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DEPT. OF MARINE RESOURCES
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Maine Lobster Zone A Council Meeting Minutes, October 12, 2005Zone A Meeting The meeting took place with the following members present: Norbert Lemiex, Kenneth Dennison, Jon Cox Jr., Rebecca Cox, Jeremy Prescott, Donald H. Parker, William Prescott III, Wade Faulkingham, John Drouin, Oscar Look, Dennis Smith, Derek Lyons, James Polk, Dwight Carver, Danny Beal, Robert Fortin, Dale Woodward, James Kennedy, Ralph Backman, Nancy Beal, Mitchell Beal, Nick Lemieux, Eric Beal, Dean Crossman, Stephen Robinson III, Michael Curtis, Chris Urquhart, Ernest Kelly Sr., Dan Albee, Jeff Best, Jeremy Tyler, Jason Tyler, Dennis Sargent, Billy Houck, Tee Trundy, Mike Dinsmore, Bob Welsh, Bonita Alley, Brian Alley, Jeremy Cirone, and Dwight Hayward. The following DMR staff members were present: Terry Stockwell, David Libby, Heidi Bray, Stephen Robbins III, Lt. Alan Talbot and Trisha Cheney. 1. Introduction and Welcome New Members J. Drouin called the meeting to order shortly after 7:02 pm. There was an introduction of the following members: J. Drouin explained that we need to elect new officers. The following positions were voted on: 3. Approval of Minutes (3/29/05) J Drouin: Since we just received the minutes, we can table it for right now until the next meeting. Nominated to table it and passed. Wait until the next meeting to discuss. 4. Reports and Updates a. Lobster Advisory Council Update J Drouin discussed the report given by John Sowles stating that they are getting good lobster data. He feels, however, that when trawl is done in Downeast Maine, the results are not an accurate representation as the resources has been fished upon all summer. The data collected is important to the stock assessments. S. Robbins III introduced himself as the new DMR whale gear specialist and explained that DMR is trying to reduce the likelihood of entanglement with ground lines by experimenting with low-profile rope. He explained that the low-profile rope that he has is a new blend and has been documented on video as working well for rocky bottom. He has 2 different types of rope out for anyone wanting to try it. b. DMR Updates T. Stockwell informs the council of the following: J. Drouin mentions that a larger lobster will have a better chance to get to the max gauge size, however, when he talked to the Co-op, they couldn’t move selects at the time. O. Look: How about 50% at 1.5 lb lobster, and the rest higher? T. Stockwell: They will have to withdraw the bid if you want to change it. Comment: Let’s get process going. O. Look: It is a little healthier lobster right now. J. Drouin: Move forward then? Comments: 1.5 and up. T. Stockwell: They will all be 2 clawed lobsters. Consensus vote to move forward. c. District Representatives – reports from each district K. Dennison: District 1 – The fishing is slow, bait and fuel are high. W. Prescott: District 2 - People talking about requiring a change to 3 to 5 traps on one line within the state waters. T. Stockwell: The number of traps on a trawl is something the zone councils can decide. If this is something this area can support, you don’t have to go state wide. J. Drouin: We can put in on next zone agenda. Thank you for volunteering. Bill took Wade Day’s position who resigned due to health issues. E. Kelly: District 3 – Same. R. Backman: District 6: Bait and fuel are high, some days higher catch than others. For the seed lobsters, I think we should put half our money into a hatchery. J. Drouin: Bob is right behind you. That is what we used to do. That is the purpose of the seed fund. I will discuss the requirements of it with Terry. Only one other zone takes half of seed money and puts it into a hatchery. Other zones put it into research. R. Backman: As soon as the grant money is gone, the scientists are gone. Look at Bob Steneck. It is the same thing with reporting. As soon as their money is gone, they will be too! W. Prescott: $500 million resource and there are only 28 Marine Patrol Officers guarding it. Lt. Talbot – We have trouble recruiting people, it doesn’t pay big money and it is hard to keep an officer in an area. Have to be on call 24/7. Lt. Talbot – It is not a general statement that you can fish 880. Do they do it? Yes. Can we enforce it? No. We would have to go out and find 880 traps to prove it. Not an easy thing to do. It is a nightmare to be selling replacement tags. J. Drouin: It used to be north and south, now 7 states due to the Zones. E. Beal: District 6 - I am mostly worried about the reporting thing. D. Sargent: District 7 – I’ll give a report next time. C. Urquhart: District 8 – The fuel is high, bait high, but the lobsters are picking up a little bit now. 4. New Business a. Landings and Reporting Discussion (Heidi Bray) J. Drouin: Introduction of Heidi Bray. H. Bray: Introduces Dave Libby and Trisha Cheney, and then begins her presentation. J. Drouin: Last spring at the Lobster Advisory Council, lobster effort reduction was discussed. The log book for new fishermen was brought up. The Council voted unanimously not to bring log books in. Last meeting in Sept., the dealer reporting was brought up. Heidi, it seems you will end up going forward regardless. Where are you with it right now? H. Bray: We have the draft regulation right now and started our industry meetings yesterday in Machias. We are still tweaking the draft. J. Drouin: Seems you had some bad meetings, if industry doesn’t like it, will you go forward? H Bray: The DMR Advisory Council has to pass this, so if they say no, it won’t. J. Drouin: I have been on the Council for 2 years; it seems (dealer reporting) is a double edge sword. I have listened to the other council members at meetings, and it is hard to get our voice heard. This information could be helpful. But, it also scares me when a program like this starts. It is just the first step. W. Prescott: You will only get 50% of what is really being landed. Your statistics won’t be right because people selling directly off their boats. C. Urquhart: It doesn’t mean that is illegal. Comment: Cash market is known, but they are not illegal lobsters. O. Look: The mandatory lobster reporting has only been in place for over a year. It doesn’t seem like it is a lot of time to see if it working. Right now reporting takes a lot of time. Information can be broken down into lies, more lies and then statistics. There are people measuring broodstock, looking at the eggs and general health. I think that the resource is healthy. Maine has been the leader in taking care of the resource. Why do you want to double/quadruple landings reporting when we haven’t given what we are reporting right now a chance. The Commissioner is dead set that it will be done. I don’t know how many dealers who are in favor of this? H. Bray: There a lot of dealers who are in support, many thinking that fishermen should be reporting, and many people don’t like it at all. O. Look: There are a lot of people reporting right now. H. Bray: But we don’t get the number of licenses fished, and have no idea of how many are active. O. Look: You have the number of boats I buy from? J. Drouin: The way the fishery is to the West is much different than they way we fish and manage here. If they are going to start to regulate the fishery, then this info can be useful to us. Capping licenses using this information or are we capping some using tags? There is no way to know. It is a double edge because I can see where it’s beneficial also. The biggest things are the Harvester ID and boat name. Maybe there is a way to get the info? C. Urquhart: Why should we believe that this info is any more than the information that they have been collecting for 30 years and that isn’t used? T. Stockwell: Most of the data was used in this stock assessment. C. Urquhart: How is it any different than any other year? T. Stockwell: You would have to ask Carl Wilson. C. Urquhart: The data will be skewed. T. Stockwell: 30 years of data can show patterns and trends. Comment: Mother Nature controls everything. C. Urquhart: I would like to see everyone from the state just back off. It is almost the next legislative session and the state already has a new idea. No one wants to step back and see where we are going. The want to try and fix something that we don’t even know if what we put in last year is right. J. Drouin: Look at the number of trap tags, and license. The zone to the west license number dropped and trap tags dropped. The effort reduction program in the 1990’s is just starting to work, and we need to let it have the chance to work. Comment: What is the stock assessment? No one can tell us what it really is anyways. T. Stockwell: The stock assessment is a combination of the settlement survey, the aging survey, landings, the Sea Sampling program, Port sampling program... C. Urquhart: I hope the trawl survey is better than first year, they didn’t get anything! T. Stockwell: A single DMR tow lands more lobsters than the total NMFS trawl surveys. B. Welsh: Having the Harvester ID and Boat associated with landings is what bothers me the most. I am just wondering why they need that information. Why is there no anonymity to this process? Can anyone tell me that? H. Bray: Can you think of a good answer to this, we have asked? Do you know of a good way to ID how many licenses without IDing the individual harvester level? B. Welsh: DMR keeps track of who gets licenses. The dealers could report individual landings with a letter in the alphabet or something. We could report the landings and the number of days that A, B or C went out to fish and get the scientific benefit. Why is that such an insurmountable thing? H. Bray: But fishermen don’t always sell to the same dealer. They are splitting their catch from the same trip, and it looks like 2 different trips and will look like double the effort. B. Welsh: Do you know what % of fishermen actually do that? B. Welsh: I would think that if someone brain stormed that a bit, they could figure out a way to get individual landings and still make them anonymous. You still haven’t addressed the fact that there are sales that individuals and retail business don’t report. I wonder what % that is compared to a fishermen selling to 2 different places. It would astound me if it was a great number. D. Libby: We have given it a lot of thought on how to do this. There are 7,500 fishermen out there and a lot of them move around which is different than the lobster dealers. By attaching fishermen name, we can track that. If every fishermen wanted to give us a code, then that would work, but it would be hard to maintain. The data is highly guarded within DMR, can’t be accessed by everyone and is aggregated by county. We won’t be giving out individual names and catch. C. Urquhart: Excuse me; correct me if I am wrong. Isn’t that the same thing they said about the trap tags when they started that program? How is it that the Town of Gouldsboro got the # of trap tags and license, and is now using that to collect personal property tax? H. Bray: That information is not confidential. C. Urquhart: It was said it would not be used against us! H. Bray: we are not saying that this is not going to be used for future management. Landings are held differently than trap tags and license information. T. Stockwell: Trap tags and license information is public information. J. Drouin: Public information that is used against us. Under a certain code number there are no landings, then eventually this license with be removed. It is one of the things that fishery managers will be using. C. Urquhart: If they wanted to know which licenses are used, couldn’t we sit as a Zone down and tell them? J. Drouin: It will be the same thing as in the 1990’s, everyone will be running out to get license. A latent licensee will go out and use it, increasing the effort. What will happen in 5, 10, 15 years from now with the resource? What might benefit you is that landings can be used to show history or participation. It scares me to think which way this will go. But again, it can be used for our benefit. The ASFMC needs the information. What happened if we are hit with hurricanes? The Commissioner sits on ASFMC and he is driven by the die off in Long Island Sound and what to do with those fishermen? Again the way that we used to fish for the past 10, 15 years is gone. No escape vent, wooden traps, all gone. I might sound like I am a proponent of it, but what they are saying that if people are losing traps, how are you going to back it up and with what information? W. Prescott: If you don’t have landings for a year, then you shouldn’t have the license. R. Fortin: I went through the apprenticeship program and I feel that I should be able to keep my license. If I went away for a year, then I should be able to come back. J. Drouin: Truthfully, this is where industry is going. There is the latent license you don’t use for 10 years, and another guy that has been fishing every day. The big guys upstairs will say industry will be cut back to 10 million tags. Then is it fair if he gets cut before you? The Lobster Advisory Council been asking how to do it fairly and equitably and this could help. N. Lemieux: Only thing that controls the resource is Mother Nature. It is too bad that the regulation put in place says that one person can fish over the other because of a health problem, or a low period because of your landings. One fellow might have higher quota just because Mother Nature dealt it that way. I think that this is leading to ITQs. Dealers are reporting right now, but then it will be fishermen. I don’t think fishermen will mind. When the zones came out, it was said that they will never change the way we guys fish; that is was just for voting purposes. Now they change it all. I think that all the conservation methods that fishermen have put in place, individual fishermen, not corporate fishing. We are lobster farming, lots of traps on bottom right now, no predators, draggers, resources is healthy. This is part of reason why landings are up. But if it drops, the resource is still healthy because look at the 100-year trend, still up! But if you base on what your landings are, then you are limited. We will end with a quota like in Canada. H. Bray: This data is important for the management of a public resource. This information is gathered to help assess the impact of those decisions and make better ones as we are basing them on guess work right now. N. Lemieux: The people representing Maine are doing a poor job. If we have highest landings, why are New Hampshire and Massachusetts pushing us around? They want to force their regulations on us. They want to force ITQs and put who ever they want on vessels because they don’t care about the resource. Shaft Master caught with 7,000 lbs of scrubbed lobsters. They got a slap on the wrist! O. Look: Will restaurant and retailers be affected? What is preventing them from filling out whatever number they want? H. Bray: They can provide whatever they want, yes. Nick Lemieux: Heidi, you say taking 3 years and effort over a three-year period. What is the mechanism to tell when you see there is a problem? I want to know what can help to ID a problem. H. Bray: Landings would help to raise a flag. It is just another piece of data we look at. D. Libby: The landings program does not make any management decision. We provide the data to lobsters zones, NMFS and they make the decisions. We put the data together. T. Stockwell: That information is looked at over the long term. The technical committee raises more questions if it looks like you are fishing harder for 1 year or 5 years. They look at weather over the long term. Norbert, you have a good point there. We share the resource with other states and we only have one vote on that committee and they have better data than us. D. Sargent: Everything was going well until effort increase. Now double the traps in the water. I also don’t think that you should take someone’s license because they don’t use it. H. Bray: DMR will withhold your dealer’s licenses. D. Crossman: I knew you would say that. You don’t want to go after the fishermen - you are putting the squeeze on me. I don’t have a bookkeeper. H. Bray: I hope you have been visited, and we can figure out a way to help you report based on the way that you do business. Everyone does this differently. D. Crossman: Why not have the fishermen report? D. Libby: It is the scale of this. There are way too many fishermen. It is easier to go through the dealers. A lot of dealers who can already do this. Some others will take a little bit more. License withholding - no one has lost a license yet. We are there to help you. We are all in this together. Right now this is what I am trying to do. D. Crossman: I don’t feel comfortable giving out fishermen’s information. You are putting the squeeze on dealers. J. Drouin: Are there regulations on this? D. Libby: The dealers already have this information. If a new guy won’t give you information, then there is a way to put in unknown fishermen. J. Drouin: You have to write him a check. D. Crossman: Then unknown fishermen if he won’t report, not on your fault? R. Fortin: Why do you need the name of the fishermen? O. Look: You have a dealer license and you fill out the number of boats bought from. On form if we put # of days at sea, would that be enough? H. Bray: It would be better than what we are getting now, but not enough. E. Beal: What are you going to do with all this information? H. Bray: We have the resources to deal with this. E. Beal: You are forcing the fishermen to fish their licenses. H. Bray: I understand the fear of effort reduction. C. Urquhart: You will increase the effort while doing this. N. Lemieux: At last nights meeting it came out that you have a grant from feds for a couple of years. After, who will take care of tabulating this and having the information readily available? Who will take care of it? How many personnel? Who will pay for it? N. Lemieux: If grant money is not there, then what? H. Bray: We will keep applying for grant money to enable the program. C. Urquhart: So you are saying that this will go for a couple of years and then may be dropped? D. Libby: I see that it will be streamlined. We won’t need the resources we need right now to operate. It is more expensive in the beginning. W. Prescott: How many Marine Patrol Officers in the State of Maine? Lt Talbot: 4 people in the academy. About 28 people in the field. W. Prescott: A $500 million fishery and 28 people watching the hen house? D. Sargent: I disagree. I think that the fishermen take care of industry themselves. I think the money can be spent better. W. Prescott: Fishermen will manage the lobster industry. J. Drouin begins by stating that anyone here can be grandfathered in, as it actually comes back to the Zone A lobstermen to vote on whether or not it can be put in or not. The zone has a choice. T. Stockwell read the Law and explained that the Commissioner is looking for discussion from the council to move this ahead or move it behind and send it out to the fishermen. There needs to be a 2/3 votes from the members of the council. C. Urquhart: This is legal even after we closed the zone? D. Sargent: How did this go retroactive? T. Stockwell: The new law allowed for it. D. Sargent: I know my son was almost there. No matter what you say, the legislature can change it to whatever they want to. I want to make it a motion that we put these guys through. R. Backman: I second it. O. Look: Why 92%? T. Stockwell: It was originally proposed at 70% and was then hotly debated. C. Urquhart: How many of these 20 will get in this year? W. Prescott: So, this would be 31 that would be added. We don’t know what students fishing before 18 and automatically get put in. J. Drouin: This is when they were at 92% completion at that date. If they haven’t finished those days, they won’t be on the list. On this list are those that have completed 100% of the program. These people we document at 100% on that date. Comment: How did they come up with this 92%? My boy has been sitting on the bench for 6 years? Our industry is doing fine. Why are they sitting there? This is not fair. I am speaking for 174 other apprentices too. T. Stockwell: The new law only allows for the Council to grandfather apprentices that had 92% of their days and hours completed by Oct. J. Drouin: It takes some longer to complete the program, which is why the dates are different. W. Prescott: I understand. These 20 people come in to be eligible. Comment: No, it should be 174. This is not fair. W. Prescott: So, amendment next year? J. Drouin: Unless a legislator changes it again. Comment: It just seems to me that if you go to college, you apply, do your time, you get your degree. You have programs like the Landings Data; can’t they help with this process? T. Stockwell: They are two completely different programs and processes. The legislature passes the laws, and DMR implements these laws through the State rule-making process. Comment: You are not out there day after day. It is hard work! T. Stockwell: That is the law as passed by the last session’s legislature. It came into effect this September. W. Prescott: In certain circumstances, I can see your point. Are you deciding now that you want to be a lobster fisherman, just because the landings are good? Comment: I have been on boats since I was 5 years old! J. Drouin: In 2005, there are only 113 apprentices on the books. This means that 83 people or so may want a license. Should I get one and hold onto it? There is a bill in the legislature concerning the transfer of licenses. It is safe to say someone will get it and maybe I can sell it for 100K in 10 years. Apprenticeship licenses are desirable. The legislature decides. Zone A has had a high rate of fishermen leaving the zone, so this may be favorable. So, there is a motion on the floor, these 20 people on the list, this is the next group that would be eligible for new licenses. The way that I look at it, your son will get his license in Feb Dennis. D. Sargent: The way I look at it, he was on the list back in 2004, and he still doesn’t have his license. There is something wrong with the paperwork. J. Drouin: You should take your documentation stating the 184 days and X amount of hours to the state and get a license. T. Stockwell: This list is the people who completed the 200 days and 1000 hours. J. Drouin: We did what we did with the laws that we had, and the legislature changed it. The lawmakers chose to grandfather these people in. D. Sargent: What about emergency legislation? O. Look: It seems to me, that if someone has 92%, then it shouldn’t be limited to just these 20 people. T. Stockwell: It is not limited, if they have 92% of their apprentice hours and days completed by Oct 6th, 2004, they need to contact DMR. J. Drouin: If you have your time in by that time, 200 days and 92% of the 2000 hours, then you should be in time. C. Urquhart: Let’s motion then? J. Drouin: Then I motion to Commissioner to accept the 92%. Vote: Unanimous. c. Fishing Vessel Safety Council Update J. Drouin points out the handout that was sent in the mail from the Lobster Advisory Council. Eventually what they want is everyone to have the same safety equipment and training. A few years ago he took the training as he heard that he would need it for the federal permit. They want to put it in as a State program and to document what boats have what equipment on board so as to mirror what is in the fed waters. They don’t want to throw it onto fishermen that don’t have it, but maybe start with the apprenticeship, the new guys who may not have 20 years experience on water. It is a classroom program, similar to the John McMillan program. You get to jump in the water in a survival suit, overturn a life raft, and shoot off flares. It was fun. Phase it in and will become a requirement in the long run. 5. Old Business a. Continued Lobster Effort Discussion Skipped. 6. Open Discussion None. 7. New Meeting Date T. Stockwell: The next Lobster Advisory Council meeting has been postponed. Meeting Adjourned at 9:23 pm. |
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