Governor Paul LePage attended the 37th annual Fishermen’s Forum held at the Samoset Resort in Rockport, in part to introduce the newly appointed Dept. of Marine Resources, Pat Keliher.
Before introducing Keliher however, the Governor addressed the standing room only crowd largely made up of members of the state’s fishing industry.
“The lobster industry is doing great, but it’s not so great for others [industries],” LePage said. The industry is more than just jobs, LePage said, “it is an economic engine and a lifestyle. It is our great Maine heritage, and we have to make it prosper.”
LePage noted lobster landings set a record in 2011, adding “this is the first year we’ve hit 100 million pounds of lobster and it’s important to the Maine economy. Maine lobster is known to be special.”
Also in 2011, “six groundfish permits landed the 180,000-pound quota, and in the Portland exchange, more than one million pounds of groundfish was landed,” LePage said.
The governor told a story of recently visiting Florida for a family event and in a restaurant he noticed a sign featuring Maine lobster.
“I asked the restaurant owner, ‘Who’s the distributor, where do they come from?’ and he said, ‘Well, they’re not from Maine; they’re from Massachusetts. Nobody knows Massachusetts lobster,'” LePage said. “We have to see if there’s any way we can do something about that in the future. Maine fish and lobster is known throughout the world. There’s no substitute. When they land lobster, they need to get credit for landing Maine lobster.”
For the tourist and hospitality industries, Maine lobster is a value-added product, putting $331 million into the economy this year, LePage said. “If it had been 2005 prices, it would be over $400 million. As we land more, we need to get more credit. Marketing needs to reflect that our friends to the north and south don’t get credit for Maine lobster,” he said.
Outlining how his administration has helped the fishing industry, LePage said though costs continue to rise, the legislature has helped by removing the tax on fuel, but he also said, there are too many costs, and they continue to rise. “Lobster prices are down, and we need to lower costs to increase the prosperity for fishermen,” he said.
“We can’t tax our way into prosperity, so we need to understand what are the ingredients to eliminate to create prosperity,” he said.
The Governor revealed a statistic that Mainers make about 82 percent of the national average for income, “way below where we need to be and the only way to solve that is if government and citizens work together to improve the cost of living and cost of doing business [in Maine],” he said.