The shrimp season in Maine, cut short by a Feb. 18 ruling citing concerns about “overharvest,” officially came to an end Feb. 28.
It’s a struggle to find a local shrimper who agrees with the ruling, but the Lincoln County men who account for a significant percentage of the state’s fishery are quick to offer suggestions to the bureaucrats and scientists who regulate the industry.
Bill McLain, of New Harbor, can’t remember when he started shrimping, but estimates it was as long ago as 1975, when he bought his first lobster license for $10. McLain bought his first boat in 1985 and now owns and captains the Sheila & Ivy.
McLain, still a lobsterman throughout the majority of the year, traps shrimp. Trappers, under the rules governing the fishery, must haul in all gear within five days of closure and dump the shrimp inside.
This latter requirement angers McLain, who says dumping the traps will only provide a snack for seagulls. “We should be able to keep our shrimp,” he said.
It’s a family trade – McLain’s great-grandfather and grandfather were commercial fishermen and his father, David McLain, bought seafood as the proprietor of Small Brothers in New Harbor.
Bill McLain’s Uncle and neighbor, Brian McLain, a shrimper since 1972, uses large nets, instead of traps, to catch shrimp aboard the Silver Bullet. Even Bill McLain’s son, Ben McLain, a student at Husson University, works alongside his father during the summer.
Bill and Brian McLain, reluctantly ashore due to high winds and heavy seas, sat down for an interview with The Lincoln County News on the last day of the season.
They both said their shrimp catch for the 2010-2011 season was “probably half” of last year’s catch. “The shrimp didn’t come here this year,” Brian McLain said.
An influx of new boats, thanks to the industry’s remarkable comeback in recent years, and the return of boats that had left the fishery didn’t help matters.
Despite the lighter haul, the dock price this year was about 20 cents higher per pound and Bill McLain, who employs two men on his boat “while we’re doing good,” would have preferred a longer season.
“We could have made money for the next couple weeks,” Bill McLain said.
Bill McLain estimates over 30 boats, including draggers and trappers, were actively shrimping this season in New Harbor and Back Cove alone. The boat jobs lost account for a large portion of the closure’s impact, but shoreside operations feel it too.
Bill sells his shrimp to Gomm’s Seafood in Prospect. The over 20 pickers at Gomm’s are likely to feel the impact of the closure with speedy layoffs, McLain said.
Brian sells his haul to a Cozy Harbor Seafood, Inc. plant in South Bristol. He estimates the South Bristol payroll at six workers, with hundreds more employed by Cozy Harbor’s statewide operation.
“Ninety percent of our catch are four and five-year-old shrimp,” Brian McLain said. After these shrimp – senior citizens, by the species’ standards – lay their eggs, “They’re going to die before another year,” Brian said. “Why not harvest them?”
This year’s season, due to shrimp migration patterns, favored shrimpers in the waters to the west, including fleets of large trawlers in southern Maine and New Hampshire, Bill McLain said. The “big boats” can fish in any weather, unlike the McLains and other small boat captains.
“I think our conservation is the weather,” Bill said.
“It’s not fair” to close the season just as the shrimp are beginning to show up down east, Bill said. “You’ve got to feel for those guys.”
The early closure also has an inordinate impact on trappers, like Bill McLain, who catch the most shrimp late in the season.
The adverse effects of the early closure reach beyond catch volume, however. Around the middle of the last decade, short seasons – as short as four and five weeks – “ruined the whole infrastructure of the business,” McLain said.
The state industry lost contracts with large buyers. Bill McLain mentions the grocery store chain Winn-Dixie who turned to business overseas to fill the void. As a result, the dock price for shrimp plummeted to 27 cents per pound. The “worst thing they ever did to this industry was have the short seasons,” Bill said.
This year, after a lengthy, slow recovery, the price is up to 70 cents per pound, but the second early closure in a row may drag markets “back to step one,” Brian McLain said.
“We’re going to lose a lot of our markets,” Brian said. “They just built the price back up so you can make a little money and now… here we go again.”
Another unintended impact, Bill McLain predicted, will be increased pressure on the lobster fishery, as shrimpers, suddenly out of work, make an early return to lobstering.
Brian McLain has a simple explanation of his feelings on the closure. “It’s very illegal,” he said, because the Northern Shrimp Section, the regulatory body that oversees the fishery, set a “target” quota for 2010-2011 landings, not a firm quota.
Bill and Brian McLain expressed support for limiting the fishery with an “owner-operator” rule excluding large, corporation-owned fleets.
David Osier of Bremen owns five boats, four of which were actively shrimping until Feb. 28. Osier said he’s heard calls for an owner-operator limit before, but disagrees with the argument for such a rule.
Osier’s boats go ground fishing in the summer and fall and the boat’s crews – like lobstermen – rely on shrimping for a winter paycheck. “This is part of our year-round operation,” Osier said.
Moreover, many of the captains of Osier’s boats start as deckhands. “It’s a way for them to start in the fishery and grow” and, eventually, purchase their own boats, Osier said.
“We all can’t be the same,” Osier said. Operations like his, he argued, are “no different than someone having more than one McDonald’s.”
To an extent, natural factors regulate the industry, the McLains said. “A lot of it’s just controlled by mother nature,” Bill McLain said. The factors the shrimp rely on – like sunlight, food, and water temperatures – are beyond any agency’s ability to regulate.
Bill McLain suggests a later opening to the season, which will help shrimpers avoid “gear conflicts” with lobstermen, and recommends a move from a seven-day to a five-day week, a move he believes would benefit the fishery and the market.
Brian McLain is more disdainful of regulation. “I think the fishery protects itself,” he said. If the catch dries up or the market bottoms out, “You’re not going to go if you can’t make a day’s pay.”
“The science is so poor on the shrimp fishery that they don’t have a clue,” Brian McLain said. Despite environmental changes, the scientists who report to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission Northern Shrimp Section, the fishery’s regulatory body, “are using the same technology they used in the early 70s,” he said.
Eventually, however, Brian relents. “You need some kind of regulation in every fishery,” he said. McLain offered a solution: a set season, without a quota, beginning Jan. 1 and ending March 31. “They wouldn’t have to do any science because it would take care of itself,” he said.
Regardless of what happens, Bill McLain wants to see the Northern Shrimp Section listen more to fishermen and less to their Technical Committee, its team of scientists.
Unfortunately, many frustrated local fishermen believe “it’s not going to do any good” to get involved, Bill said. He disagrees. “Numbers help” at state and regional meetings with regulators, he said.
Margaret Hunter, the Chair of the Technical Committee, said the closure was legal, despite the lack of a firm quota. She expressed sympathy with the McLains’ concerns, however.
“They’re not alone,” Hunter said. “The early closure pulls the rug out from under a lot of people.”
“It’s not an ideal way to manage a fishery,” she said.
Multiple factors, including an increase in licenses – the state issued over 100 more than last season – and the early arrival of the shrimp in shallow waters, created a “perfect storm” leading to a larger haul.
The regulatory agency “did the responsible thing in terms of conserving the stock,” Hunter said.
Hunter also disputed Brian McLain’s assertion that the Technical Committee uses outdated technology. “That’s not true at all,” she said. The committee now uses a “new methodology adopted in the early ’90s.”
Nate Hanna, a New Harbor trapper, sums up the feelings of many in the industry more succinctly. “I’m really disappointed,” Hanna said. “A lot of people were depending on making a few extra bucks shrimping.”
Hanna, like the McLains, voiced support for a later start to the season, but his immediate desires are simpler. “I wish we could go a little longer,” he said.
