Skinny recruitment and fewer lobsters, say lobster biologists. That worries many in the industry. But that's not all they are worried about. A fairly recent practice by a few dishonest fishermen involves dipping egg-bearing, or "berried" female lobsters into chlorine bleach to remove the eggs - and virtually all evidence that there were eggs. The practice allows the female lobsters to be sold as "clean," or non-egg-bearing. Dipping, say industry experts, is most likely done by fishermen more concerned with a fast profit than the future of the fishery.
DID YOU KNOW?
Typically, 'in-berry' females have hard shells.
Once they release their eggs, females molt and,
while their shells are still soft from molting, mate
again. Sexually mature females molt and carry
eggs in alternate years, molting at only half the
frequency of mature male lobsters."This is going to be disastrous," said Bill Adler, executive director of the Massachusetts Lobstermen's Association. "The idea that these very large 'eggers' - that play a major role in sustaining the fishery - are subject to this massacre. It's very deliberate. It's wrong and it's destroying the fishery for everyone," he said, referring to the huge numbers of females being landed and sold as "legal."
Are they really legal? Or, as many suspect, are these lobsters the victims of tampering? Law enforcement has had no way of knowing, unless the berried females were being "scrubbed," a process by which they are, literally, scrubbed of their eggs by use of a hard brush, or the use of a high pressure water hose or compressed air. This practice has, by and large, ceased as scientists and law enforcement officials developed an easy and portable test to detect the scrubbing.
Scrubbed lobsters, though absent of their eggs, retain at least some of the "cement" or "glue" that is naturally secreted by females to hold their eggs to their pleopods, or swimmerets. A stain test was developed to determine if a female lobster was scrubbed: A swimmeret clipped from a suspect lobster is placed into a test vial containing a test solution; in the presence of the cement, the test solution turns purple. If the female was not scrubbed - and therefore not carrying eggs at the time it was landed - the solution remains colorless.
Whether it was serendipity or a concerted effort to stay one step ahead of law enforcement, someone discovered that dipping berried lobsters in a chlorine bleach-seawater solution would cause the cement to dissolve, thereby releasing the eggs. Mike Syslo, director of the Massachusetts State Lobster Hatchery and Research Station of the Division of Marine Fisheries (DMF) located on Martha's Vineyard, said he first learned of chlorine dipping about five years ago, when a fisheries conservation agent from Rhode Island called him after having boarded a lobster fishing vessel in the port of Point Judith. The agent reported a strong smell of bleach aboard the boat and around the lobsters.
NMFS special agent Roy Morejon, who works in the Portland, Maine, Office of Enforcement, said evidence from boarding inspections has found "lobsters that smell like chlorine, numerous hard-shelled females, 1 a high ratio of females to males, and lots of [Clorox] bottles on the boats. But how widespread is the problem [of chlorine dipping]?" he asked. "I don't know." Even if the problem is not widespread, it should be dealt with, said Adler. "It doesn't take long for four bad guys to ruin the fishery for the rest of us."
Against All Odds
Here are the facts: Less than one-tenth of 1 percent of hatched lobster eggs will survive to legal size, which takes, on average, seven years. Of the lobsters that make it to legal size, an estimated 90 percent of them are caught the same year that they become "legal" - in many cases before they ever reproduce. At this rate, only 10 percent of the inshore lobster stock is available for recruitment. Illegal harvesting practices have the potential of reducing this number even further.
Even with such staggering odds, lobster harvests throughout New England have remained constant. In fact, Maine and Massachusetts have had a number of record-year harvests in the last several years (see Nor'easter 3(1): 28-33). And, with groundfish stocks in serious decline, offshore lobsters will have fewer predators to worry about. So why all the concern over a little dishonest dipping and scrubbing?
One reason for concern is the fact that it takes more time, more money, and more fishermen to land the same amount of lobsters every year. "There is more pressure on the resource than ever before," said Morejon. "The catch is staying about the same, but there is more per unit effort."
Another reason for concern, according to Syslo, is that, due to the slow growth rate of lobsters, the impacts of what is happening to the fishery today - in terms of recruitment success, recreational and commercial harvests, and the illegal harvest of berried females - will not be understood for nearly a decade.
To Catch a Lobster
There are basically three ways to fish for lobster: lobster pots or traps, dragging, and scuba diving. Commercially speaking, lobster pots and dragging are used in virtually all cases, except in Maine, where pots are used exclusively. Most lobster pot fishermen make up what is called the "inshore" fishery, generally taking place within the three-mile, state-regulated waters, although many place traps in federal waters as well. Draggers fish exclusively in federally regulated waters, referred to as "offshore." Currently, the commercial landings for lobster are split at about 65 percent inshore and 35 percent offshore.
The demise of the New England groundfish fishery and the subsequent enactment of stricter fishing regulations (see Nor'easter 5(2): 16-21), has increased the pressure on the lobster fishery: Whereas dragger fishermen were once allowed to land lobster only as a result of incidental catch or bycatch, many are now dragging for lobster as a targeted species. And, according to Maj. Philip McMann of the Massachusetts Environmental Police, they are no longer catching an "incidental" quantity of lobsters. "We're seeing catches of 8,000 to 16,000 pounds of lobsters per trip," he said.
Such numbers are cause for scrutiny, said McMann. "Offshore vessels fishing the canyons [popular fishing grounds at the edge of the continental shelf extending from the Gulf of Maine to the Carolinas] were bringing in large quantities of lobsters - the majority of them female," he said. "We get concerned when the ratio of females to males is way above what it should be."
Under very specific conditions, it is not impossible for lobstermen to catch a high ratio of females to males. Anecdotal information from different sources puts catch ratios as high as 22:1, female to male. One possible explanation for this, said Syslo, is that females will congregate in certain areas to hatch out. "Occasionally," he said, "you'll see isolated pockets with a high ratio of females." However, this shouldn't happen all of the time, according to Bob Bullis, a veterinarian with the University of Pennsylvania's Laboratory for Aquatic Animal Medicine and Pathology, located at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole.
"This can occur - especially in heavily fished areas - at certain times of the year," he said. "What happens is that the males are depleted, since you can land males legally all year long, but "in-berry" females that may have been landed and returned to the water will, at some later time, be free of their eggs and legal." Such ratios are not the norm, however. "In any large sample, you should get a ratio of 1:1 or 1.5:1, female to male; 2:1 maximum," Bullis said. "Any ratio above that is suspect."
Of the extremely high ratios of females to males that draggermen have been known to land, many in the industry feel that bleaching or scrubbing may be involved, but to what extent is anyone's guess. "I have no idea as to the percentages of illegal females being landed," said Syslo, "but the lack of finfish and the new regulations must be forcing consideration of illegal practices. However," he said, "I'm not pointing the finger at the draggermen. Inshore pot fishermen are capable of chlorine dipping, too."
Law enforcement, however, is targeting draggers in its initial efforts to crack down on illegal harvesting practices. The reasons? Fishermen dragging for lobster bring more landings to port at once. And, because draggers fish in federal waters, they are subject to federal fines - up to $1,000 per violation. Such fines often result in high publicity and, say law enforcement officials, prove to the fishery that they are serious about cracking down on illegal harvesting practices.
To Catch a Thief
Since the problem of chlorine dipping was first suspected, law enforcement officials and lobstermen have been anxious for a test to be developed so that they could catch illegal harvesters and prosecute them. The hope was that if the offenders could be proven guilty, it would discourage others in the industry from chlorine dipping, just as the test to detect scrubbing has done.
In 1994, Bullis and Syslo received a grant from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Sea Grant Program to develop a test that can detect the presence of chlorine by using the same on-board procedures as the scrubbing detection test. Additional funding support was provided by Massachusetts DMF, the National Fisheries Institute, The Lobster Institute, and the University of Pennsylvania.
One year later, they came up with an inexpensive, simple, fast, and portable test: a swimmeret is clipped from a suspect lobster and placed into a small vial containing a potassium-iodide solution. If the solution turns yellow, the lobster has tested positive for chlorine. The intensity of the yellow color varies, with the most intense color indicating a more recent exposure to chlorine.
To complicate matters, there are variations to the technique of chlorine dipping, said Syslo. "Most typical is the 50 percent strength solution of chlorine and seawater with less than a one-minute soak." Another, newer, technique is the 'quick-dip' method. "It's a stronger concentration," said Syslo, "but they'll, literally, dip the lobster in the solution, take it out, and let the chlorine go to work, then brush the lobster with a soft bristle brush." The brief exposure to the strong dose of chlorine is enough to render the egg-binding cement ineffective, yet the dip is so short that a brush is still needed to remove all of the eggs.
"The quick-dip method limits the effectiveness of our test somewhat," said Bullis. "Offshore draggers may be out to sea for 10 days. Even though our test can work for up to 16 days, prolonged holding times and warmer conditions can produce false negatives," he said, explaining that, in warm temperatures, chlorine decays faster in sea-water. Under such conditions, the quick-dip technique could escape detection by the new test. "However," Bullis said, "what you often see with the quick-dip method is residual cement and/or evidence of scrubbing," both of which are detectable with a swimmeret stain test.
Despite the very specific conditions where the residual chlorine test may yield a false negative, "the beauty of this test," said Bullis, "is that there are no false positives." Bullis' and Syslo's test, with its simplistic methodology and easy-to-interpret results, has met favorably with fishery managers and law enforcement, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) General Counsel, the legal branch of the agency that oversees the NMFS.
"Specificity is the key issue," explained Charles Juliand, senior enforcement attorney in NOAA's General Counsel Office, in Gloucester, Mass. "We need to have an expert on the stand who can say, 'If you see x, y, and z, it's more than likely a result of what the test is measuring.' In other words, there aren't a whole bunch of other things that can make the test react that way," he said. Juliand said he has seen "dozens" of scrubbing cases cross his desk, but has not seen any cases where the Bullis and Syslo bleach detection test has been used - yet. But, with the new, tougher federal regulations that explicitly forbid mechanical (scrubbing) or chemical (chlorine bleach dipping) alteration of lobsters - combined with the apparent reliability of the test and an increased push by law enforcement to crack down on illegal harvesting practices - Juliand thinks it's only a matter of time.
"People are loathe to put anything back into the water that they can get paid for," he said. "Nobody ever thinks they'll get caught." Meanwhile, Syslo and Bullis have been busy demonstrating their test, as well as the test for detecting scrubbed lobsters, to enforcement personnel throughout the Northeast. "Enforcement officials are going for the big bust," said Bullis. "Yeah," added Syslo, "I'd hate to be the first guy they catch."
Tracey I. Crago is Communicator for Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Sea Grant.