ELLSWORTH, Maine — At the urging of fishermen who dive for urchins to the west of Penobscot Bay, the advisory Sea Urchin Zone Council is recommending to state officials that those fishermen be given twice as many days to fish as they got this past year.
Due to previous overfishing, the number of urchins harvested annually in Maine remains at the lowest levels they have been over the last 25 years, resulting in a limited number of authorized fishing days. In 2010, an estimated 2.2 million pounds of urchins were caught in Maine, down from an all-time high of 41 million pounds in 1993. The estimated overall value to fishermen of the 2010 urchin landings in Maine was $4.5 million, according to official Maine Department of Marine Resources statistics.
Because of the decline, fishermen in urchin Zone 1, which includes the western side of Penobscot Bay and everything between it and the New Hampshire border, recently have been limited to only 10 days of harvesting urchins each year. Fishermen in Zone 2, which includes the eastern side of Penobscot Bay and the coast east to the Canadian border, have been allowed to fish for 45 days because the estimated urchin population is higher.
“It’s in a little better condition, but we are watching it closely,” Linda Mercer, director of DMR’s bureau of resource management, said Friday about the Zone 2 fishery.
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