Divers vs. Lobstermen: Ongoing feud runs deep

The most ubiquitous users of Cape Ann's waters - lobstermen and scuba divers - can never seem to agree on the living arrangements at sea.

The debate is heating up.

Both sides have met with members of the Gloucester City Council three times in the last few months to discuss proposed changes in the city's diving ordinances. The strongest dividing point between the two groups pertains to the dive flag:

* Divers want a city law requiring one flag per diver removed. They claim the tethers between divers underwater and flags on the surface become entangled and pose a drowning hazard. State law allows for a group of divers to use a single flag.

* Lobstermen want the law to remain in effect, saying the lives of divers could be in jeopardy if one flag represents multiple divers and boat operators on the ocean surface cannot see where each and every diver is. Lobstermen have long been leery of divers taking lobsters from their traps.

Diver: Willing to work with lobstermen

John Blackadar is sympathetic to the worries of Cape Ann lobstermen. He admits there are some scuba divers who deliberately open traps and steal lobsters, and others who choose to ignore both city and state laws requiring divers to stay within 100 feet of a dive flag.

But Blackadar, who once ran Quincy's underwater recovery dive team, lives in Hanover and now sits on the board of directors for the Bay State Council of Divers, is not convinced that enforcing Gloucester's current dive ordinances is the way to appease complaining lobstermen.

"Like any organization, we want to do the right thing," he said, "but not everybody should be punished for the few people who break the rules."

Blackadar said he and other divers have been happy to recommend changing some of the city's dive ordinances to favor lobstermen. One current law forbids lobstermen from tending their gear within 25 feet of a dive flag. The law, he said, prevents lobstermen from doing their job, especially in productive lobster fishing areas, such as the shoreline between the Annisquam River and Rockport, where hundreds of divers swim among thousands of lobster buoys every summer.

Blackadar and other divers are recommending that the City Council repeal the ordinance so lobstermen can tend to all their gear, even within inches of dive flags.

Blackadar said even though he has made it a point in the past to help lobstermen out, like finding lost traps after a storm and lecturing other divers who stray outside the 100-foot radius around a flag, divers as a whole get a bad rap.

"We do sometimes get harassed," Blackadar said. "Some lobstermen rev up their engines when they get close to us."

The issue of divers stealing lobsters directly out of traps is not new to Blackadar. He said he has personally called the Coast Guard a few times after seeing divers come to the surface with illegally caught lobsters.

"We are concerned (for the well being of the lobstermen)," said Blackadar, "because they have to make a living, and we've known most of them for years."

But the concessions divers are willing to make regarding Gloucester's ordinances stop with the dive flag, Blackadar said. It is just plain unsafe, he said, for divers swimming in groups to each have to tow a flag, as one of Gloucester's dive ordinances requires.

The city's law runs contrary to the state's, which says groups of divers can be represented by just one dive flag if the divers all stay within 100 feet of the flag. The problem with the city's law, Blackadar said, is that the tethers between swimmers and flags on the surface become tangled and pose a safety hazard for the diver.

Blackadar said when he comes to dive on Cape Ann, he usually travels with groups of up to 15 other Bay State Council of Divers members, and he keeps the other swimmers in close proximity to dive flags.

"We swim in groups, tight groups, (with one dive flag), so we don't have the tangling problems," he said.

Lobstermen should remember that it was the divers who first thought about liability, he said.

"Remember," Blackadar said, "we put the dive flag into effect years and years ago, because we were worried about safety. A lot of divers back then were upset (with the decision)."

Lobsterman: Divers need to obey rules

Gloucester lobsterman Nick Parisi has accidentally bumped into enough scuba divers swimming without flags and seen enough bags and coolers full of undersized or pregnant lobsters to know there is a problem with the city's dive ordinances.

"I was steaming in once and seen a hand sticking out of the water right in front of me," Parisi said. "I shut down the engine immediately." He said the scuba diver just laughed and swam back to shore when Parisi yelled that he had been "scared to death" by the near miss.

Another time a diver came up directly beneath Parisi's vessel, pounded on the hull and told Parisi not to put the engine in gear.

"They're putting flags on their boats or on shore and coming to the surface half a mile away," Parisi said. "'I got lost, I got disoriented,' they'll say. It is going to happen. One of them is going to get run over."

But the biggest problem, Parisi said, has been divers stealing lobsters right out of his traps.

Parisi said he once put out 100 traps, and when he pulled them up a few days later, 67 of the traps had open doors. This is something a fish could never do considering the doors on the top of the wired, metal traps are bound by tightly-strapped bungee cords.

Besides catching lobsters, crabs, sea stars and the occasional fish in his traps, Parisi said he has pulled up diving gloves and a flashlight. He knows another lobsterman whose catch once yielded an expensive watch and dive knife.

He said every summer he sees a few divers walking up on shore or climbing back into their boats with a bag stuffed full of lobsters.

"You can pretty much tell when a diver gets out of the water with a bag with 25 lobsters, you can tell they aren't getting them legally," he said. "We're pulling 100 traps and getting maybe 10 lobsters. They're coming up with 30. They ruin it for everybody."

Parisi said he has called the game wardens on more than one occasion to report suspicious behavior from divers, like when he sees bag after bag of lobsters being loaded into divers' boats, or when he is pulling traps and bubbles from the divers are directly below and preceding him along his string of traps. Sometimes the divers are arrested for harvesting undersized and pregnant lobsters, Parisi said. More often than not, though, the divers are out of the water and driving away by the time law enforcement officials have arrived.

But Parisi insists it is only a few bad apples who spoil diving for everyone else.

"I've met some really nice (divers), and I've met some arrogant (jerks)," he said. "But there's a lot more divers who make up for the short few."

One time he pulled a trap up and found a full bottle of expensive tequila with a note written on it.

"'Thanks, Nick,' the note read, 'I took four lobsters.' To this day I don't know who it was," said Parisi, adding that he was impressed someone would take the lobsters, return to the surface, write the note on the bottle and dive back down to put the bottle in the trap.

It is almost impossible, Parisi says, to police the water and prove whether or not people are stealing lobsters. So the only thing that can be done is to look out for the safety of divers, and that means keeping the current law regarding dive flags in Gloucester's books.

"(They're diving) with one flag, and they're all over the place," Parisi said. "You can't have one flag for 10 people."

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