Maine’s fishermen hit troubled waters

The forklifts zigzag through the chilled warehouse, balancing plastic crates filled with cod, haddock, pollock, flounder and other catch from the North Atlantic.

The smell of fish hangs heavy on a recent Sunday as more than a dozen buyers for seafood processors and wholesalers slide into their seats at the Portland Fish Exchange, a commercial fish auction that has been around for two decades. Spread on the tables before them are sheets listing the types and amounts of fish to be sold. Telephones are pressed to their ears.

They’ve already inspected the catch so auctioneer Paul Dewey begins the bidding, just as he has for the last 20 years.

“I have 88 cents, looking for nine. I’m looking for nine,” Dewey says in rapid-fire fashion as he auctions off a batch of pollock. “Anyone have nine?”

For the next hour, a nod of a head or a raised paddle marks the bidding on 56,000 pounds of fish that will make its way to restaurants and retailers across the United States. But not as much fish is being sold in Portland as a few years ago. There aren’t as many boats unloading their catch here, either. Times are so tough that Dewey is being released from his job.

“I give the commercial fishing industry in Maine about two years,” said Bill Gerencer, a seafood buyer for Massachusetts-based M.F. Foley Co. “Not just the Fish Exchange, but the entire industry.”

Maine fishermen are battling against strong currents that put them at a decided disadvantage to their counterparts in Massachusetts. They have to use more of their precious allotment of fishing days to steam to bountiful fishing grounds to the south. And unlike Massachusetts, Maine charges fishermen sales taxes on diesel fuel.

Maine lawmakers in March scrapped a proposal to let trawler fishermen sell lobsters caught inadvertently. They must toss the lobsters back or go to Massachusetts, where they can be sold.

The net effect: The future of the Portland Fish Exchange is about as certain as New England’s fickle weather.

When the exchange opened in 1986, it was said to be the first wholesale fresh fish display auction in the United States.

Today, Hank Soule, the auction’s general manager, points to a chalkboard listing the fishing vessels that are scheduled to deliver their catch to the auction in the next week. The board is blank.

In its heyday in the early 1990s, the auction handled more than 30 million pounds of seafood a year, with auctions often held five days a week.

In 2006, just 9.5 million pounds was gaveled for sale, down from 17.1 million pounds in 2005. Auctions were held just two or three times a week last year, and with small volumes at that. This year, Soule projects about 5 million pounds will be sold.

“How do you keep the doors open with 5 million pounds?” he asks. “I don’t know how we can do that, but we’ll try to figure something out.”

Times have become so desperate that Fish Exchange officials tried to get a long-shot bill passed to change a Maine law that prohibits fishermen from hauling to shore lobsters caught in their nets.

As regulations get stricter and fish populations fluctuate, Maine fishermen are taking more of their catch to Gloucester, Mass., where they are allowed to sell up to 100 lobsters per day at sea, or up to 500 per trip. They say that the lobsters can bring in thousands of dollars, enough to make the difference between profit and loss.

The bid pitted the fishermen against Maine’s powerful lobster lobby. The groundfish industry is worth peanuts compared with lobstering, the state’s top fishery worth close to $300 million a year.

The bill didn’t make it far.

Lawmakers didn’t even get a chance to debate it because the Marine Resources Committee killed it in a unanimous vote.

But the Legislature is considering ways to keep the industry going, other than changing the lobster law. Lawmakers will consider making fishing boats exempt from the state’s fuel tax, creating health insurance plans for fishermen and buying days-at-sea allotments and leasing them to fishermen who bring their catch to Maine.

Meantime, fishing boat owners like Allyson Jordan are left little choice but to sell their catch in Massachusetts.

Jordan grew up in a Portland fishing family when the catch was plentiful and regulations minimal. Over the years, she has seen the fleet shrink as strict rules and declining fish populations have squeezed fishermen out. Each of her boats used to fish nearly 300 days a year; now less than 75 days each.

Jordan’s 65- and 71-foot boats, which she owns with her mother, were among the top-selling boats at the Portland Fish Exchange a few years ago. Now they rarely come to Portland, opting instead to unload in Gloucester for the lobster revenue. She is even looking to Gloucester for berthing for her boats.

The Maine fishing industry, she says, needs help to survive.

In the meantime, Gerencer, also from Maine, watches and waits. There’s only one thing, he says, that will save the Maine fishing industry: “A miracle.”