By Sheila Dassatt
Happy 250th Birthday USA! This is a memorable time in our lives and I feel fortunate to be a part of it. How many remember the Bicentennial? It’s hard to believe that it was 50 years ago now. I can remember the evening news with Walter Cronkite and the Bicentennial Minute at the end of the show. He would always say “And that’s the way that it was.” Now it’s 50 years later and we can still say the same quote.
A lot has changed in our country since that time, way more than I can even list in this article, but times have certainly changed. Some would say, “the bad is now good and the good is now bad.” How true! It is hard to wrap my head around the fact that some things that were highly illegal when I was growing up is now legal. We are supposed to accept it, but it is hard when you have had a certain mindset for all those years. The ones that are growing up now will not even know the difference of what is bad and what is good, it will just be accepted.
In the world of our fishing industry, we have evolved from wooden traps to wire vinyl coated traps. This was a big step forward at the time. A good-sized boat was a 32’footer, slim and a cutter through the water. The lobster licenses were open to the public. I got my license in 1993 and simply went to Augusta and purchased it. Imagine! There were no apprentice licenses, most of our teaching came from our father or grandfather and followed each generation. That was how I learned!
From that time forward, the Zones were established and a restriction was put on the licenses. The lobster industry worked into much more restrictions and it was harder to get a license. At that time, I let my license go and went to work at Hamilton Marine, figuring that I didn’t need it at the time. The restrictions came on and in order for me to renew my license, I was put on a 6 to one waiting list and would have to go through the apprenticeship program. With that in place, it would’ve taken me years to work my way up the wait list. I still think that some of us should have been grandfathered. We had been fishing for years with our family. This was just the beginning of all the changes.
I have been with the Downeast Lobstermen’s Association for over 22 years and have been doing my best to keep up with all the regulations that have come up along the way.
We have been fighting the whale rules ever since I have been there and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There have been gauge rules, vent rules, always in mind of preserving our lobster resources. As you know, now we are fighting the windmills and the ropeless gear threats to us. Not once, but twice, DELA went to the Legislature to protect our lobster fishery from the Portland Fish Exchange from making it legal to land by-catch lobsters that come up in the drags. This was outlawed in the 50’s due to having it deplete our stock so badly, then it was brought up again in the early 2000’s. We absolutely cannot allow this to happen at any time if we want to preserve our lobster stock. You’d be surprised who voted to go along with it…We now are supposed to be reporting our catch every time that we haul and electronically at that. This has been difficult for the older generation that do not have these electronics, so they need to go to a person that can do it for them and probably pay them to do it as well. This is one reason that a lot have retired or sold out earlier than they really wanted to. The offshore fleet is now fighting a tracker ruling that most feel is not fair. This ruling is going as far as the Supreme Court. So you can see that times have certainly changed over the past 50 years.
Another new aspect is aquaculture, which is fairly new in the most recent years. I believe that it was created with a shortage of wild caught seafood in mind. As time has gone on, much of our wild resources have been depleted, such as our groundfish population, such as cod, haddock, pollock and flounder, just to mention a few. Salmon is another one that has been tested in aquaculture pens. There are still issues to be worked out and it is not entirely accepted in certain pens. As long as the population in this world needs food, the necessity for managing our food supply exists.
Our scallop and halibut seasons have been cut shorter each year, as they feel that the supply is getting depleted. The Maine shrimp season has been shut down completely, so if you want a nice “Maine shrimp dinner,” you’ll find that you are eating Canadian shrimp. The larger shrimp come from the south such as the Gulf of Mexico. Urchins are another resource that was almost completely depleted. The urchins are now highly regulated and have a short season in order to bring them back.
These are just some of the changes that have happened over the past 50 years. We now have a larger boat fishery, but with all the threats that we are facing, a lot are moving down to a smaller vessel again. The larger boats have primarily diesel engines and with the price of diesel fuel, they are quite expensive to operate. They are coming inshore to try to make ends meet. Our expenses are very high now. Years ago, we could also get our bait at the canneries for next to nothing, just pay for the salt. Now the bait has to be acceptable for State of Maine standards to keep it safe for consumption for the lobsters and the consumer. There are now safety standards in place to keep it all safe. We can’t use just any bait anymore, which is probably a good idea. Our overall expenses are much higher than years ago and it is a lot harder to overcome them and make a profit.
One more plus that we now have in Maine is we now have processing for lobster and crabs. Years ago all the processing was done in Canada, which wasn’t very profitable for us. Along with being able to process our own lobsters, we can now market them on the internet. A lot of people now order their lobster online and it is much more accessible. This is a good thing!
So, I hope that I have covered the changes that have happened over the years with our fishing industry. I know that change is a hard thing to get used to, but this article is just a sample of issues that have evolved over the years. I hope you enjoyed your holiday and had some of that good Maine Seafood!!
