Lumpkins says way of life is imperiled

Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2009

By JOHN WHARTON

Staff writer

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Staff photo by JOHN WHARTON

Robert Lumpkins retrieves his golden retriever, Hunter, from St. George's Creek at their home on St. George Island.

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Robert Lumpkins is scheduled to report to a federal prison at the end of October to begin serving 18 months for his role in the underreporting of rockfish harvests, but he was hard at work this week.

Lumpkins, 55, traveled Monday morning from his Golden Eye Seafood business off Route 249 near Piney Point to his home on St. George Island, stopping only briefly before putting his truck back in gear and on the road.

He said his many tasks played a factor in the charges that his check-in station falsely listed the weight of the fish that he and other commercial fishermen brought through there.

"When you're trying to catch the fish, sell the fish and check in the fish, it makes for an awful busy man," he said. "When you're wrong, you have to pay the consequences."

Lumpkins said the life of a waterman in general is paying for the consequences of pollution's role in a major depletion over 40 years in the number of oysters and crabs in the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries. Their work is made harder, he said, by restrictions on finfish harvesting as that trade switched from bank traps to the strenuous labor of pound netting.

"As time goes on, less watermen are able to make a living in the seafood business," Lumpkins said. "I think watermen are pushing the envelope as hard as we could to keep on existing."

He started a crabhouse 30 years ago, and that once seemed like enough to do for a lifetime.

"There was no need to do anything else until the last 10 or 12 years," he said. "I had to diversify and do everything I could to keep the watermen going and the business going."

Changing times have forced watermen to move from familiar work to other tasks, Lumpkins said.

"Now, I don't know what's going to happen," he said. "It's really sad to see how things have gone downhill in the last 20 years. People are doing things now that they don't really want to do. It's hard to make a living doing it."

Lumpkins said his wife's defense contractor business has generated income that they depend on. He hopes to return to his livelihood after his release from prison.

"It's all I know how to do," he said. "It's all I ever did since I was about 9 years old."

He knows he'll be re-entering a vocation with a dwindling number of participants.

"I went down to the Methodist graveyard and walked among all the watermen there, including my grandfather," he said. "There are probably more watermen buried in the Methodist graveyard than what we have [now working] in St. Mary's County."

jwharton@somdnews.com

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