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06/14/2017 12:00 AMBart Mansi started working on lobster boats in 1973 while he was still in high school. He struck out on his own in 1980 before establishing the Guilford Lobster Pound in 1991. He was out on his boat at the crack of dawn each morning, hauling hundreds and hundreds of pounds of lobster from Long Island Sound. The industry was thriving with hundreds of fishermen filling pots up and down the coast. And then everything changed.
In 1999, the lobster populations in Long Island Sound experienced a massive die-off that crippled the local lobster industry. Rising water temperatures, pesticides used in controlling the spread of mosquito-borne West Nile Virus, and a new lobster disease known as paramoebiasis contributed to a steep decline in the lobster industry.
A study by Connecticut Sea Grant showed that in the fall of 1999 New York and Connecticut lobster landings declined by as much as 99 percent from the previous year. Previously, the two states reported commercial lobster harvest ranging from seven to 11.7 million pounds annually valued between $18 to $40 million with more than 1,200 licensed lobstermen out on the water in 1998. After the die-off, however, the number of licensed lobstermen dropped to fewer than 900 in 2002, and in 2004 the commercial harvest totaled about 1.6 million pounds – valued at less than $7 million.
Now, Mansi leaves the docks by four a.m. and with his team tries to pull between 300 and 400 lobster pots each day. With close to 1,800 pots out in the Sound, Mansi says it takes about a week to check them all, and then they start all over again. He said he is still cautiously optimistic about the industry and even saw a bit of an uptick last year.
"Every year we go out there with the expectations of doing good otherwise there is no sense of even doing it," he says.
Rather than die-out, some career lobstermen on the shoreline were forced to adapt. Nicholas Crismale, a former Branford lobsterman and president of the Connecticut Commercial Lobstermen's Association, says it is now almost impossible to make a living off of just lobster fishing.
"Lobstermen, being the eternal optimists that they are and me being one of them, you hope that it gets better but it just never did," he says. "They have diversified to a point. They have targeted other species to supplement their income and keep on the water." Branford-based D.J (Donald) King began lobstering and fishing in Long Island Sound in 1969 at the age of 10, but after the 1999 die-off, his new motto became diversification or bust.
"It was really, really great years ago, but in order to stay in the business you really had to change things up a lot," King says.
"...Pretty much anything that involves the water I am doing. We have a shellfish farm and we raise the shellfish from seed and I also raise kelp... There is no guy that is strictly a lobsterman anymore."
King says he's not sure if lobsters will bounce back in the Sound due to the environment, but said he still goes out lobstering, and the situation has looked a little better over the last two years with higher egg production.
"I would like to be optimistic and say it will come back but I don't know if it will or not," he said. "They are up against environmental issues, pollution, and they say the water is warming a little bit... I'm hopeful but I wouldn't count on it, that's for sure."
Having his own dock and restaurant has played a significant role in keeping Mansi in the business. Just docking a lobster boat can cost anywhere from $4,000 to $5,000 per year, which deters a lot of new people from joining the industry.
"That is the sad thing," he says. "There is really no new blood. When we go to meetings and we look around we look at the guys who are left, and we are in our 60s. For a young kid to get started now it is just hard, and with the regulations they are putting on —between the cost of the boats today and the traps and a place to tie up — I don't think a young kid could survive and bring up a family any more doing this."
Today, Mansi estimates that there are about 20-25 lobstermen fishing along the Connecticut shore, but the demand for lobster has not gone down. Mansi said his business is still doing well – calling summer a crazy busy time in a good way, but acknowledged that his industry and his way of life are, in his words, "a dying breed."
"Pretty soon, the only way you are going to see a lobsterman is they are going to have a display up in Mystic at the Aquarium," he said. "They are going to have a mannequin of a lobsterman and a trap and a boat with a plaque that says 'years ago, this is what we use to do in Connecticut'."
While some lobstermen stick with the old ways and some continue to look for new, lobsters are still ending up in stores and on restaurant menus across the shoreline. Mansi says he now brings in 80 percent of his product from Maine or Canada and sources 20 percent locally — something he says use to be the other way around.
"It is only in Connecticut – there are plenty of lobsters everywhere else," he says. "It is not like it is a species that is dying out. They are catching hundreds of millions of pounds every year in Maine."
Potential new regulations on lobster fishing could also cause a problem, according to Mansi. He points to potential regulations on the size of lobster that can legally be pulled — meaning the lobster needs to be on the larger end — could hurt restaurants.
"I think they are looking for trap reduction, and I don't know if they are looking for a bigger size but I hope not because that will hurt a lot of restaurants," he says. "You will have to take a bigger lobster which will make the lobster a pound and a half or over which is going to hurt a lot of restaurants that do the smaller lobster specials."
Crismale said he believes the water in the Sound is too far compromised due to pesticides and equated the Sound lobsters to Hudson River oysters – in other words, they are not coming back. However, he says restaurants do have other alternatives.
"You just gravitate towards other areas," he said. "There is a pretty viable resource in Maine and Canada. Maine doesn't allow the use of pesticides and lobster fishing is recognized as an industry up there."
However Crismale, whose wife owns the Lobster Shack in Branford, says bringing in lobsters from Maine or other areas comes with a cost.
"It's cost-prohibitive now to be bringing in lobsters," he says. "As they increase the size of the lobster, the lobster becomes more expensive so you are paying price per pound and then you have shipping cost from other states and so on. The restaurants can overcome it a little bit — they gravitate towards things like shrimp — but it is unfortunate that we have lost this resource and the economy that came with it."
One way or another, lobsters will still make it to the table. Now it is just more likely the lobster on your plate had a longer, more expensive, journey from the ocean than it did before.