The head of the Maine Department of Marine Resources said the agency is dropping a controversial proposal to increase the minimum size for lobster.
Commissioner Pat Keliher announced the change Thursday night during a heated public meeting with lobstermen in Augusta. Federal fisheries regulators approved the minimum size increase in response to studies showing sharp declines in young lobster in the Gulf of Maine. But lobstermen have questioned that data and predicted the change will benefit Canadian lobstermen.
Rep. Billy Bob Faulkingham, a lobsterman from Winter Harbor, said DMR’s shift is quote "great news."
"Lobstermen turned out by the hundreds to oppose this. We were going to get devastated by Canada taking our lobsters if we had implemented this without an agreement with them. So it's good to put a pause on this rule and keep our market in tact," Faulkingham said.
A cellphone recording of Thursday's meeting captures Keliher angrily shouting and cursing at an audience member who accused him of selling out to Canada and federal regulators by proposing the size increase.
In a statement to the lobster industry on Friday, Keliher said it was clear that the industry was "unified" in its opposition to the rule change.
"As many of you know, this regulation, which was set to go into effect on July 1st of this year, was a proactive measure intended to respond to declines we have seen in sub-legal lobsters, which are the lobsters that are just below the current legal size limit," Keliher said. "The objective of this measure was to leave those small lobsters on bottom for another year so they could mature and reproduce, which would buffer this vital resource against the effects of a changing climate."
Kennebunkport lobsterman Eric Wildes, who has been fishing for 48 years is among those who ardently oppose the gauge increase. He says there are not enough data to support it.
Wildes says the new regulation would cost him 20 percent of his catch and yearly income. And he says all of the future rules lobstermen will have to comply with, including an increase in the size of the escape vent in lobster traps, could also have serious impacts.
"If the gauge increase is in July and there's another 1/16-inch increase in 2027 and a vent increase in 2028 that could shut it down," Wildes said.
Now that DMR has dropped the proposal, Keliher said he will have to go back to the policy board of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission to develop a new plan to ensure Maine is in compliance with the federal lobster management plans.
