April 4, 2016 — NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — The thrum of the boat’s engine was audible last fall as local scalloper Rick Lynch, 44, talked frankly about his personal experiences and observations of drug use on New Bedford’s waterfront, now and nearly 30 years ago.

A New Bedford native who lives in Dartmouth, Lynch has been around long enough to fall into a few bottles, or needles, and climb back out again. He said he’s been sober for about 15 years, and a captain of scallop boats for about 14. Lynch supports mandatory drug testing in the fishing industry, but the idea might gain little traction on the regulation-wary waterfront — even after drug arrests on outbound fishing boats last month.

Understanding Lynch’s views about the present, though, means hearing about his past. He said he was 16 when he started working on local fishing boats, in the late ‘80s.

“Back then, Union Street was crazy,” Lynch said. “There was cocaine running around, there was heroin everywhere. There used to be bags of cocaine on the galley table on the boat, because we were working crazy hours back then, you know. Everything was illegal, in what we did fishin’. I mean, we brought in illegal small scallops because there was a scallop count back then. We were jumping over the Canadian line and staying up for days because we’d loaded the boat so much. Guys were eating No-Doz like they were going crazy — or eating Dexedrine, diet pills.

“And then when we came home, we drank,” Lynch continued. “All weopi did was drink. For years, I didn’t make it one block up Union Street, you know? I wasn’t even of age to drink and I had a tab at the National club, you know? I was 17 years old and I had a tab in a bar. Because that was acceptable if you were a fisherman back then — the police didn’t even go into those bars back then. If they did, they were drinking with us.”

In the wake of those times, and amid what could be a rising wave of drug use on New Bedford’s waterfront — where federal and local law enforcement raided 11 boats and made four opiate arrests over two days in March, in the second such raid this year — Lynch floated the idea of mandatory drug tests on commercial fishing boats, for crew members as well as captains and mates.

“I mean, there is no mandatory drug testing in this industry, you know, where there is in every other maritime industry,” Lynch said. “You get on a tugboat, you gotta have drug tests. You get on a ship, you gotta have drug tests.”

New drug-testing policies are just one idea of many that could rise to the surface as groups including Fishing Partnership Support Services, the Massachusetts Fishermen’s Partnership and others work to provide resources and support for fishermen amid the nationwide opioid epidemic, which is devastating entire communities and knows no borders.

Several longtime fishermen and industry leaders told The Standard-Times, though, that despite last month’s arrests and a drug-related death on the water in February, mandatory testing could be a tough sell.

Retired fisherman Rodney Avila, for example, said imposing mandatory drug tests on crew members would be one more regulation for fishermen and boat owners who already feel beset by them.

“There’s enough mandates on the fishing industry as it is,” said Avila, who owned three New Bedford-based groundfish boats, or “draggers,” between 1968 and 2013. “How much can these guys take?”

Avila is a former marine superintendent for New Bedford’s Harbor Development Commission and a former SouthCoast member of the New England Fishery Management Council. He emphasized — as have numerous fishermen, industry leaders and city officials in recent weeks — that the drug arrests unjustly stain the scores of clean, hard-working fishermen in New Bedford.

Read the full story at The New Bedford Standard-Times