By Aaron Porter

SOUTHWEST HARBOR — Adaptability is a necessary quality for any fisherman who has worked the Gulf of Maine the past 20 years.

Fish stocks have ebbed and flowed like the extreme tides of the Bay of Fundy, fisheries regulations and requirements have swirled around like an obscuring fog over the often-dwindling fish populations, and litigation has raised the stakes and muddied the regulatory waters.

Jerry Balzano keeps the turns of wire rope even on the drum as the trawl is hauled in. A dogfish pup stares back from the sorting table containing the catch from one tow in the states trawl survey. Jerry Balzano mends the trawl survey net. STAFF PHOTOS BY AARON PORTER

So much takes place in legislatures and hearing rooms that it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that out on the water fishermen are still working however they can. In the case of the crew of Portland-based dragger Robert Michael, that means fishing for numbers along the Maine coast for nearly four months out of the year.

The 54-foot Fiberglass dragger has become the primary vessel responsible for carrying out the semi-annual inshore trawl survey for the states of Maine and New Hampshire. 

Getting under way from Southwest Harbor at first light Nov. 4, Captain Curt Rice and crewmen Dale Doucette and Jerry Balzano were well into the fifth year of the trawl survey, which provides data for fisheries researchers and managers struggling to make sense of coastal fish stocks.

Maine Department of Marine Resources scientists Sally Sherman and Keri Stepanek explained that the data from the five-year effort is being used now to help in broad assessments of herring, monkfish, shrimp, shad and lobster, to name a few. Sherman said federal fisheries researchers primarily use the trawl survey data to “ground truth” stock assessments they have made based on catch data.

But last week Sherman’s chief concern was not how scientists would use the data. Perched at a table in the wheelhouse, she and Rice were engaged in a fisherman’s discussion about weather. The day before had been windy. The crew had gone up Blue Hill Bay to try and get tows in on some of the randomly preselected sites the survey targets.

“We got one tow in before it started to blow 50,” Rice said. Then they’d called it quits and headed back into Southwest Harbor by mid-afternoon.

Thursday dawned relatively calm with a light northerly wind building. On the trip out the Eastern Way, Rice chatted on the radio with the captain of Jocka, another southern Maine dragger.

On the way out, crew and scientists almost instinctively performed the few tasks required to prepare for the day. Sherman double-checked the day’s tows on a laptop. Stepanek hunkered a couple of exact stainless weights out of their boxes and onto the work deck to calibrate the digital scales used to weigh the fish brought aboard in the drag. Doucette and Balzano, coffee in hand, reviewed the drag gear and put together some food in the galley.

By 8 a.m. the dragger had reached the first designated drag area. As Rice ran down the area before setting the trawl, he encountered a number of lobster trap buoys. He called Marine Patrol to come out and move some lobster gear out of the way. By then, a crowd of lobster boats was working its way out from Frenchman Bay, tending traps on the way.

For the most part, helpful advice came over the radio. Lobstermen asked just what direction he would drag in, and told him what length of gear was attached to different colored buoys. They even offered to come move some.

Relations with lobstermen haven’t always been the best. In years past, there were instances when boats surrounded the dragger, preventing it from setting the trawl. Now, there’s a resigned acceptance that the survey is going on without doing immense damage to the lobster stocks in the area. The dragger’s presence seems to be more of a logistical nuisance than anything, especially during the unpredictable season lobstermen have had this year.

The boats kept their distance, but one came tight across the stern checking for any lobster gear when the drag was hauled aboard after a 20-minute tow. There was nothing but fish.

Before the trawl was set, Balzano pointed out the Sonar attachments on various parts of the gear. When the net is set, a sensor towed beside the boat relays the positions of the attachments to a computer on board. That way the consistent set of the trawl can be monitored from the wheelhouse and snags on the bottom quickly detected.

Even in the relatively placid conditions last week, the dangers inherent in dragging were obvious. The heavy steel trawl doors clanked and slammed against the hull, chains rattled, and steel cables crackled and whirred as they raced off the drums.

With the heavy gear underwater, everything came taught and, with exception of the straining diesel, relatively quiet for the 20-minute tow. Rice watched the clock and the surface for lobster gear.

“Six more minutes and we’re legal,” he said nearing the end of the tow.

Stepanek watched the laptop with the net-monitoring software and Balzano looked at the fish finder.

“Fish,” he said, pointing to a smudge on the screen and noting that they were above the net.

Hauling in a trawl, even after a scant 20-minute tow, is exciting. Balzano and Doucette shook down the stray fish still in the mouth of the net, as it came aboard. With the full end hoisted over the sorting table, Balzano opened the bottom. Red and brown lobsters, green-eyed dogfish, bright silver herring and alewives, flat dabs, round butter fish, haddock, squid, spiny sculpin, translucent shrimp and whiting all spilled out into the sunshine, squirming and flapping.

Sherman and Stepanek set on the table immediately measuring and sorting the lobster first. They muttered size, sex and condition into small recorders taped to their suspenders. Rice said the lobsters are returned to the water as close to the end of the drag as possible. He doesn’t throttle the boat up to move until they are back in the water. But that can take a while, given the amount of lobster that comes up in some drags now. In a couple of last Thursday’s tows, the removal of lobster seemed to reduce the pile of fish to be sorted by nearly half.

With lobsters back in the water, other fish were sorted into a series of plastic buckets and baskets. Each was weighed. Then Doucette and Balzano got out the measuring boards and called out the length of each fish. Sherman and Stepanek recorded the figures on data sheets before the fish were tossed over the side where seagulls wait.

Meanwhile, Rice had throttled up and set out for the next designated site.

The fish sorting was usually complete inside of an hour and Balzano washed down the table and deck for the next drag.

On Thursday, the boat got in three tows. A fourth site was choked with lobster gear.

“If it’s going to take them forever, we don’t ask them to move it,” Rice said, explaining the limits of the Marine Patrol’s gear moving assistance. He and Sherman consulted and headed on to the next site.

For Rice, the trawl survey is a break from the grind of offshore dragging as a commercial fisherman, but it’s far from a vacation. Outside, there’s no gear to worry about and no designated drag sites. On survey duty, he’s got to get used to unfamiliar harbors and coastlines and make very precise drags in often tight quarters.

For the scientists, the trawl survey is time out of the office and in touch with the fishermen and the fish their department works to manage. Sherman said the data from the survey keep her busy through the year, as more requests come in for species-specific information from fisheries managers and researchers.

The fall survey, working its way Downeast, will wrap up this week. Rice and his crew will head back offshore in the commercial fishery until Sherman and Sepanek come aboard to do it all over again for the 2005 spring survey.