September 26, 2016 — State officials are hoping what is good for elvers will be good for urchins, too.
Having implemented an electronic “swipe” card system in the elver fishery in 2014, the Maine Department of Marine Resources now is requiring urchin fishermen and wholesale dealers to use such cards to register every transaction. The requirement, which will give the department up-to-the-minute statewide harvest data, went into effect when the urchin season got underway on Sept. 1.
The goal, according to DMR officials, is to better manage the struggling fishery, which has seen far better times. Just over 20 years ago, Maine’s annual urchin landings briefly exceeded $40 million, noted Patrick Keliher, head of DMR. Only lobstering, which in the mid-1990s first passed the $100 million-a-year mark, was more valuable.
With only $4.3 million in total statewide landings in Maine in 2015, urchins now are the state’s seventh-most lucrative commercially fished species. The vast majority of all the urchins harvested in Maine are shipped to the Far East for the region’s voracious seafood market.