ELLSWORTH, Maine — February 28, 2013 — Maine’s Department of Marine Resources has released updated 2012 landings figures that confirm what many people already knew, if only unofficially: the value of the state’s elver fishery shot up significantly last year.
The official preliminary tally of last year’s elver season, which ran from late March through the end of May, indicates that elver fishermen earned a cumulative total of nearly $38 million in 2012, which is approximately five times the cumulative total of $7.6 million that they got for their catch the year before.
Compared to 2010, it’s even more staggering. That year, the fishery generated only $584,000 in revenue for licensed fishermen — one sixty-fifth of its value in 2012.
The elver fishery now ranks behind only lobster in Maine for overall fishery value.
Updated lobster landings figures also released on Thursday indicate more than 126 million pounds of lobster were caught in Maine last year, earning lobster fishermen a cumulative total of nearly $339 million for their catch, both of which are record figures.
Due to tumult in the lobster market, however, the average price lobster fishermen earned for their catch last year was $2.69 per pound, the lowest annual price they have received since 1994.
Overall, according to DMR, Maine commercial fishermen caught 314,989,031 pounds of marine species in 2012, for which they cumulatively were paid more than $521 million.
Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News