December 20, 2021 — Maine’s northern shrimp fishery has been closed for seven years and regulators decided Friday to continue the harvest moratorium for another three years with no signs of rebound.
But in a change, officials with the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission entertained the idea of opening a small personal-use fishery at the suggestion of the Maine Department of Marine Resources and planned to look into it in the future.
A moratorium was enacted after the northern shrimp stock collapsed in 2013 and has been in place ever since. It is unclear what caused the shrimp’s downturn but recent research suggests that a species of squid that rode into the Gulf of Maine on a historic 2012 heatwave may have played a significant role.
Maine is the southernmost range of the shrimp and the gulf’s warming waters are also suspected to be part of the reason the cold-loving shrimp have struggled to bounce back, even with no commercial fishing for nearly a decade.