June 6, 2015 — GLOUCESTER, Mass. — The specter of increased observer coverage on the decks of their boats is not sitting well with Massachusetts lobstermen, whose resistance to the NOAA Fisheries plan was in full flower at a public meeting Thursday night in Gloucester.
Resistance? It was more like rebellion.
“We don’t want to end up like the groundfish guys,” Arthur “Sooky” Sawyer, the longtime Gloucester lobsterman who serves as president of the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association, told NOAA representatives at federal agency’s regional headquarters in the Blackburn Industrial Park. “I don’t need anybody to measure my lobsters. I can measure my own lobsters.”
That was one of the milder comments, as the audience of about 50 lobstermen from the North Shore and other Massachusetts coastal communities peppered NOAA representatives with questions and concerns about the regulator’s plan to expand its Northeast Fisheries Observer Program (NEFOP) in the New England lobstering industry and as far down the East Coast as Maryland.
The lobstermen were particularly livid over two issues: what they perceived as National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s inability to grasp the extent of the safety issues that will be created by putting observers and their gear onto already-cramped lobster boats and the lack of definitive answers on whether boat owners will carry any of the financial liability if an observer is injured while at sea.
“I’ll get rid of my permit before I’ll let these guys on my boat,” yelled one lobsterman from the back of the crowd.
The NOAA team, which included representatives from the U.S. Coast Guard and the private MRAG Americas company that supplies observers to monitor the lobster industry, planned to give a visual and oral presentation and then open the floor up to questions.
Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times