over 55 and I can’t see making a full time fisherman take a hit. George said the only reduction is the extra 10%. Bob said I used the words trap cut; I think we will be making a mistake. Jon said – Bob you said tiered and George said trap reduction; there are a lot of people that think we need a trap reduction. George said that is why this is such a difficult discussion; we need to move this. John said I applaud eliminating replacement tags and a tiered license system.
Bob said the way to move forward is to have a sub-committee to work with the DMR to find way to address these issues. John said if you have a tiered license system you can do a fairly large reduction. Jeff Eaton asked how come a 90% reduction has to be traps, why is it always traps; can’t we give up time of day or other things. Bob said I think we are anticipating some changes based upon the whale rules and the stock assessment.
Gerry said I asked for a freeze 3 years ago because I saw that lobsters were declining and I knew something had to be done; we’ll be lucky if we come out with 600 traps with the stock assessment. Jon said it was mentioned 10 years ago that this could happen. Gerry said when I saw something was going to happen I supported a freeze because what we did before; we did wrong. Carl Wilson said what I think it comes down to is biological and to improve it; it comes down to landing fewer lobsters, that’s the bottom line with assessment. We manage the fishery through input controls; there are decisions to be made based on fishing mortality. Dana Rice said I am reluctant to get in to this discussion because I am not a harvester. If you count all the things that Canada has done; they still have all the same problems. I do know there is going to be a trap reduction and people will be leaving the fishery. Carl said if that happens, if people get out of the fishery; how do we know that they are out of the fishery. I think there is an adjustment as far as what happened in southern New England. Dana said people are going to be going out as part of economics.
Elliott said we have all for years resisted doing logbooks and it’s coming back to bite us now. Ted Hoskins said we’ve had about six different perspectives and I don’t think we should move without everyone’s ideas; they all need to be a part of it. Jon said I agree with Ted, if we jump in this direction and the whale thing comes at us; we may be facing something else. I would hate to think we had a limit before they come after us. We are coming off a high with catching lobsters, but we are not riding the high that we were a few years ago; it scares me to think of what could be coming from the stock assessment. Carl said in 1997 western Maine was in a very different position than they are today and eastern Maine is not what it was then either; that’s the reference we are using.
Jeff said I can see from the survey that freezing tags was narrowly supported and some of the islands and smaller towns will be affected by this; without lobstering I couldn’t stay on Chebeauge Island. It’s going to look great with fewer traps in the water, but what will it look like down the road. Bob said we want to protect the people that make their living from lobstering. John said I agree but young people have to have the same ability. Bob said the entry program seems to be working now; what I think needs to be done is, we need to look at historical participation. Elliott said a tiered license system would work; those licenses would go away and that will weed out those who don’t intend to fish full time. Bob said the other side is to look at the 35 year old who has built his life on everything; his boat, his house and family. George said at last night’s Zone A meeting we had a guy say, don’t lock me out. We have to keep all those things in mind; as a State we have to keep everyone in mind.
George said when I first started here everything went to 800; yes there were cuts but I don’t think people have gone broke. Bob said we did well, but we’re not dong well anymore. Dana said we used to do a lot of fisheries, I urge people to do things right so we don’t do this same thing to this fishery. Ted said when we go at this sub-committee, it needs to be strongly supported, to gain access to the experts; everything needs to fit together, we are in a resource bind. We need to find ways to maintain access to this fishery, fishermen around the world are in trouble, this is the time when you really need to pay attention; I hope we find a way to support this group. Bob said we have gone through this for the last few years; the DMR has chapter after chapter on these ideas, we have to set the table so we are prepared as an industry to make the changes we need. Gerry said this problem has always been there and now we are seeing it. I support George’s statements; how are you going to address the issues we have?
George said I really haven’t thought them through yet; we need to look at a broad suite of issues with an eye on equity; it will impact the people in the fishery. If we have industry meetings and we are not clear on what the issues are then the Department of Marine Resources with have to react. Jon said there is another issue here; it has to go before the Legislature. George said that is correct; we will need their support.
Jim said I agree with taking away the 10% on the extra tags; it is a big complaint in my area, however what you said about historical participation with a tiered license; some people have had to get full time jobs because they can’t make it, I think the suggestion about changing the time of day may work. Sarah said the time of day clause can be changed at the zone council level but it has never been tested.
David Cousens said everyone gets so hung up on the number of traps; what some of our problems are is we put cheap lobster on the market. We need to cut down on fishing when lobsters are in tough shape; there are ways of fishing smarter than what we are doing. We need to not land the lobsters that we are landing in July, August and September; if you look around the world people are changing their way of doing business.
Jon said he was concerned with doing away with the extra 10% on tags; I know a lot of the zones like the idea but we have cruise ships in our area. George said we will come back with a proposal and then we will draft a regulation.
MOTION: (G. Cushman and E. Thomas) To support Commissioner Lapointe with not automatically issuing 10% lobster trap replacement tags and to move forward with putting a trap tag freeze in place for one year. Unanimous.
4. Old Business
5. Reports and Updates
a. DMR Updates
Commissioner Lapointe said the Atlantic States Commission will meet tomorrow on herring; as you know the quota went from 55 to 45 metric ton this year. The catch rates have been incredibly high and they may consider closing the herring fishery or they may vote to have one day out. This will have huge impacts so if you know someone in NH or MA give them a call and ask them to go to the meeting.
George said the ship strike rules have been published; their rules sunset after 5 years. The Commissioner encouraged people to take a look at them and said the public comment period ends on September 29th.
George said the MSC has scheduled three meetings in September to talk with people about what it would mean to go from pre-assessment to full assessment and encouraged people to find out when the meetings are and to attend.
b. MLA
Patrice McCarron said the Maine Lobstermen’s Association has scheduled their meet the candidates meetings. This is an informal get together that gives the candidates the opportunity to learn about the most pressing issues facing the lobster industry. Patrice said the year before last when we did this we had good turn outs about 50 people or so; it’s a time to get to know the candidates and put in a plug for them to join the Marine Resources Committee. Jon Carter said if guys are having Zone Council meetings before elections; this is important.
6. Set next Meeting Date and Agenda
The date for the next Lobster Advisory Council is Thursday, October 2nd.
MOTION: (E. Thomas and T. Hoskins) To adjourn. Unanimous.
The meeting adjourned at 7:30 pm.
