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TRAPPED: Maine Lobster Towns Try to Weather a Global Economic Storm

December 03, 2008 - PORTLAND -- The cold November winds have Mike Floyd wondering if it's time to surrender to the stock-market plunges, bank collapses and credit freezes.

Someday soon, Floyd knows, the costs of steaming from home on Long Island and hauling his lobster traps will exceed the income he and his helper can earn selling their catch in a market scuttled by the global economic crisis.

"What it's going to come down to is how long we're going to keep doing this at this price," he said.

There are still lobsters to catch, but lobstermen up and down the Maine coast have been hauling their traps back to shore as much as two months earlier than usual. Many in southern and midcoast Maine are now fishing for other jobs to pay the bills, while those in more isolated parts of the state are simply hunkering down for a long, lean winter.

The plunge of prices since early October has lobstering families and communities closing ranks and buying time. And what worries lobstermen even more than the approaching winter, they said, is the chance that the market won't recover by next spring or summer.

"We're just holding the turn," said John Drouin, repeating an old fishermen's phrase about navigating through uncertain times.

Drouin lives in Cutler, an isolated Down East lobstering community where there are virtually no other jobs to support his wife and five children. "There is going to be a lot of guys that go out of business this winter," he said.

Drouin is still fishing, even though at $2.25 a pound it's barely worthwhile. He might catch $675 worth of lobster on a good day but spend $600 on fuel, bait and a helper, he said.

Drouin plans to get through winter by cutting back on family expenses. He's more worried that he won't be able to make up for the lost income when the lobster season starts up again in April.

"In reality, I don't see this getting any better next year," he said.

BANK COLLAPSES AFFECT BIG BUYERS

The rhythm of life in Maine lobstering communities is usually dictated by the tides, the weather and the size of catches. But that changed in early October, when the industry got caught up in the turmoil of global financial networks. Lobster prices plunged.

Along with a drop-off in lobster consumption worldwide, the collapse of banks in Iceland froze credit to large buyers in Canada, where about 70 percent of Maine lobsters typically go to be cooked and frozen.

The price paid to lobstermen dropped from $3 to $3.75 per pound to $2 to $2.75, figures not seen in more than a decade. Retail prices, meanwhile, dropped a similar percentage to as low as $3.49 per pound for soft-shell lobsters.

Statewide, the October lobster catch earned Maine fishermen less than $20 million, down more than 67 percent from a high of more than $60 million in October 2005, according to state records.

"This thing in October took everyone by surprise," said Floyd.

Floyd lives on Long Island, a town of about 200 year-round residents that lies six miles east of Portland in Casco Bay. The 53-year-old lobsterman is also chairman of the Board of Selectman, deputy fire chief and captain of the town's rescue boat.

As in Cutler, lobstering is Long Island's primary industry. An estimated 24 lobster boats are based on the island, and most families are connected to, if not dependent upon, the business.

Long Island, however, has the advantage of being in southern Maine, where the price of lobster is about 50 cents per pound higher than in Cutler, and where a struggling lobsterman is a 45-minute ferry ride from the state's largest employment center. Long Island lobstermen and their crews often find other work in winter.

Floyd and Sam Whitener, a Long Island native and sternman on the Kathleen II, have been hauling lobsters at a healthy pace this fall. But while the catch has been strong, the pair has come home some afternoons with little or no profit to show for it.

"If the price of fuel hadn't come down, I think we'd be in dire straits much more," Floyd said.

Floyd and Whitener usually fish into January, but Floyd said they'll stop fishing as soon as the weather or the lobster price gets bad enough to make it a losing proposition. He hopes to make up for it in the spring, but is also worried the market might not get any better.

"If this price carries over to next spring and next summer, then some of these guys are going to be hurting," he said. "The first impact would be Sam would lose his job, and I'd go alone."

While some lobstermen in southern Maine have already begun hauling traps alone, it's considered a difficult and potentially dangerous way to fish.

CRISIS COULD ALTER COMMUNITIES

Concerned that families weren't able to put away enough earnings for the winter, officials in Long Island and other communities are trying to be prepared.

"It's going to be a lean winter. But as a community, we pull together and we help," said Ruth Peterson, a Long Islander who manages financial assistance programs. The town, for example, has stockpiled donated firewood for families who might need it, she said.

Long Islanders also say the market downturn has underscored the need for affordable housing to keep more fishermen and sternmen from moving to the mainland. High real estate prices, driven by the market for summer homes, have already pushed most young fishermen off the island, and a downturn in the lobster industry would likely speed up the island's demographic shift.

There are "Long Island lobstermen" now living in places such as Windham. Whitener, for example, lives in an apartment in Portland, along with other sternmen, and takes a 5 a.m. ferry to the island to go to work.

Steve Train, a 41-year-old Long Island lobsterman with two children in the island's school, stopped fishing earlier this month, about one month earlier than usual. Soon, he'll go back to sea for his winter job as a crew member on a shrimp boat.

"Right now, it's a downturn, it's not a devastation," Train said. But, he said, a prolonged trough in the lobster market could permanently change some communities.

"The industry will survive. The resource will survive," Train said. "It's just the number of people in it that you worry about, and how the individual communities will survive without the same number of people in" the industry.

Businesses ranging from trap makers to general stores to pickup truck dealers in northern Maine are already feeling the effects of the industry's struggle, said John Drouin, the Cutler lobsterman.

"There's 200 households in town. Fishing accounts for about 120 of those," he said. "There's a lot of concern about whether the people are going to even be able to pay their tax bills. We're just hoping that it's not a very snowy winter, because there's not going to be a lot of money to plow the roads."

Some might be forced to leave town to try to find work, despite the stalled economy, because there are no other businesses nearby, he said. "It's a 40-mile round trip to get a gallon of milk."

FEARS FOR THE FUTURE

Paul Hickey, a lobsterman in Harpswell, said it's time for the industry to get creative.

Hickey, 51, is retailing some of his own catch for $4 per pound each Friday afternoon outside a store at the Tontine Mall in Brunswick until Christmas. The Wild Oats Bakery & Cafe offers a 10 percent discount to anyone who buys lobsters from Hickey.

"It's to try to get a little bit better price for some of our lobsters, and just to get people to think more about eating more lobster through the holidays," he said. Hickey also is planning to get a construction job when he stops fishing around Christmastime.

"I am worried about this winter, but the thing that really scares me is next year. You can tread water for a while, but ... I really don't see this as being sustainable," he said. "Is this going to carry forward? What's our price going to be in July?"

By JOHN RICHARDSON, Staff Writer, Portland Press Herald, November 30, 2008


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