I'd be 95% negative on that industry. It's an industry that gets $40 million some years to help it stay in business. I'm competing to fish the same grounds as they are. They're using that money to subsidize taking over the places I traditionally fish, especially my weir fishery. The weir fishery is where we catch the sardines. If you see Brunswick sardines, from Connors Brothers, they usually come from the weir fishery and the purse seine fishery. The good quality is in the weir fishery—high-quality sardines.
We've gone from 68 weirs to 32 weirs on Deer Island. In any area the aquaculture comes into, the weir fishery disappears. It takes over the bottom. The flapping of the fish, the moving of the fish, the fish feed, the boat movement day and night, and the bright lights drive the fish away. The fish don't go into those areas anymore. So it's been negative for us.
As far as lobster catches are concerned, too many of the places where lobsters came ashore to spawn have been moved because of it, but in that rocky bottom—they live on a cobblestone bottom—we've lost spawning area for lobster stocks to aquaculture sites.
It doesn't matter what you're doing around home, you're competing against a subsidized industry. I have built my industry up myself. I have never had a government loan or a bank loan in my life, in anything I've done. I've built my industry up with my own money and my own work. I think everyone should work that way more. I feel sorry for this fellow here. I'm not saying that in some cases.... I know it's different from even when I started out, but I think subsidies are wrong, myself. I think we need to do it ourselves and do it our own way--work hard, and be proud of it when we have done it.
