Saving Seafood

State and Local

Maine elver fishing industry had one of its most successful seasons ever

May 10, 2022 — Maine’s baby eel fishing industry is wrapping up one of the most successful seasons in its history.

Maine is the only state in the country with a significant fishery for baby eels, which are also called elvers. The elvers are sold to Asian aquaculture companies that raise them to maturity for use as food.

Fishermen have just about tapped out the season’s quota of about 9,300 pounds of eels, state regulators said. The eels were worth nearly $20 million at the docks, with a per-pound price of $2,162, regulators said Monday.

The per-pound price was the third highest in state history, and the total value was at least the fifth highest, state records show.

Read the full story at News Center Maine

 

Maine’s struggling Atlantic herring fishery gets boost from NOAA disaster assistance

May 9, 2022 — NOAA Fisheries has awarded Maine $7,191,787 to provide disaster assistance for the state’s struggling Atlantic herring fishery. NOAA Fisheries will work with the Maine Department of Marine Resources to administer these funds.

“The drastic reduction in Atlantic herring quotas has caused significant losses in primary income and threatened job security for many in the herring industry,” said Senator [Susan] Collins, in a news release. “Given the unstable status of our Atlantic herring fishery, and its role in supporting Maine’s iconic lobster industry, I advocated for the State of Maine’s commercial fishery failure declaration request.  This financial assistance provided through the designation is crucial to the survival of Maine’s Atlantic herring fishery.”

Read the full story at the Penbay Pilot

New Hampshire to receive $600K in funding for Atlantic herring fishery disaster

May 9, 2022 — More than $600,000 will come to New Hampshire to help those impacted by the 2019 Atlantic herring fishery disaster.

A scientific assessment in 2020 found herring were overfished, leading to a disaster declaration by the federal government.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-New Hampshire, said the funding will help combat economic issues caused by the disaster.

Read the full story and watch the video at WMUR 9

 

New York: Wind Farm Study Moorings Anger Fishermen

May 6, 2022 — Fishermen on the South Fork are angered by the placement in August of several dozen 500-pound concrete blocks on the ocean floor off Wainscott, moorings for the telemetry devices in use for the South Fork Wind Fisheries Study Work Plan that was a condition for the East Hampton Town Trustees’ lease agreement allowing the South Fork Wind farm’s transmission cable to make landfall on a beach under their jurisdiction.

Researchers with Stony Brook University who are conducting the five-year study required of the wind farm’s developers are at present on a regular visit to the sensor array to collect data, replace batteries, and deploy new, smaller, and retrievable moorings alongside the existing 500-pound blocks. A spokeswoman for the developers, Orsted U.S. Offshore Wind and Eversource Energy, said on Tuesday that the original moorings will be removed.

Bonnie Brady, executive director of the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association, criticized the deployment of the concrete blocks on the sea floor where dozens of boats fish. She described the area as “a really busy squid, fluke, all-of-it area,” she said on Monday. “Why would academia treat fishermen so poorly when they’ve got a body of knowledge academics can’t begin to?” For trawl fishermen, the concrete blocks are a hazard, Ms. Brady said.

Read the full story at the East Hampton Star

Gov. DeSantis announces record funding to fight red tide in Florida

May 5, 2022 — Gov. Ron DeSantis spoke at Frenchy’s Rockaway Grill in Clearwater Wednesday afternoon to announce what was called record-level funding for red tide mitigation in Florida.

Signage at the event was for “Protecting Florida Together,” his office’s environmental initiatives slogan. The governor was joined by Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Shawn Hamilton, and a variety of lawmakers and state leaders.

The governor started the event by thanking Frenchy’s for hosting him, saying the last time he was there was to watch the Super Bowl when the Tampa Bay Buccaneers played. He introduced a variety of officials with him as “a great cast of characters,” then jumped into the speech.

“We’re here today to announce some new funding that I’ve approved in next year’s budget, now I’ve not signed the whole budget yet because we’re still going through those, I’ve got line item veto authority,” DeSantis said. “We’ve gotta make sure we get it right. But we have done more than any governor to help put resources to bear for research and mitigation efforts against red tide. If you look at the four years before I became governor, those four years, there was a total of $2.5 million dollars that was allocated to address the research and mitigation of red tide. Once I make this announcement today, for my four years, we went from $2.5 million to $40 million.”

DeSantis said he and state leaders were excited about the funding efforts.

Read the full story at WFLA

Groups question aquaculture “roadmap”

May 5, 2022 — A group of scientists, students and organizations earlier this spring wrote a letter to the director of the Maine Sea Grant program expressing concern about a recently released 10-year plan for the state’s growing aquaculture industry.

The Maine Aquaculture Roadmap 2022-2032 was produced by the Maine Aquaculture Hub, a network founded by five organizations: Maine Sea Grant, the Maine Aquaculture Association, the Maine Aquaculture Innovation Center, Coastal Enterprises Inc. and the University of Maine Aquaculture Research Institute. Prior to the report’s release, the writers held a series of focus groups to gather input from interested parties, including aquaculturists, fishermen, government agencies, academics, environmental groups, nonprofits and others.

But critics, in a letter to Gayle Zydlewski, director of Maine Sea Grant, voiced concerns regarding “the framing; timing; representativeness of participants; diversity, equity, and inclusion; and limited focus on education.”

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American

 

MAINE: American Aquafarms buys shuttered Gouldsboro seafood processing plant

May 3, 2022 — American Aquafarms has purchased a former sardine cannery in Gouldsboro, indicating the company will likely continue to pursue a salmon farm in Frenchman Bay after being dealt a major permitting setback last month.

The sale of the Maine Fair Trade Lobster plant from East Coast Seafood to American Aquafarms closed Friday, according to East Coast Seafood CEO Bob Blais. American Aquafarms has said that it plans to use the 11-acre property in the village of Prospect Harbor for a hatchery and processing facility.

Thomas Brennan, American Aquafarms director of project development, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday. On Friday, he said knew the company was heading in the direction of a sale, but didn’t have a firm closing date.

“It’s going to happen,” Brennan said. “It’s just a question of when.”

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

Maine dam owner to make changes to try to save salmon

May 3, 2022 — The owner of hydroelectric dams in Maine said Monday it’s going to make changes to some of its operations to try to help save the final remaining wild Atlantic salmon in the United States.

The country’s last wild populations of the fish are found in a few Maine rivers. Salmon counters found fewer of the fish on one of those rivers, the Penobscot, last year than in any year since 2016.

Brookfield Renewable U.S. said Monday that it has begun shutdown procedures for dams on the lower Kennebec River to help the salmon migrate. The company is a subsidiary of a larger Canadian company that owns many dams in Maine.

Read the full story at AP News

Maine’s fisherman report record $890M haul

May 3, 2022 — Maine’s commercial fishing industry set a new record last year, with a historic haul valued at more than $980 million, according to newly released data.

Figures from the state Department of Marine Resources show the value of fish landings jumped by more than $350 million between 2020 and 2021, breaking a previous record.

By far, lobster landings were the most valuable commercial fishery in Maine last year, with more than $730 million in landed value at an average wholesale price of $6.71 per-pound, according to the state agency. Lobsters were followed by soft shell clams, which were the second-most valuable species, with harvesters reporting more than $25 million in sales.

Elver fishermen reported more than $16 million in landings, making it the third most valuable fishery last year, the agency said. The elver fishery grew from $525 to $1,831 per pound between 2020 and 2021, according to the landings data.

Read the full story at The Center Square 

Maine lobstermen fear disaster as new gear regulations take effect

May 2, 2022 — Doug McLennan looks out his window in South Thomaston every morning at the traps and boats in his yard and worries about the future of lobster fishing in Maine.

McLennan’s wife, Laura, is his sternman. His two sons, who have homes on either side of his driveway, are lobster fishermen, too. His great-grandfather was the legendary “Tall Barney Beal” of Jonesport, a Grand Banks fisherman and the 6-foot-6 descendent of the original settler of Beals Island, known for his incredible strength.

McLennan isn’t worried about the state of the fishery. Despite a dip in landings last year, more than 100 million pounds of lobster were hauled and their value broke records. Also, Maine’s lobstermen have a reputation for sustainable practices that preserve the stock for future generations, he said.

What worries McLennan and thousands of other Maine lobstermen is the latest round of federal regulations designed to protect the endangered North Atlantic right whale, and additional measures being planned for the next decade. The newest regulations took effect Sunday, though their enforcement has been delayed until supply chain issues for some of the required gear are resolved.

This is just the latest in gear regulation change required by the Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Plan, which was put in place in 1997 and has been amended several times since. The current changes comprise the first phase of a 10-year conservation plan to reduce the risk of right whale entanglements in fishing gear by 98 percent.

Many lobstermen have raised concerns about safety and the potential for gear failure and loss of expensive traps under the new rules, and they worry about what is coming next.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald