A TALE OF LOBSTERS, MEN AND MIGRANTS

Larry the lobster says, "Hey, turn down the heat!  I'm already overregulated.”

                                  

Lobster dipped in drawn butter is one of life’s great pleasures.  Cut off a piece and leave it soaking in butter while you sample the Shrimp Linguini Alfredo. When the lobster is well saturated, savor it, then saturate the next piece, as you sample a skewer of grilled shrimp scampi.  Considering my fondness for the delectable crustacean, I was happy to learn that Maine’s $1 billion dollar Lobster industry is not in danger of floundering (!) due to the state’s “aging population.” 

Migrants in Maine filling labor gap; a prelude for U.S?

                    The New York Times – April 13, 2024                            

According to Jeanna Smialek, writing in the New York Times, the average age of Maine’s population is 45.1 years, the oldest in the United States, implying there is going to be a shortage of lobster fishermen. Fortunately, migrants, both legal and illegal are filling the gaps. “It (the influx of immigrants) is also boosting the U.S. economy’s potential.  Employers today are managing to hire rapidly partly because of the incoming labor supply.  Nationally, even with the barriers that prevent some immigrants from being hired, the huge recent inflow has been helping to bolster job growth and speed up the economy.” 

In spite of those pesky barriers, like national borders, proper vetting, the border patrol, ICE, and overwhelming numbers, “State legislators are working to create an Office of New Americans, an effort to attract and integrate immigrants into the work force.”

Do we really need to create another deep state bureaucracy (a lobstertocracy)  to attract even more immigration?  

The New York Times article sounds like a win for both immigrants and the lobster industry. Why then, does this fine kettle of fish (couldn’t resist) not make my mouth water knowing that illegals heading from Mexico to Maine will enable Red Lobster keep Lobster Fest going?  Why do I not get hopeful, as the headline stated, that Maine’s example is a “prelude for (the) US?”

Answer: there are downsides and distortions to this lobster business / migrant symbiosis.  Start with those aging 45.1 year-old fishermen hobbling around with walkers on listing boats.  The potential shortage of lobster fishermen in Maine is not due to curmudgeon burnout, but to diminishing lobster supply and increasing regulations.

   Recent data indicates a nearly 40% drop in Main’s young lobster population in recent years,

which has led to new regulations to preserve the spawning stock.  These changes include

adjustments to the minimum and maximum catch sizes for lobster in certain parts of the Gulf

of Maine, starting in January 1, 2025. 

  New data shows nearly 40% drop in Maine's young lobster population in recent years | Maine Public

“These regulations have made lobster fishing more costly and time-consuming, which could potentially lead to a decrease in the number of active lobster fishermen.”  Other pressures include shortage in the fish used as bait, such as Atlantic herring.  “The combination of these factors suggests that while there may not be an immediate shortage of lobster fishermen, the industry is under stress, and this could affect the workforce in the future.

         Shortage in Fish Used as Bait Could Impact Maine’s Lobster Industry – NBC Boston

Commentary on Maine Public Radio, concluded, “There has been no specific mention of a shortage of lobster fishermen in Maine, but the industry is facing significant challenges that could impact the number of fishermen. “   October 17, 2023

Contrary to what we are being told, there is no lobster labor shortage.  Therefore, there are no jobs needing to be filled by migrants. If the lobster population has been falling, there is even less need for more fishermen.

Contrary to what we have been told - The steady influx of migrants does not improve the economy.  Instead, they strain the resources of cities all over the country; crowding schools with non- English-speaking kids; using emergency rooms for primary medical care, getting on the welfare rolls, straining the resources of hospitals as is happening in Denver. And while they are streaming in to improve the economy, they will bring, as they did in 2023, 26,700 pounds of fentanyl, five times the amount in 2020.  One hundred and seven thousand Americans, died from this imported poison in 2023.  That’s twice the death toll from ten years in the Viet Nam war.

Last year, Custom and Border Patrol Agents arrested 35,433 illegals who already had criminal convictions including 598 known gang members.  Since fiscal year 2021, 294 people on the terrorist watch list were stopped at the southern border.

Speeding up illegal immigration will not be great for the economy because illegal Chinese and Venezuelans crossing the border in Texas are not eager to put on their galoshes to - all together now –  do the jobs Americans don’t want to do.

 It doesn’t seem that these “old” guys are ready jump off the boat, swim ashore, and reserve a bed in the Lobster Fishermen’s Retirement Home.  They don’t want to quit; they are being pressured by government regulations. One fisherman said, Lobster fishing “is embedded in my soul.”   All of Maine’s non-commercial fishing license holders are, by law, from Maine families. Most started lobstering from small skiffs when they were kids and many are from multi-generational fishing families.

Maine’s lobstermen have lived with uncertainty, unsettled weather, the ups and downs in the harvest, supply and demand concerns, crowded fishing space, the increasing cost of fuel, bait, and boat maintenance, plus the COVID-19 pandemic.  Recently, they found themselves dealing with other challenges including new National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration regulations closing 1,000 square miles of federal, offshore fishing bottom four months each year to protect the endangered Right whale. I have no objection to protecting the whale, but then again lobster fishing is not “embedded in my soul.”

I’m from the government and I’m here to help

Bottom Line

It seems that the younger guys don’t want to put up with the increasing regulations, while the older guys, feeling the pressures of regulations, are seeing the end of a way of life. 

The New York Times article was not news, it was commentary encouraging the continued flooding of our southern border, falsely claiming that the influx has the positive consequences of filling jobs in Maine.

Post Script: A close family member of mine, a marine biologist, is something of a Federal Government Fisheries Ambassador to communities in Maine and elsewhere.  He tries to ease the fears of fishermen by presenting facts, studies, charts, opinions and so on. He is a good communicator with an agreeable personality.  But he often emerges from these meetings exhausted after being cursed at for hours.  He tells them he doesn’t make policy; he’s a scientist overseeing government policy, while painstakingly working to ensure the government’s projects will not damage the fishermen’s livelihoods or the environment.

After these meetings, he goes out to a fresh seafood restaurant for a nice lobster dinner and a cold, draft beer. (Maybe even two).