PORTLAND (AP) – Strict new fishing regulations will hit all New England fishermen hard. But the hardest hit may be those in Maine.

The so-called Amendment 13 regulations don’t go into effect until May 1, but already the signs are ominous here in Maine’s chief fishing port.

Some boats with long ties to Portland have started taking catches to Gloucester, Mass. A fishing gear supply store on the city’s waterfront shut down in mid-November. Last week, the port’s only ice supplier cut back its hours of operation.

By themselves, those moves wouldn’t necessarily have fishermen fidgeting. But with new regulations looming, they may be a foreboding of what is to come.

Lendall Alexander, a fourth-generation fisherman from Harpswell, said Amendment 13 will likely put some Maine boats out of business and force others to move away. Aboard his 60-foot boat, Julie D, the 44-year-old Alexander watched on a late November morning as his crew unloaded 9,500 pounds of dabs, monkfish, sole, cod and other fish at the Portland Fish Exchange fish house.

Maine fishermen are at a disadvantage because they have to travel farther than boats to the south to get to New England’s most productive fishing area, the world-famous Georges Bank east of Cape Cod.

That alone, Alexander says, will tempt many boat owners to go to Massachusetts ports so they won’t have to use up precious fishing time getting to and from the fishing grounds. They may be further lured because the Bay State – unlike Maine – lets fishermen bring lobsters ashore, which can amount to several thousand dollars a trip, and doesn’t charge a fuel tax.

If enough Maine boats begin working out of Massachusetts, the state’s fishing regime will be put at risk.

“The new regulations affect Portland disproportionately compared to other ports, mainly because of our geographic location,” said Alexander.

New England fishermen for the most part were allowed to fish when and where they chose before 1994, when the first time restrictions were put on the fleet. Since then, boats have had their “days at sea” whittled away with each regulatory change; beginning in May, the start of the next fishing year, the average boat will be allowed to fish only 52 days.

Fishermen and others in the industry say the situation now is more uncertain than ever.

For starters, the number of Maine boats going after cod, haddock and other groundfish has been cut in half since 1994, according to state officials. The New England Fishery Management Council says there were 235 Maine-based fishing boats in 2001, 163 of which caught groundfish. The vast majority are in Portland, with small numbers in ports that include Port Clyde, South Bristol, Boothbay Harbor, Rockland and Bar Harbor.

Maine’s fleet is hindered because most boats are relatively small, shorter than 65 feet or so. That means they are too small to regularly make the 20-hour trip to Georges Bank, where the fish are most plentiful.

Perhaps more importantly, the onshore fishing infrastructure has weakened – some say deteriorated – in recent years.

The number of fish processors in Portland is half what it was a decade ago. There is only one ice supplier, one commercial fishing gear supplier and fewer skilled workers to repair and maintain boats.

The industry is so lean that it won’t take much to push it over the edge, said Craig Pendleton, who owns a 54-foot boat in Portland.

“Maine has lost so much over the past few (regulatory changes),” Pendleton said. “Portland is down to one ice facility, one gear facility, and few repair facilities, such as welders. Our market is so depressed we’re really scraping bottom.”

Maggie Raymond fears that the Portland fishing industry could go the way it has in Boston. Raymond and her husband brought their 83-foot boat to Portland in 1989 because the support businesses in Boston were disappearing.

“One of the reasons we left Boston was because we couldn’t get anything done,” said Raymond, who also heads the Associated Fisheries of Maine fishing group. “It became impractical to do business there. That’s the oldest fishing port in the country and now they’ve only got a handful of boats.”

Portland’s sole ice supplier, Vessel Services Inc., began closing on Fridays and Saturdays as of last week. Because boats need tons of ice to keep their catch cold while at sea, an ice supplier is vital to a fishing port.

Edward Bradley, a longtime maritime lawyer and part owner of Vessel Services, said the company’s revenues fell 30 percent after fishing days were cut by 20 percent two years ago. If the next two years are as severe, Bradley fears the worst.

“If we lose the infrastructure, we lose a way of life, what people have been doing for 300 years or more,” Bradley said.

There are some bright spots, said Hank Soule, general manager of the Portland Fish Exchange, a fish auction house that handled 22 million pounds of fish last year from more than 150 boats.

Soule said fishermen will be helped by a rule that will allow boat owners to lease their allotted fishing days to other boat owners. Another provision will allow fishermen to go after healthy populations of fish in designated areas. The full details of the proposed regulations will be made public in January.

Soule acknowledges that the next two or three years will be painful, and that the fleet will shrink and some boats may go to Massachusetts ports. But he doesn’t hear the gloom-and-doom talk that was so prevalent earlier this year.

“Nobody’s saying it’s all over,” he said.

On the Julie D, Lendall Alexander ponders how he will deal with the cuts ahead. A decade ago he could fish all he wanted, and in 1995 he was allowed to fish 252 days a year. Next year he will have 75 days to make his living.

Alexander, like most fishermen, is keenly aware of fishing time. He’ll tell you his last fishing trip, off midcoast Maine, took three days, 12 hours and 36 minutes.

He hates to admit it, but he might even bring his catch to Massachusetts on occasion – as a matter of survival.

“Maybe I have to go to Gloucester,” he said. “It’s a matter of time.”

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