A federal programme that offers technical training, business planning and financial aid of up to $12,000 for boat owners, captains and crews harmed by foreign competition. New England lobstermen are lining up for this programme. The Trade Adjustment Assistance Program is run out of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, with funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
All New England seacoast states have qualified for the assistance and cash aid and have been funded. Report says that more than 400 lobstermen from Essex County alone have submitted applications. Lynn Vozniak, the Essex County executive director of the USDA’s Farm Service Agency, said that to qualify for the business assistance and cash aid, lobstermen must be able to prove that they commercially harvested and sold lobsters in 2009 and at least one other year between 2006-08.
Bill Adler, executive director of the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association, credited the Maine Lobstermen’s Association for doing the initial work to determine that the program — it has also been used to help shrimpers along the Gulf of Mexico — would be open to some fishermen. He informed that the programme is also open to non-trapping lobstermen — fin fishermen who also have a lobster license and catch them as bycatch.
