June 29, 2017 — Maine lobstermen are hitting the water late this year because of cold weather, but without the cloud of a looming bait crisis hanging over them.
Bait freezers along the coast are full of herring and pogies, and even alewives, which means that bait is not only available, it is also much less expensive than last year when herring cost as much as 60 cents a pound, said Pat Keliher, commissioner of the state Department of Marine Resources. This year the lobstermen’s go-to bait costs about half as much.
That’s still not a great price, Keliher said. Herring fetched about 18 cents a pound at the start of the 2015 lobstering season.
“I won’t say we’re in great shape, but we are in a heck of a lot better shape than we were last year,” Keliher said.
He attributed the strong start to basic supply-and-demand economics. When the supply of bait fish is high and demand is low, lobstermen do well.
Fishermen caught herring in the deep waters off Georges Bank earlier this year than they did in 2016, Keliher said. Although they’ve landed a little more than last year – about 19.9 percent of their quota, compared with 19.1 percent at the same time last year, according to this week’s federal landing reports – this year’s catch came early enough in the season to keep prices low.
The inshore herring fishery in the Gulf of Maine opened this month. The state is applying the same restrictions it implemented last year to stretch out this local supply of fresh herring deep into the summer, when the lobster season starts to peak. These measures include weekly landing limits, a limit on how many days a week herring can be landed, and a prohibition on the use of carrier-only fishing vessels.