Fred Dauphinee of Scituate became a lobsterman in 1972, in his 30s, because he loved the outdoors, the physical work, the lifestyle -- and of course, lobster. At his peak in the early '80s, he worked from dawn to dusk and set 880 traps, making enough to sup port his wife and three sons. "I fished full-time for 35 years," he says, wistfully.
Today, Dauphinee is 67. While he still lobsters on weekends, his main job is as a driver and ware house worker in Norwell. While he remains hopeful, the Scituate native said it's getting increasingly hard to make a living lobstering.
The number of lobsters caught off the Massachusetts coast fell each year from 2002 to 2005, be fore rebounding in 2006. Dauphinee suggests a handful of reasons for the general decline in lobster catches, including tighter controls by regulators and possible effects of the Boston Har bor sewage treatment outfall pipe opened 9 miles offshore in 2000.
And he has another theory, one shared by many lobstermen and by some experts in the Northeast: Pesticides used to kill mosquito larvae all around the area have seeped into ocean and hurt lob sters as well.
"I'm ... very worried about the use of pesticides," he said.
He is not alone.
Bill Adler of Marshfield, direc tor of the Massachusetts Lobster men's Association, based in Scitu ate, said such concerns have been widespread ever since a massive kill-off of lobster in Long Island Sound in 1999. That year, lobstermen off the New York and Connecticut coast began pulling up traps full of dead lobsters. Many blamed pesticides used against the mosquitoes car rying the West Nile virus. The lob ster industry there nearly col lapsed after cities and towns began floating solid cakes of the chemi cal methoprene in storm drains to kill mosquitoes. While pesticide use was strong ly suspected, no definitive conclu sions were reached. A major study, conducted by the University of Connecticut, con cluded in 2004 that pesticides may have played a role, but that other stressful environmental conditions and disease were at fault.
They identified a microscopic organism (known as a "paramoe ba") and a new fatal disease in lobsters, paramoebiasis. The dis ease is caused by parasitic mi croorganisms invading lobster nervous tissue. The Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries downplays the effect of mosquito pesticides, al though it has not conducted a study of the issue locally.
"The Connecticut study looked at possible causes for a significant lobster die-off there and did not find evidence that pesticide runoff was to blame," said Lisa Capone, spokesman for the division. Since 2002, when the Massa chusetts lobster catch was 13.7 million, there has been a decline. In 2006, the catch increased again to more than 12 million.
The preliminary numbers for 2007 indicate that approximately 10,747,000 pounds of lobsters were harvested in 2007, but that is only 92 percent of the reports re ceived. Lobstermen in Rhode Island re cently expressed concerns about a pesticide finding its way into Nar ragansett Bay. They have said the use of methoprene is killing lob ster larvae and inhibiting the molt ing of adult lobsters. Bob Bayer, director of the Lob ster Institute at the University of Maine, is also convinced pesti cides played a role in the Long is land die-off. "Anything that will kill a mosquito larvae will kill a lobster larvae," he said. "They also float on the surface of the water and are very similar to mosquito larvae."
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3:19Larry and a Maine Lobster !by larder6021,813 views
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