Lives Lost

2/28/07

At the end of January Newsday reported on the plight of a long successful multi-generational Long Island bayman. As soon as I read about how the Town of Islip and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) had finally run Frank Sloup out of town, I knew it was coming. I just didn’t know how and when. I think I found out last night. Nearly 40 years ago Frank won a law suit that protected the rights of inshore commercial fishermen against moves to restrict or eliminate their activities by local governments, the principle being that migratory species were under federal jurisdiction. Frank has now been forced to give up and move south because his fishing gear was determined to be a hazard to navigation. He sued under the same principles he had won under before. This time he lost.

Last night the DEC held a hearing on the proposed 2007 regulations on the commercial take of horseshoe crabs. The word on the street is that the severe restrictions for we who harvest these prehistoric looking creatures for the fish trap bait market have been laboring under were forced down all our throats after pressure was put on Governor Pataki over a cell phone from the parking lot in East Seatauket by an environmental group after last year’s hearing. This year’s proposed restrictions are even tighter, and the enforcement and reporting regime is going to be greatly increased. And the State will now entertain any local agency’s complaints about horseshoe crab harvesting anywhere deemed to be a “Public Recreation Area.” When asked, DEC officials told us that these areas could be any public waters that are used for recreational activities. That is a much lower and much more generic sounding standard than is “navigational hazard.” When the questioning went to what interest the recreational public had in curtailing the taking of horseshoe crabs in their playful midst, a Brookhaven Town official, in seemingly solo attendance in front row amid scores of commercial fisherman in the room, made an amazing statement.

‘They’re a user group. They like to look at them and take pictures of them,” he said passionately.

That does not make them a user group. If seafood consumers aren’t an accepted user group under federal fisheries policy, and they are not, then those who merely like to “look at” commercially regulated marine animals certainly are not.

Frank Sloup and those brave and magnanimous souls like him have played a huge role in retaining the traditional livelihood that used to give this Island its breadth of life and color. He’s down in Maryland managing a restaurant now. I dread thinking that he is gone, even though I was sometimes in competition with his traps, which were for the most part baited with horseshoe crabs.

It makes me wonder where I’ll end up.