By Ed Stannard
Register Metro Editor
The state’s lobstermen will have another year and just enough money to try to save their industry.
Gov. M. Jodi Rell this week designated $90,000 for the state’s lobster restoration effort, known in the industry as the V-notch program. The $90,000 was left over from the program’s $1 million budget for this fiscal year.
"We’re just hoping to utilize the money that we have to keep the program going," said Nick Crismale of Mid-Sound Fisheries in Guilford and president of the Connecticut Commercial Lobstermen’s Association.
Before Rell’s announcement, the V-notch program looked sunk, taking with it the state’s lobster industry, Crismale said.
Only 67,000 female lobsters’ tails were notched this fiscal year, which ends June 30. The goal is 80,000, but the General Assembly didn’t budget a second round of money, and lobstermen were facing a forced size increase in catchable lobsters. That, they said, would put them out of business.
Instead, the state paid lobster catchers a total of $180,000 in compensation for the females whose tails were notched by high school-age helpers and dropped back into Long Island Sound.
The females then can mature and reproduce before they molt and are ripe for catching again.
The rest of this year’s $1 million was spent on equipment, insurance and training the 60 students from the Sound School in New Haven, the Bridgeport Aquaculture School and the Ella T. Grasso Technical High School in Groton.
Crismale had great praise for the teenagers, who enthusiastically got up before dawn to go out on the water.
"Every kid that I’ve had on the boat has exceeded my expectations, I’ll tell you," he said.
The state’s lobster industry was devastated by a mysterious die-off, which has been attributed to a hotter-than-usual summer of 1999 and low oxygen levels, though Crismale believes it was because of pesticide runoff.
The state’s catch dropped from 3.72 million pounds worth $12 million in 1998 to 570,000 pounds, worth $3.2 million, in 2006, according to the state Department of Environmental Protection.
"I fish about once or twice every two weeks and we’re lucky to catch 30 or 40 pounds worth of lobsters," Crismale said. At one time, his traps caught 800 to 1,000 pounds a day.
In a statement, Rell said, "The benefits of continuing this program go far beyond Connecticut’s current lobstermen. They extend to the future health of lobster stocks in the Sound and all other marine resources."
The Citizens Campaign for the Environment praised the decision, saying Rell "has acted responsibly and decisively to allow the V-notch program to continue working to restore this vital program."
Ed Stannard can be reached at estannard@nhregister.com or 789-5743.