State Lobstermen In The Rough
NEW LONDON, Conn. – As temperatures in Long Island Sound rise and the price of lobster falls, there is little room left in the middle for Connecticut’s lobstermen.
The state lobster industry is taking on water at an alarming rate and it is a direct result of two factors: the struggling U.S. economy and a perfect storm of environmental challenges. According to the most recent data, 2007 Connecticut lobster landings were less than 20 percent of their 1998 high of 3.7 million pounds.
“It’s the quintessential New England dream,” said Robert Keltner of Waterford of being a lobsterman. “You’re battling the sea, you’re in nature, you’re battling your wits.”
Keltner was a crewman for three years for Mike Theiler before enrolling in law school at Cooley College in Michigan this fall. For him, the battle just wasn’t worth waging anymore.
Theiler, meanwhile, still owns and runs his commercial lobster fishing business out of New London, doing most of his work aboard his 40-foot boat, the “Jeanette T.” During the industry’s boom in the ‘90s he enjoyed solid profits, benefiting from Connecticut’s yearly landings that remained consistently well above 2 million pounds throughout the decade.
But these days, profits have sunk. Theiler estimated it costs him $5 a pound to catch lobsters between fuel, employee and equipment expenses, while he can sell them for only $4 a pound at most, and his costs are still rising.
“It wasn’t but 2001 that the price of diesel was around $.44 a gallon in the summer,” Theiler said. “I think at its highest this summer it was $5 a gallon. That’s a tenfold increase on one of the basic necessities of lobster fishing: diesel fuel.”
Theiler traded his job as a lab technician at Pfizer in 1989 for his current maritime life, deciding the pull of the ocean was too strong to ignore.
“My office had a view of the river and I’d sit there watching all the boats go in and out,” he recalled. “It killed me.”
Theiler said he would do it all again because sunrises on the Sound and work on the water can’t be monetized, noting that he does enjoy “a better view than most offices.”
Yet money, or lack of it, has become an overwhelming threat to the industry and Theiler’s business.
Environmental issues have worsened the struggle, with the rising temperature of the Sound’s waters the chief factor challenging the lobster stock. Penny Howell, a Senior Fisheries Biologist with the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection, said the temperature stress point for lobsters (the temperature at which life becomes difficult) is 20.5 degrees Celsius.
In taking temperature readings in the Sound several times a year, the DEP saw only 27 percent of their measurements above the stress point between ’92 and ’97. Between ’00 and ’05, this number had risen to 46 percent.
“The minute [lobsters] get into an area that’s lethal, they’re fine, they’re fine, they’re dead,” Howell said. “That’s what the die-off was all about in ’99.”
Howell added that pollution in the Sound, mostly stemming from pesticide runoff, has furthered the problem.
Landings have not recovered since the die-off and lobster fishing licenses have been falling in turn. From a 1980 high of 793 licenses, Connecticut’s numbers have dropped over 60 percent to an ’07 low of 299.
“All of the signals are bad,” Howell said. “Our current estimates are 50 percent below the long-term average of lobster stock.”
There are some positive initiatives being undertaken to help. Last year’s V-Notch program, for instance, was the product of a collaborative effort by lobstermen and the DEP to protect female lobsters and allow them to reproduce, while compensating the fishermen in the meantime.
The program was largely a success, as Theiler noted, but ran out of funding this year because of state budget constraints and may not be reinstituted for years to come.
Howell and the Marine Fisheries Division of the DEP are putting the finishing touches on a comprehensive study of the lobster stock in the Sound to be released in February. It will investigate possible methods of stock replenishment and preservation and has already shown that overfishing is not to blame for the stock’s decline.
Theiler, meanwhile, is looking for ways to maximize the profitability of his efforts. As co-chair of the Connecticut Seafood Council, he has seen the demand for locally caught seafood increase dramatically of late and sees a future in it.
“I think if we’re going to move on here, myself and local guys, we’ve got to latch on to the green movement, this locally grown and harvested thing,” Theiler said. “Whether it’s farmer’s markets or some sort of coops or something. That’s what’s going to get us through.”
