HARPSWELL

The Department of Marine Resources and University of Maine’s Lobster Institute have detected an uptick in the illegal removal of eggs from lobsters along the Maine coast, and are putting their heads together on ways to reduce the practice.

Egg-bearing females are illegal to sell and when caught lobstermen must cut a “v-notch” into the tail and toss it back. Lobsters with v-notches are marked as brood stock, and can never be taken. This conservation method acts as an insurance policy for female brood stock, and the removal of eggs to disguise the lobsters as general stock results in reduced hatches and ultimately a diminishing of Maine’s prized resource.

Punishment for egg removal, or “scrubbing,” is a Class D crime which, in addition to license suspension, is punishable by up to a year in jail and fines in excess of $1,000. In December, two lobstermen — Dexter Bray of Cushing and Philip Poland of Stonington — were caught for lobster scrubbing and had their licenses suspended for six years.

Bob Bayer is the executive director of the Lobster Institute and is a professor of Animal and veterinary Science at University of Maine. He is heading up a project to provide the DMR’s marine patrol officers with an updated course of detection of tampered lobsters.

“Twenty years ago we put a study together about removing eggs with chlorine bleach,” said Bayer, who devised the first method for detecting illegal removal of lobster eggs in 1996. “The lobstermen would dip the tail into the bleach and all the eggs would come off. Looking at it with the naked eye, you would see nothing. But one of the things we saw under a microscope are these little tiny hairs, little swimmers on the back of the tail, where the feathers were broken.”

Bayer said that since then, lobstermen have adopted a variety of different methods to remove eggs from females, including using a scrub brush and other methods that Bayer declined to mention because he “didn’t want to instigate anybody.”

“Generally, lobstermen are pretty good stewards,” said Bayer. “They want to protect their industry. There are only a few out there with clouded minds.”

Bayer said that law enforcement has been on top of lobster scrubbing for the most part, but since it’s so potentially detrimental to the future of the industry, the DMR doesn’t even want isolated cases.

“Scrubbing lobsters is one of the most serious violations of marine resource laws we see,” said Marine Patrol Colonel Jon Cornish in a DMR statement in December, issued after Bray and Poland were convicted of scrubbing. “By removing eggs to make a short-term monetary gain, criminals deny future generations of fishermen the opportunity those eggs represent. Just as important, they undermine the work law abiding harvesters do every day to sustain this important resource.”

Bayer said that once he determines new ways to detect lobster scrubbing in addition to the damage of microscopic hairs on the lobster’s tails, he will write a report on his findings. Bayer hopes to have the report out by this spring.

“It’s motherhood you’re destroying here,” said Bayer. “Scrubbing is not going to happen much, but there’s always going to be a little of it. We’re trying to keep it to a minimum.”

bgoodridge@timesrecord.com