Fisheries leaders should be looking out for Maine’s little guys | Opinion

Knoep Nieuwkerk of Kennebunk has been a fisherman in the Gulf of Maine for 30 years. He catches lobsters, pogies and groundfish and participates in many other fisheries.

I was not born into a fishing family. But fishing is what I was born to do. I had to fight for everything. I taught myself how to catch lobster, fix an engine and keep my business afloat when everything’s working against me. I fought rough seas, bad luck and sometimes my fellow fishermen for bottom — I lost a lot of traps along the way.

But in the end, we always fought together when others tried to cheat us. Maine’s lobster fishery is at a tipping point. We need our leaders to fight alongside us, not with the big- money, foreign-controlled industrial fishing fleets tearing our fisheries apart. That’s not what happened recently at the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC).

I’m one of 5,000 lobstermen the Maine Lobstermen’s Association says contribute 10,000 jobs and $2 billion to our economy. Our future should be important to our leaders, but I watched as they voted with the big boats in the face of data showing that the Atlantic menhaden fishery and everything it supports, including our fishery, is in trouble. The only winners were the massive vessels controlled by a Canadian seafood conglomerate that is vacuuming up these small foraging fish, menhaden, by the billions, and grinding them into fish meal for use as pet food and feed for their salmon farms. It’s called “reduction fishing” but I call it a waste. We need those fish for bait in the lobster fishery.

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