Economics
Times Record "Sustain Maine" op-ed series
Sustaining Maine's Lobster Fishery: Less May Be More
July 2004
David Vail
Joe Andrasko
One of the biggest mysteries in Maine's four centuries of commercial fishing is how today's lobsterers can haul record-high harvests, year after year, without the disastrous collapse that has hit other valuable species. What explains the persistence of unprecedented yields? Can such harvests be sustained? What precautionary measures could increase stock resilience -- bait fish as well as lobster - if Mother Nature has a radical change of mind.
Maine's lobster harvest has tripled since the 1980s and lobster sales of $200 million now account for nearly two-thirds of Maine's seafood revenues. The lobster boom has sustained the economic health of thousands of fishing families and dozens of fishing communities along Maine's coast. But lobster fishing is surrounded by scientific and economic uncertainty.
Biological models indicate that lobster is over-fished and depletion is likely. But actual harvests - and fishermen's perceptions of stock abundance - have been robust. We don't know for sure why stocks have held up and whether, when, or why they might drop.
It's likely that the run of high yields is partially due to natural factors, such as changes in Gulf of Maine water temperatures and reduced predation from depleted cod and striped bass. Fishing methods probably factor in too, with baited traps serving as feedlots for immature lobsters.
Nonetheless, social scientists, like the University of Maine's Jim Acheson, and natural scientists, like Bowdoin's Anne Hayden, believe that a big part of the story is lobster co-management. Under Maine's co-management system, lobsterers are organized into eight fishing zones, each represented by an elected council reporting to the state's Department of Marine Fisheries.
While the DMR sets basic rules, like minimum and maximum catchable sizes, zone councils have substantial flexibility in applying regulations such as trap limits, licensing of new entrants, and number of traps per 'trawl.'. Within state-defined limits, co-management gives lobsterers a hands-on role in fine-tuning protective measures for local conditions. Following a long Maine tradition, lobsterers also enforce the rules among themselves.
It is widely agreed that this public-private partnership, setting and enforcing limits on catchable lobsters, licenses, and trap numbers, has worked. It has helped lobstering avoid the tragedy of the commons that has radically depleted sea urchins, cod, and several other groundfish. With those species, quasi-open access to the resource gave individual fishers an incentive to catch as much as they could as fast as they could.
It is also widely accepted that uncontrolled and poorly understood ecological factors have also helped sustain unprecedented harvest levels. Unfortunately, our limited knowledge of marine ecosystems doesn't allow confident predictions about whether such factors will continue to generate abundant lobster populations. Essentially, no one knows if co-management could respond effectively to a major shock, such as intensified predation or the spread of disease.
Bowdoin economics major Joe Andrasko has a hunch that lobstering in Casco Bay is both less efficient and less resilient than it could be. Even with their collectively set 800 trap limit, Casco Bay's lobsterers may be setting too many traps for their own good - both near term and long term. His hunch comes from experience as sternman for a veteran Cundy's Harbor fisherman and is reinforced by UM economist Ralph Townsend's studies of the fishing effort-yield relationship.
Joe wondered: if lobsterers could decide collectively to reduce traps, might they save enough through lower costs -- bait, fuel, labor, gear tangles -- to offset a potentially smaller harvest? A good starting point was to ask people with first-hand knowledge: Casco Bay lobsterers.
Joe interviewed 18 lobsterers, focusing on 14 full-timers. Cutting away several layers of complexity in the analysis, he found fairly convergent predictions. If lobsterers fishing eastern Casco Bay cut back from 800 to 600 traps, the predicted average catch reduction was just under 400 pounds/year, for a revenue loss of $1200 (about 1.5%). On the other side of the ledger, operating costs, were predicted to fall about $100/week, with over 90% of the savings from bait. Slightly more frequent trap hauling would make fuel and labor savings comparatively small. There would be small on-going savings from fewer trap losses and replacements.
If the lobsterers' predictions are near the mark, shifting to a 600 trap limit would conserve resources and raise full-timers' net income by $1000-$1500/year -- two to three percent. With fewer traps to tend, boat owners would gain a few hours more free time each week and conserve 60-70 gallons/year of diesel fuel.
Sustainable development requires adherence to a precautionary principle: avoid catastrophic risks. From this perspective, a lower trap limit might also buffer the industry against adverse shocks, which most expect to hit sooner-or-later. The predicted 1.5% reduction in lobster catch, though small, would theoretically support an exponential increase in stocks, making the industry more resilient to a shock. There would also be less pressure on stocks of herring and other bait fish.
These findings are far from conclusive, but they are thought provoking and worthy of further investigation. In sustaining a profitable Maine lobster fishery, less may be more.
David Vail teaches ecological economics at Bowdoin College; Joe Andrasko, a 2004 Bowdoin graduate, is currently a fishing guide on Nantucket.