Maine Lobstermen Dig In as Another Marina Threatens to Expel Them : Industry: Tourists are muscling out fishermen, some say. They fear that the influx will drive up real estate prices and reduce their access to the waterfront.

Developer Ed von Papen looks at the old Underwood sardine cannery and sees an opportunity to make money--a place to build a “boatel” and marina for tourists and their yachts.

Fisherman Gene Lawson looks at the boarded-up factory--at its peeling paint and weathered wharf--and sees recent history repeated. Once again, the tourist industry is muscling out the fishing industry.

But Lawson and 65 other fishermen who work out of Bass Harbor are drawing the line. They are fighting the Von Papen project, hoping to set a precedent that will give fishing priority along the 3,000-mile Maine coast.

“It’s an important decision because what you’re changing is the face of the entire coast of Maine,” says Kim Strauss, the owner of Little Island Marine, a boat-repair yard in Bass Harbor.

Dozens of lobster boats are moored in Bass Harbor, a village of about 400 people on the southern tip of Mt. Desert Island. It is one of about two dozen major working waterfronts in Maine and the last true fishing village on an island better known for Acadia National Park and wealthy summer colonies such as Bar Harbor, say fishing industry observers.

Town officials think the proposed 84-slip marina and 26-unit “boatel” would be a boon to the local economy, giving Bass Harbor a share of the tourist dollars that flow through Bar Harbor and other communities on the island.

But Lawson and other lobstermen contend that most fishermen have been driven out of the island’s other harbors by marinas catering to yacht owners.

If a marina comes to Bass Harbor, they fear that they will be forced out by wealthy tourists who do not care for the smell and noise that comes with the fisherman’s calling.

“Most everyone I’ve talked to is against it,” said Lawson, 38, a lobsterman for 20 years and a member of the village’s Harbor Committee. “We don’t want to take a chance on our livelihoods, on our families. I’m not saying it will put everyone out of business, but there’s a good chance it will. It has in other places.”

The fishermen object to the proposed marina’s location at the harbor’s narrow entrance. They predict that the motors from yachts and other pleasure boats will cut the lines to their lobster traps outside the harbor. And they say the influx of wealthy tourists will drive up real estate prices and reduce their access to the waterfront.

“If you look at fishing as a culture, as a total economic environment, there’s a lot more to fishing than having a boat in the water,” Strauss says. “There’s an infrastructure that goes with it. My feeling is where you have pleasure boats and fishing boats--when you have those two economies--the pleasure boats will take over because those people have more money.

“It’s subtle. It sets in motion forces that, five years down the road, are going to have a serious impact on fishing in the harbor. What happens is land values go up and access to the harbor gets cut off.”

The fishermen won the first round in the battle when the state Department of Conservation’s Bureau of Public Lands rejected an application from Von Papen and his Mt. Desert Realty Trust to lease the roughly two acres of submerged, state-owned land beneath the proposed marina’s floating boat slips.

In rejecting the application, the bureau ruled that the proposed marina “will directly and indirectly interfere with fishing” and hurt businesses that serve the local lobstermen.

Consultants working for Von Papen said he will appeal the decision in Superior Court. Bob Ware, a Portland engineering consultant working for Von Papen, said if the decision isn’t overturned it will be much harder for developers to build marinas in traditional fishing harbors.

“It throws up another roadblock,” Ware said. “Right now . . . the environmentalists have become so entrenched that it’s almost impossible to develop the Maine coast even on an environmentally sound basis.”

Jim Haskell, a planning consultant for Von Papen, said the Massachusetts entrepreneur decided to try to transform the abandoned cannery into a marina after visiting with some friends on Mt. Desert Island.

“Cruising the Maine waters is certainly internationally known and there’s been an increase in cruising traffic,” Haskell said. “So he saw this as an investment.”

Ware said the project, if completed, would cost between $4 million and $6 million, adding considerably to the town’s tax base.

Von Papen also offered to let town residents use the marina’s boat ramp for free and offered to let fishermen dock their boats in the marina’s slips during the winter, again for free, Haskell said.

Haskell said he believed the fishermen’s traditional suspicion of outsiders was sabotaging Bass Harbor’s economic prosperity.

“To the fishermen Down East, Ed von Papen is a developer and he ain’t local--that’s two strikes against him. . . . He’s ‘from away.’ They’re yachts. They’re rich people. . . . This attitude can be very protective--and it can be very destructive. This ‘Us versus Them’ is really doing considerable economic damage in eastern Maine.”

Ware agreed. “Bass Harbor is a pretty harbor, but if you really take a look at it, there are a lot of economic problems there. There are a lot of decrepit and run-down buildings, the signs of poverty or near poverty.

“There isn’t a pure fishing community that is really economically viable at this time,” he said. “It has to be a combination of interests, fishing, pleasure boating and other recreational uses.”

Philip Conkling, executive director of the Island Institute, a nonprofit advocacy group that has sided with the fishermen in the fight, agrees that communities like Bass Harbor have been weakened economically by the decline in segments of Maine’s fishing industry, particularly ground fishing.

But he adds that, “This is an industry that has an enormous intangible benefit to the coast of Maine, to our sense of who we are.

“If you erase Bass Harbor by approving this project, even from the tourists’ point of view, it’s not going to be good. Part of the reason people come to Maine is to see fishing boats, to see lobster boats. It’s part of the whole experience.”