The end game for fishermen, lobstermen

A decade ago there was talk at the Gulf of Maine Conference about making the Gulf of Maine a "Non-Extractive Marine Reserve". It would be like the zone off St Johns in the Caribbean. No fishing, clamming or even picking seaweed. They are making good progress toward that. Did anybody see today's Environmental Defense Fund ad in the BDN thanking Senator Collins for her help?

It's on Page B8 in the County Edition.

I started lobster fishing, very part time as a teenager, in Stonignton, ME when I was aroun 18 about 1965. I maintained that license up until about 2001-2002. I had the idea to hang onto it just in case I wanted to go back to it full time but eventually my stomach could not take it any more. Every government agency worth its salt has established "regulations" that cover just about everyting one could imagine

Lobster fishermen were the most independant people on the coast of maine for a long time. Now they march to the drums of the powers that be, almost begging, to go fishing. I have never witnessed such a complete sellout of independance to government goons in all my lifetime.

One can't help but notice that the "regulators" are different people from those whom they "regulate". Arrogance breeds inflated self importance amongst bureaucrats.

Fishermen of today, your grandfathers would be ashamed of the way you have sold your soul to these arrogant elitist fools who haunt the fishermen's forum promoting all their latest wonderful "ideas".

Many friends of mine have seen the forum as a two or three day drunk and party. If I had to sit there and listen to this BS Propoganda I would have to hit the sauce too.

Fishermen should have stood up a long time ago and told these self-proclaimed "experts" where to put their BS. They should have made it clear that they did not give a damn what the regulators wanted they were going to continue as they wished and as their grandfathers did, independantly.

What would the fed have done, arrest everyone and totally shut the Maine fishery down? They dont have the jails to put them in. What the fishermen need is cajones. Not more kowtowing to the powers that be.

The whole of the regulators just turn my stomach these days.

They will have destroyed fishing in Maine one of these days and then they will just move on to regulate the next thing they think will need their expertise. Meanwhile all the coastal communities in this state will be decimated with no young native people even wanting to live their anymore because there will be no work.

Nice job by the fishcrats!

WC

Without the fishing/lobstering money this state will die. Imagine the businesses that need these industries. The local coffee shop, bait dealers, suppliers of gear, not to mention the tourists that come for the lobsters. One of the worst things that has happened to the lobster industry was putting us into zones instead of the traditional boundries. Now add wind turbines into the mix and you can see where the priorities are. Green kills

Angus King appointed Robin Alden of Stonington as the commissioner of marine resources. Since she was married to Ted Ames a member of a long time Vinalhaven fishing family, she gained instant credibility with the fishermen, the first one to do so. And IMHO this was the worst thing that has happened to the fishing business in Maine in my near 63 years. The zone councils were here brilliant idea.

Of course she is no longer commissioner but she and Ted are living quite well on the grant money gravy train doing one thing or another.

One of the nice things about zone councils: Sooner or later all of the zone councils got around to "closing their zones" to new fishermen. Of course there is a complex formula that takes into account several oldsters retiring before a new young fellow can get in. Well who in their right mind wouldn't want to "shut out" their competetion if they had the chance.

End result of all of this: In the small Maine fishing towns lots of young men are still growing up and wanting to be lobstermen, but can't get into it, at least not very many of them. Always used to be anyone who wanted to try it, could and the best business men among them would survive. But not now. What does a young man who wants to go fishing do when he can't? Gets in his car and drives to where he can find a job. This will be the ultimate death of the coastal towns as working fishing communities. And we let these idiots do it too us.

Well maybe Roxanne Quimby will come along and buy many of these towns, what's left of them anyway, and turn them into greenie tourist meccas or something.

That would be about like turning the economic rose that has existed for a hundred years or so into an economic turd IMHO.

WC

You are right WC, my son started lobstering out of a skiff when he was 10yrs old, do to the rules he could not get his real license until he filled out numerous logbooks that had to be signed by a sponsor and a warden then had to be approved by the State. It was a good day when he finally got his license, no as it stands we are allowed one new lobstermen for every five that retire, you could be an old man before you got your license. Now they are talking about going to a 3 tier system, where depending on your catch determines how many traps you are allowed to fish, but if they shutdown fishing their will be no bait and that will all she wrote.

Lobster fishing especially, but other commercial fishing ventures including seining herring, scalloping, shrimping and so on have been the absolute lifeblood, the bonds that held all coastal Maine communities together for 100 years. I grew in and around it and had tons of friends in it also.

The absolute political fools that inhabit Augusta, ME and Washington DC have managed to nearly destroy it, and the native population of the coast of Maine in little more than 20 yrs. And if we live 10 more years we will see it turned into nothing but a retirement community and tourist mecca. Only the quaint fishing boats that tourists always came to see will be history.

I stood on Church St in Stonington about 12 yrs ago with a friend from boyhood, a longtime very sucessful commercial fisherman and sound businessman. We were looking over Greenhead Cove in Stonington. He said that he believed that he and I would live to see the day when there was not a fishing boat in that harbor. I believed him them and are even more convinced of it now more than ever.

Before anyone could ever hold any position that would in any way, shape, or manner influence or affect fishing he or she should have to spend 20 yrs at sea on fishing boats just to see what the real world is like. And it isn't anything like the world in a college classroom where this Bull S**T comes from.

I would like to have had some of them on some of the days we were 25 miles outside of Isle Au Haut, in January, hauling lobster traps with the temp down to 5 or so and every other sea breaking clean over the 40 ft boat just to have them get a bit of appreciation of what fishing is really like.

They just jockey a desk cause they haven't got skill enough to do anything else.

Sorry for the rant but there are lots of "fishcrats" (thanks Mike Brown) who deserve that and more.

WC

Can we get a simple "no" out of any State employee or so called leader when it comes to the loss of States' rights in this country? Maine lobstermen bowing down to these ridiculous regulations? The grant gravy train WC refers to is all to real and the "little people" are being hurt - even killed. Not just on the coast but in the depressed manufacturing centers as well.

When will Maine's Governor & Legislators work to list "Maine working people & Maine's unique way of life" as endangered species? I say put in for it, the regulators will probably rubber stamp it through without reading it.

Regulations applied for the common good never seem to be very good, never mind productive, especially when dictated by clueless government entities who have never even experienced the industry they regulate. That being said, I have cool memories of snorkling as a kid and grabbing lobsters off the sandbar and tossing them in the net for dinner...I guess I'm more worried about the companies who just dreg everything without leaving the needed resources to naturally replenish. I went snorkling with my grandaughter..same places lat few years, they seem devoid of the stuff I saw as a kid.

The people who are plotting the demise of the fishing industry are the same as the ones who have destroyed the woods business.......The bottom line is they don't care at all what happens to those jobs or the ripple effect . To their way of thinking it's a small price (for you)to pay as long as their grand plan succeeds.If you think you can get the morons in Augusta to see the long term effect of no fishing industry dream on. They can't connect the dots and still believe that a tourist/service sector economy is the way to go.

The sea is very unforgivng of those who make mistakes. One mistake can cost it all. My mother's only brother went over the side, for good, when I was 14 yrs old. And he is only one of hundreds, maybe thousands who, in just my lifetime have paid for their mistakes while doing something they loved.

Every day thousands of Maine men and women go out to sea to try to scrape a living the best way they can, knowing full well the risk, but living with it by thinking "it won't happen to me". How many died last year in Cobscook Bay alone?

The commissioner of Marine Resources, just like all the commissioners, is chosen because of party affiliation more than anything else. To think that these men and women, who daily are willing to take risks required in order to extract a living from an unforgiving sea, have to kow-tow to the machinations of someone whose prime qualification for the job is loyalty to the current flunky in the Blaine House is almost more than I can stand.

Commissars and desk driving idiots routinely make decisions that can break peoples lives. Yet when the industry they have destroyed is gone, they just move on to the next.

How much longer are good people going to stand for this garbage from TPTB?

WC

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness

You have to eat to live. I eat fish and game. Don't mess with my fishing and don't mess with my guns. They are both used to procure food. End of story.

Joe Redneck, why do you hate nature?

;->

You all really, really ought to read the document itself.

http://www.conservefish.org/storage/marinefish3/documents/rceq73109.pdf

It is a red-green manifesto. It doesn't explicitly proscribe all sport fishing, but it does go so, so much farther. How about 'we really, really oughta sign on to the UN Biodiversity treaty"?

http://www.discerningtoday.org/members/Analyses/biodiversity.htm

Shocking. Really. It is as if it was written my Jonathan Carter while he was subjected to a meth - induced fit of megalomania. (not that he takes meth - but if he did he'd come up with this kinda manifesto)

Eagle island I don't hate nature. I love nature. So much of it tastes sooooo good :)

I spent yesterday afternoon at the hearing on LD1810.... baldacci's wind initiative...... fishermen and lobstermen beware!!!!! Despite the claims that your livelihood was studied and will be well protected... the issue about insurance for transmission lines may put another twist on it.

Johnw we are watching. I caught it on the news last night and came away with the impression that screw the fishermen and lobstermen the Future is now. Just how much do Angus and Baldacci stand to make by screwing the State of Maine?

Updated: March 10, 2010, 3:22 PM ET
Culled out
Public input period for federal fishery strategy has ended
montgomery_robert By Robert Montgomery
ESPNOutdoors.com

The Obama administration has ended public input for a federal strategy that could prohibit U.S. citizens from fishing some of the nation's oceans, coastal areas, Great Lakes, and even inland waters.

This announcement comes at the time when the situation supposedly still is "fluid" and the Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force still hasn't issued its final report on zoning uses of these waters.

http://sports.espn.go.com/outdoors/saltwater/news/story?id=4975762

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Council on Environmental Quality
The Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force

On June 12, 2009, President Obama sent a memorandum to the heads of executive departments and federal agencies establishing an Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force, led by the White House Council on Environmental Quality. The Task Force is charged with developing a recommendation for a national policy that ensures protection, maintenance, and restoration of oceans, our coasts and the Great Lakes. It will also recommend a framework for improved stewardship, and effective coastal and marine spatial planning.

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The time period to submit comments to the Task Force has closed, but you can read comments from others. The Task Force's Interim Framework is open for comment through Friday, February 12, 2010.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/ceq/initiatives/oceans

Islander ..... what was interesting was the developer from mass who got up and spoke....bottom line this they won't attract development money unless the state give guarantees.....translation ,the taxpayers assume the risk. It was great when one guy up and debunked the idea of all the manufacturing jobs. that will be created .... he said just like the turbines that are being erected now they are made in China and India ...no US jobs there

I just do not see what the attraction to wind power is to the consumer, I see it as one of the biggest scams going and when I see our elected officials salivating over this it screams FOLLOW THE MONEY. If you wanted to build a ski area on that mountain top you would have to jump through hoops and you still would not be able to build. But you want to put up some wind turbines, no problem. Seems you only have property rights that the beautiful people agree with. Does any one actually think we will be allowed to fish or lobster anywhere near these turbines or transmission cables? It would have been cheaper to put solar panels on all the houses on Vinalhaven rather than those eyesores called wind turbines, IMO