Even Divide Among Voting Council Members Fails Limited Entry Program

ELLSWORTH — With one member absent from a meeting held Jan. 15 at the Craig Brook hatchery in East Orland, the Zone C Lobster Management split right down the middle and failed to approve a plan to adopt a limited entry program for new lobster fishing licenses.

The tie vote saw five council members line up on each side of the question of whether to close Zone C to new lobstermen unless some other fisherman, or fishermen, surrendered their license and trap tags. One of two representatives from the island community of Vinalhaven voted against closure. The second Vinalhaven representative did not attend the meeting.

The issue of whether to adopt a limited entry plan that would require a certain number of harvesters who fish in Zone C to surrender their licenses before any new license could be issued has been a contentious one. Prior to last week’s vote, Zone C was the only one of Maine’s seven local Lobster Management Zones not to have approved such a plan.

Last fall, the council narrowly approved a decision to send a survey to the nearly 800 license holders at least 18 years old that fish in the zone asking whether it should be closed. The Maine Department of Marine Resources (DMR) sent out 774 questionnaires and received responses from 317 harvesters. Among those responding, 217 harvesters voted for closure, 100 voted against.

That 2-to-1 margin in favor of closing the zone clearly wasn’t persuasive to some council members. Among those opposed to closing the zone was Stonington lobsterman Frank Gotwals, who voted in favor of sending out the questionnaire at a tense October council meeting. The other four nay votes came from representatives of the island communities of Vinalhaven, North Haven, Isle au Haut and Matinicus.

“I voted against it, but my reasons were different from the others,” Gotwals said on Monday. According to Gotwals, he voted against closing the zone because “it won’t work” as a way to reduce the number of traps being fished in Zone C, the main purpose for limited entry plans.

He had another objection, as well. If the council voted to close the zone, fishermen completing the two-year lobster license apprentice program would not be able to get a harvester’s license as they can now.

You’re taking something away from apprentices that’s been promised to them,” Gotwals said.

Faced with the strong sentiment among a substantial number of Zone C lobstermen that the zone was becoming too crowded, the council voted to ask DMR Commissioner George Lapointe to consider a different mechanism for slowing down the growth of the fishery. According to Gotwals, the council approved a suggestion to increase the mandated apprenticeship program from the current two-year period to three years. That would still allow young people from island communities where lobster fishing is often the only viable career to get their licenses, but might discourage applicants who were not entirely serious about fishing.