Lobstering Becomes A Way Of Life For Cape Tech Senior

ORLEANS – Glenn Svenningsen said when he was born, his father had already fallen in love with lobstering and left construction to pursue it full time.

 “I hated it,” said Svenningsen, standing in front of a stack of lobster traps at his house in Orleans. “I always went when I was little and I got really seasick.” 

So Svenningsen, now 18 and a senior at Cape Cod Regional Technical High School, did a lot of landscaping and freshwater fishing but had no desire to follow his father, also named Glenn. 

His feeling about the industry changed when he started talking to a neighbor. Johnny Soposki, a few years older, used to drive from upstate New York and go fishing whenever he didn’t have high school.

 “I was like, ‘Dude, you like it that much?’” Glenn remembers asking. “And he was like, ‘I love it.’”

Svenningsen tried again, convinced himself getting sick was a mental game he had to win, and he did. Before eighth grade he got 25 lobster pots, and he and a friend got student permits.

 “That was fun,” Svenningsen said with a smile.

It wasn’t long before he bought a 28-foot boat, F/V Good Enough, and found himself looking forward to 4:15 a.m. wakeups. And he didn’t just lobster, he went fishing with anyone he could, catching black sea bass and conch for instance. 

 “When I have to work on land I hate getting up, [but] on the ocean it’s no problem,” he said. 

When school ended he went on every trip on his dad’s boat. In September he still had time to make half as many, thanks to a co-op program at Cape Cod Tech. 

The last two years he has also spent time working on another boat, the Hex, which he bought from a friend of his father’s. 

 “I cut the whole thing apart. We put on new gunnels and a doghouse. Last year was the deck and transom,” he said of working on the boat with his father.

Before he bought the boat, permit and about 300 traps, Glenn’s father sat him down and talked about the industry and investment. Glenn decided he would move ahead, and his dad and mom Tessa supported him.

 “I have so much debt,” Glenn admitted. “You will make it back if you work hard enough.” 

But lobstering on the Outer Cape just got more complicated.

Concerns about diminishing numbers of lobsters prompted the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC), which manages lobsters for the region, to come up with new conservation rules. 

The rules included a gauge increase that meant fishermen could catch larger-sized females so they would be able to spawn more often. Maine and New Hampshire balked, and state legislators announced that they would not support the gauge increase. The industry in Maine, exponentially larger than the Commonwealth’s, prefers a conservation method they have relied on for decades called V-notching. 

A small V shape is cut into the tail flipper of an egg-bearing female lobster and she is thrown back into the water. If the lobster is caught again with this telltale, she must be released, protecting future spawning.

The ASMFC then reversed course and repealed the gauge increase as well as other changes, so the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries issued regulations this summer to implement the federal reversal, so it would stay in compliance.

When the state opted to match federal rules, close to 40 state-permitted lobstermen on the Outer Cape took a hit. They had been exempted from the stricter V-notching regulations since 2000, when they had worked with the state to implement more stringent regulations that relied on a gauge increase in exchange. 

The rules from ASMFC require Outer Cape lobstermen to abide by a new V-notch standard. Outer Cape lobstermen argued that the rules are discriminatory because the change severely impacts them and not others. This spring, the Outer Cape Lobstermen’s Association sued, asserting, among other things, that V-notching is not an appropriate conservation measure and can make lobsters more susceptible to bacterial infections. In the lawsuit, they also pointed to studies where a gauge increase led to a 1.3 percent increase in egg production, much better than V-notching and a lower gauge size. 

Although sympathetic, a state judge ruled against them.

 “It’s bad,” said Svenningsen. “It devalues my permit.”

The change in regulations means fishermen on the Outer Cape are throwing back close to a quarter of their catch.

 “No one thinks about the ramifications on those who have to work under those regulations who already made an investment,” Svenningsen said.

Soposki, who helped convince Svenningsen to get into the industry, said the changes are particularly hard on those entering the business. Hex and Good Enough are small boats. Soposki crews on a larger boat, F/V Time Bandit, owned by Kurt Martin, which has state and federal permits. When Soposki was out on the 42-foot Time Bandit, they pulled traps that had a run of V-notched lobsters. 

 “Generally, they are together, so there were three throwbacks to every keeper,” Soposki said. 

With federal and state permits, Martin can set his gear in different spots and find more keepers. The Good Enough and the Hex would stay in state waters within three miles from shore. Plus, Svenningsen can only move 25 pots at a time instead of more than 100. 

Soposki, Martin and the Svenningsens are all close, having lived in the same neighborhood in Orleans. Soposki spent a lot of time with Glenn and his family when he was away from his own. 

 “His parents took me under their wing; I’ve grown really close with them,” Soposki said. “They helped me stay in the game, gave me some family structure.” 

Just as the younger Svenningsen started fishing because of Soposki, the elder Svenningsen changed careers after lobstering with Martin. 

 “I went out one time with Kurt and that was it,” he said. He was already skilled at a number of things; he built his own house for instance.

 “Big Glenn is good at everything. He can paint cars, build cars, build houses, boats,” said Soposki.

Soposki said the up-and-coming fishermen talk about the skills and work effort of people like Martin. 

 “The older guys? They are like animals,” he said. 

Younger Glenn is also handy. He bought a wreck of a truck for $500 and welded it together; Soposki calls him “bungie man” because if you give him a bungie cord he can fix almost anything.

 “I actually have him in my phone as bungie man,” Soposki said with a chuckle. 

For not loving fishing initially, Soposki said, Svenningsen has certainly taken to it. “I’ve been through some pretty tough days with him, but at the end of the day he is still smiling even though he got his ass kicked.” 

In recent years, the elder Svenningsen has started building boats during the off-seasons. First, he built a more comfortable vessel for himself, called Resilience, with help from well-known boat builder Roger Carroll. Next was Martin’s Time Bandit.

He has three lobster boats in the queue. Svenningsen also has some recreational boats to build, which the younger Svenningsen said require a bit too much polishing for him.

Both Svenningsens have been working on the Hex, the dad with an oversight role. 

 “That’s (younger) Glenn’s project. At the end of every night I will get him on target. He is more than capable of doing the work.”

Svenningsen never pushed his son to get into fishing, and recent changes are worrisome.

 “The science isn’t there. How do you base an assessment on [researchers] going out a couple times a year?” he said. “You are the mercy of whoever comes up with the rule change. They make up our rules and we get mowed over.”

The younger Svenningsen still has most of senior year ahead of him, but he has been paying attention to what has been happening. 

 “I’ve been learning,” he said. “I’m interested in going to meetings and talking about the problems.”