Local lobstermen relieved moratorium scrapped

In the late 1990s lobsters in Long Island Sound and the men who fished them were kings.

In 1998, inside 158,527 Connecticut traps, lobstermen pulled up 3.7 million pounds of the crustaceans worth more than $12 million, state figures show.

In 2008 -- the latest figures show -- with 56,000 traps laid by state fishermen, only 427,000 pounds of lobster came to the surface --an 88 percent decrease from 1998.

With their fishery in shambles -- it was officially declared a "disaster" by the U.S. Secretary of Commerce in 2000 -- those few who left hauling traps last week were worried about a recommendation that would halt lobstering between Cape Cod and Cape May, N.J. -- including Long Island Sound -- for five years. The state Department of Environmental Protection held two meetings earlier this month for lobstermen and the public to talk about the recommendation made by a committee of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission.

Attorney General Richard Blumenthal last week urged the American Lobster Management Board, which reports to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, to consider alternatives to the possible moratorium.

Blumenthal wants the board to insteaed examine other conservation measures such as reducing the catch of egg-bearing females and creating no-harvest areas.

Blumenthal got his wish.

The Commission decided last Thursday to put aside the five-year moratorium and instead recommended a second study.

Blumenthal, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, believed a moratorium would potentially devastate the state's commercial lobster fishermen, wholesalers and retailers.

The first shock that went through the Long Island Sound lobster fishery occurred in fall 1999, now known as the Lobster Die-off.

"I remember it was Sept. 9, 1999," said Gus Bertof, who was setting about 1,400 traps at the time. "Everything was dead. There was nothing alive in the traps the rest of the week. I knew in my heart that was the end of it."

Bertof now fishes about 200 traps and only part time.

"Anyone that lobsters in Long Island Sound is part time now," said Bertof, 63, who has been hauling traps around Greenwich and beyond since the 1960s. With the cost of bait and fuel and the expense of maintaining traps, "It doesn't pay for my boat to leave the dock," he said, adding that for what he gets paid wholesale for each lobster would buy him only a single Big Mac at McDonald's.

Depending upon who you talk to the reasons for the Long Island Sound lobsters' demise are found in warming waters, pollution, pesticides used for West Nile mosquitoes, runoff and unprecedented numbers of predator fish such as striped bass and blue fish eating young lobsters.

Since September 1999, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission and Long Island Sound lobstermen have put in place regulations and programs in hopes of rebuilding the fishery with little apparent success in terms of increasing lobster numbers.

For 15 years before the die-off, regulations required that legally harvested lobsters have a hard-shell body or carapace that measured 3 and 1/4 inches or longer. As a way to restrict the number of lobsters caught in 2005, the commission required the measurement go up to 3 and 9/32 inches and less than a year later it went up to 3 and 5/16. Since Jan. 1 in Long Island Sound the "gauge" as it is known, because fishermen carry a metal gauge with them on the boat to measure from the eye socket to the end of the shell, went up to 3 and 3/8 inches.

In 2006 the lobstermen went to the state legislature that funded a program to save female lobsters from the dinner table. The V-notch program, as it was called, required participating lobstermen who caught a female lobster 3 inches or more in length to cut a notch in its tail 3/8-of-an-inch deep. The state paid for the notched lobsters thrown back into the water and other fishermen would be prohibited from landing the creature until its tail had completely re-grown, which would take about two molts or about a year because lobsters shed their shells twice a year in the Sound. After a couple years the V-notch program ran out of funding and was discontinued.

DEP Fisheries Biologist Colleen Giannini said Connecticut is bound by the decision of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission. The state's fishery could be shut down by the federal government if Connecticut does not comply with its dictates, she said.

Since the 1990s the Long Island Sound lobster fishery has undergone a near complete transformation and does not seem to be getting better, she said.

"I have seen this fishery go from a full-time fishery to a part-time one," she said. "Half the time I am thankful I got the chance to see the stock in the mid-1990s and the rest of the time I wish I never did because I see how it looks now."

During trawling surveys done in the mid to late 1990s, researchers would turn up 600 to 700 lobsters, sometimes more she said. Now the maximum lobster counts average about 40.

Giannini said closing down the entire fishery from Cape Cod through New Jersey is the most "drastic" way to rebuild the lobster stock and the fastest.

Lobstermen disagree.

Darien resident and long-time lobsterman Roger Frate, president of the West End Long Island Sound Lobster Association, said, "We have 95 percent less lobstermen and 95 percent less traps since 1999. In Connecticut there are only about 32 lobstermen left in the state."

Frate said back when there were more than 150,000 traps baited almost daily the lobstermen were truly farming lobsters by providing them with food.

"This is a horrible idea. Once they close it they will never open it," he said prior to the Commission's decision.

Frate is convinced, as he has been for years, that pesticides used to kill West Nile mosquitoes killed and drove out many of the lobsters. He said Long Island's continued use of the pesticide is keeping the fishery from a rebound.

Giannini said from 1979 to 2006 an average 75 lobstermen were plying their trade between Bridgeport and Greenwich. In 2007 there were only 35 and most of those were part time.

At the peak of the lobster catch in 1998 there were 5,738 trips to the fishery made by fishermen that year in the western Sound. In 2007 the number of trips dropped to 1,383, she said.

"We don't have enough lobsters entering the population . . . We are seeing fewer and fewer animals," Giannini said.

Giannini said scientists have not figured out whether younger lobsters are dying off or they just are not there to begin with.

Research shows lobsters are retreating to deeper parts of the Sound, which she figures has less to do with warmer water than predator fish stalking them closer to shore.

There seems to be no question that water temperatures are increasing.

According to temperature sensors placed in some traps, the number of days the water rose above 68 degrees --when lobsters develop respiratory problems-- occurred between 55 and 73 days during 2006, 2007 and 2008, Giannini said. There is no comparable data for earlier years.

But temperature readings taken at the Dominion nuclear power plant in Niantic shows a significant warming trend. In 1976 there were only eight days of the year in which the water rose to 68 degrees or higher. There were 73 days in 2008 in which the water reached 68 degrees or higher.

Giannini said she does not think there is enough of a change in water temperatures to force the movement of lobsters into deeper waters because of thermal stress. But that and more predator fish nearer the coast could be acting in concert, she said.

Norwalk lobsterman Mike Calaman, 44, goes out six days a week and calls himself a full-fledged, full-time lobsterman.

He fished 260 traps and pulled up 216 legal lobsters on a recent day.

Calaman, who has been fishing lobster since he was 11, said he is feeding and nurturing the lobsters around his traps by giving them 1,500 to 2,000 pounds of bait every day. Often, he says he pulls up the same lobsters (he puts bands on them to track their movements, they only move about 300 yards, he said) and throws them back until they are legal size.

"I think it is ludicrous," Calaman said of the idea of closing The Sound to lobster fishermen prior to the Commission meeting. "We are providing a safe habitat for these creatures. Without the traps there is no bait going down to the bottom. We are raising lobsters, we are farming these things," he said.

Calaman said lobsters are not being overfished in this part of the Sound because there is hardly anyone left fishing for lobsters.

"Anyone left should be commended for hanging in there, not punished," he said.

Nick Crismale, president of the Connecticut Commercial Lobstermen's Association, which represents lobstermen from Norwalk to Stonington, said he doesn't think the DEP or Atlantic Marine Fisheries Committee know how many lobsters are in the Sound.

While he admits the fishery is depleted, Crismale said, "Most of their information as far as abundance of the lobster is taken from the log books of lobster fishermen and because there are so few lobstermen they equate that with a diminishing resource. Well, if you don't have the numbers you could think you have a diminished resource but that is not necessarily true."

After fishing for lobster for 38 years, Crismale did not set traps this year and is dredging for clams instead. He also pointed up other predator fish such as porgy, sea bass, black fish and fluke, which feed on lobsters. "They are having a major impact on the lack of revitalization of the lobster resource," he said.

It is essential that the fishery keeps going in Long Island Sound, Crismale said.

"If we don't do that, the infrastructure of lobstering in the Sound will be gone. The fishermen will lose their spots along the water and you can see the end coming . . .We are not going to hang around for five years to see what the technical committee of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission comes up with at that point," he said.

Frate, who owns Darien Seafood in Noroton, said if Long Island Sound is ever shut down, Maine and Nova Scotia will control the lobster market and prices will skyrocket.

"Please. Don't close the Sound up," he said, prior to the decision.