Saving Seafood

Maine gets $5M to support testing of alternative lobster fishing gear to reduce whale entanglement

November 28, 2023 — Maine has received more than $5 million from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation to expand the testing of alternative lobster fishing gear.

State officials see the work as a way to get more Maine feedback into the hands of federal regulators, who are looking for ways to further reduce the risk of entanglement and injury to critically endangered North Atlantic right whales.

The Maine Department of Marine Resources said the funds will support the research and testing of two kinds of emerging technology — gear that retrieves lobster traps from the ocean floor without the use of vertical lines and acoustic geolocation devices that identify traps without surface buoys.

The federal government may eventually require the use of this gear as it drafts new right whale management regulations over the next five years.

Much of the $5 million will directly cover a training and outreach program with a variety of coastal organizations, which include the Maine Sea Grant, the Island Institute Institute and the Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association, among others.

Read the full article at wbur

New England lobstermen threaten to sue feds over planned Massachusetts fishing closure

November 10, 2023 — New England lobstermen are threatening to sue a federal agency planning to make fishing on Massachusetts waters even more challenging from February until May, when they already face restrictions on where they are allowed to tend to their livelihood.

NOAA Fisheries is looking to permanently add a wedge between state and federal waters to an existing closure that stretches roughly 9,000 square miles off the Massachusetts coast, a measure feds have put in place to preserve the North Atlantic right whale.

An emergency rule prohibited trap and pot fishery buoy lines on the wedge during the past two years, but the feds are looking to make the zone permanent and have the backing of the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries.

The proposed permanent expansion to the Massachusetts Restricted Area has caught lobstermen by surprise.

Dustin Delano, chief operating officer of the New England Fishermen’s Stewardship Association, took exception to the “recklessness” of the proposal after an amendment was included in this year’s $1.7 trillion federal spending bill that looked to delay protections for the North Atlantic right whale by six years.

Read the full article at Boston Herald

New England lobstermen say they’ll likely sue if NOAA expands fishing restrictions

November 8, 2023 — The New England Fishermen’s Stewardship Association (NEFSA) has promised it will challenge NOAA in court if the administration finalizes an expansion to the Massachusetts Restricted Area (MRA) – a region of the ocean off the coast of the Northeast U.S. that prohibits lobster fishing.

NOAA is proposing modifications to the MRA that will add the temporary “wedge” closure area to the permanent closures, which last from 1 February to 30 April. The “wedge” is an area of approximately 200 square miles in between two of the existing closures that remain open to fishing.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Weakening Gulf Stream could cause decline in Maine’s lobster fishery

November 7, 2023 — Researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution confirmed with 99 percent certainty that the Gulf Stream is weakening, and with it the future of seafood species like lobster off the U.S. East Coast is uncertain.

The Gulf Stream transports warm water north from Florida along the East Coast of the U.S., influencing everything from water temperature to weather in Europe. According to a recent study, the Gulf Stream has slowed by 4 percent over the past four decades, and there is 99 percent certainty that the weakening is from more than just random chance.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

A ‘whole way of life’ at risk as warming waters change Maine’s lobster fishing

October 30, 2023 — Lobsterwoman Krista Tripp doesn’t need a scientist to tell her the normally cold waters off the coast of Maine are warming. The submersible thermometer she takes on every fishing trip proves that.

But it’s not just the warmer water that’s changing fishing here on the rocky coast of northern New England. Heavy rains are lowering the ocean’s salinity. And warm-water fish that don’t belong keep showing up.

“You can tell the water’s changing, and we’re getting new species,” says Tripp, 38. “People are posting fish they catch on Facebook and asking ‘What’s this?’ And they’re tropical fish.'”

Tripp started lobstering at her grandfather’s knee, where she learned to bait traps. She still tries to fish some of his old favorite spots near to shore, but increasingly she’s plumbing the waters right at the edge of where her permit allows, three miles offshore.

Her grandfather trapped lobster his whole life, and now Tripp, like her father before her, carries on that legacy. For generations, lobstering has helped define this slice of northern New England, where the cold Atlantic waters have been home to the species that helped build a young United States: cod, whales, lobster.

But what Tripp sees from the Shearwater’s wheelhouse is just one part of a larger problem facing the United States, as climate change warms the world’s oceans and transforms the creatures that live in them. As the oceans get hotter, sea life adapts, and many species that used to be easily fished close to land are fleeing to colder, deeper waters.

Read the full article at USA Today

MAINE: Lobster dealers hope for a fall surge

October 26, 2023 — Steamed, boiled, broiled or baked under hot coals and sand or shipped to restaurants and processors hundreds or thousands of miles away, lobster remains a major driver of Maine’s economy, contributing more than $1 billion each year.

And lobstermen’s earnings accounted for more than a third of that amount last year — $388 million, according to preliminary data from the Maine Department of Marine Resources (DMR) — bolstering local communities up and down the coast.

This year, boat prices are high but the catch is down, dealers say. Supply is meeting demand but the demand is lower than last year. While at least one local seafood retailer had a great summer, wholesale dealers’ reports are unenthusiastic. Both lobstermen and dealers are keeping fingers crossed for a big fall surge in catch.

With the state’s commercial fishery granted a six-year reprieve in December from new federal regulations that many industry voices said would decimate the fishery, the 2023 season has focused on traditional concerns, such as supply, demand, prices and bait.

“The price is up but the catch is down, and we’ve had horrible weather,” said Susan Soper, general manager of Winter Harbor Lobster Co-op. “Our retail sales were almost 60 percent down.”

Read the full article at the Ellsworth American

Delano: Biden administration won’t leave lobstermen alone

October 26, 2023 — Lawmakers and a federal appeals court last year defeated a federal plan to save endangered whales by eradicating New England’s lobster industry. With those plans undone, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is crafting a workaround scheme to regulate lobstermen out of the fishery.

Recent years have been brutal going for lobstermen, such that the survival of our trade is highly uncertain. Lobstermen are at once negotiating higher fuel costs, higher bait costs, higher shipping costs, and an agitation campaign from dark money nonprofits trained on major buyers of Maine lobster products. NOAA’s new regulatory plan is poised to decimate our inventory.

NOAA’s new plan – a rule promulgated under the Marine Mammal Protection Act – would expand an existing restricted area, where lobster fishing is banned for three months each year. The scope of the expansion is unclear as of this writing, but any expansion is unwelcome as a matter of precedent and a practical business matter.

As with the previous plan, NOAA is allegedly crafting its new rule to protect the endangered north Atlantic right whale. The agency maintains vessel strikes and entanglements with lobster gear are killing these marine mammals.

Read the full article at the Boston Herald

 

Native fishermen from US claim Canada’s DFO illegally removed lobster traps

October 24, 2023 — Native fishermen in the U.S. state of Maine claim officials with Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans recently took unwarranted and unauthorized action against them.

According to Henry Bear – past general manager of the Maliseet Nation’s commercial fishing fleet on Grand Manan Island, and past Maliseet Tribal Representative to the Maine House of Representatives – the DFO took unwarranted action against Maine-based Passamaquoddy and Maliseet fishermen by confiscating lobster traps. The fishermen were lobstering in Canadian waters of the Saint Croix River and of Passamaquoddy Bay – which form part of the border between New Brunswick, Canada and Maine in the U.S. – when the DFO reportedly confiscated the traps.

Read the full article at Seafood Source

Decline of rare right whale appears to be slowing, but scientists say big threats remain

October 23, 2023 — The decline of one of the rarest whales in the world appears to be slowing, but scientists warn the giant mammals still face existential threats from warming oceans, ship collisions and entanglement in fishing gear.

The population of North Atlantic right whales, which live off the U.S. East Coast, fell by about 25% from 2010 to 2020 and was down to only about 364 whales as of 2021. Now the whales are at around 356 in total, according to a group of scientists, industry members and government officials who study them.

This suggests the population is potentially levelling off, as equal numbers of whales could be entering the population as are being killed, the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium said Monday. However, getting an accurate count of the aquatic creatures involves certain ranges of error, which put estimates for 2021 and 2022 at roughly around the same number.

Read the full article at the Associated Press