Lobster Still Pinching Much of Seafood Market : Fishing: Other New England fisheries struggle, but Maine lobster fleet expects a 4th good season.

Waves rain down on the pilot house as Pat White steers his 33-foot lobster boat through six-foot swells en route to his favorite fishing spot on a crisp New England morning.

Aboard the tossing boat, the stench of fish bait, diesel fumes and bleach are enough to turn the stomach of a newcomer who tries to avoid falling flat on a wet deck littered with fish debris.

But White is cheerful.

“How do you like them apples?” he says as he yanks a 60-pound trap aboard the boat and plucks out some prized lobsters. He turns to the newcomer: “You bring good luck.”

Good supply and stable prices have given lobster fishermen such as White plenty to smile about this summer.

As some other New England fisheries struggle, the Maine lobster catch has topped 30 million pounds twice during the last three years, and another exceptional season is expected this year for its 4,000-strong lobster boat fleet.

Prices have remained relatively stable. Consumers have been willing to pay premium prices--$10 a pound at a Los Angeles supermarket, for instance, or $40 to $74 for a dinner at the Manhattan Ocean Club. At Maine seafood markets, though, the crustaceans are available for less than $4 a pound, and some restaurants in the state sell two-lobster dinners for as little as $10.

The fishing industry and scientists wonder how long such good fortune can continue.

“That’s the million-dollar question,” says Jay Krouse, a state marine biologist in Boothbay.

With more than 2 million traps already crowding the ocean floor, lobster is already overfished, the federal government says.

And lobster people fear their livelihood could be further threatened if those who used to go after dwindling fisheries such as cod and haddock are pressured to begin exploiting lobster to make a living.

“It’s like squeezing a balloon,” said Robert Morrill from the National Marine Fisheries Service in Portland. “You squeeze the balloon, it will bulge somewhere else.”

For now, the fishing is good.

At daybreak, lobster fishermen like White can be seen on piers from Kittery to Calais chopping smelly bait, loading their boats and chugging out to sea, much the same as their fathers and grandfathers did.

Most lobstermen in the York area fish between 600 to 1,000 traps, hauling in enough to earn a decent living, said White, who is the executive director of the Maine Lobstermen’s Assn.

“If you go up and down the coast, you find guys who make a good living and guys who don’t,” he said. “It’s like farming. Some farmers make a good living, some don’t.”

Among lobstermen’s association members, White has been trying to bring folks to a consensus on conservation rules such as minimum and maximum sizes for lobsters that can be caught.

But lobstermen are an independent lot, he concedes, and reaching a consensus will be difficult.

“It’s a wonderful life,” White said as he tossed lobsters into a barrel-shaped container. “It’s just like everything else in the world today: It’s more complicated.”

Fishermen cannot harvest egg-bearing female lobsters, which can carry 5,000 to 50,000 eggs. Lobsters that are not at least 3 1/4 inches from their eye sockets to the start of their tails are tossed back into the ocean too.

A “good trap” might contain eight or 10 lobsters, fishermen say. At least half are usually thrown back.

As sea gulls flutter overhead, White cuts a notch into the tails of mature females to declare them off-limits and flips “snappers” that don’t measure up back into the cold water.

Such conservation measures, along with the inefficiency of the old-fashioned traps used by generations of lobstermen, have helped lobsters thrive even though their population is generally thought to have peaked, he said.

The problem with fishing for many other species is too many fishermen and too few fish after years of overfishing.

One of the most beleaguered species is haddock. Fishermen last year took in only about 879 metric tons from the fertile Georges Bank fishing grounds off Cape Cod. That contrasts with annual haddock catches of around 50,000 metric tons in the 1940s and ‘50s.

White said Maine lobstermen want to reach a consensus on stricter voluntary regulations--perhaps on a moratorium on new licenses--to avoid having the federal government step in to regulate the industry.

“All the other fisheries are watching to see if we can make it work,” he said.