Saving Seafood

Lobster gauge increase delayed a second time

August 7, 2024 — The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) just voted to delay the planned gauge change to increase the minimum allowable catch size in Lobster Management Area 1 until July 1, 2025. The Commission also approved Addendum 30, which clarifies that lobsters imported from Canada under the U.S. minimum size would be banned.

The proposed gauge increase, known as Addendum 27, was a response to a 35 percent decline in juvenile lobsters. This proactive measure, initiated in 2017, was aimed at enhancing the resilience of lobster stock and was initially set to be implemented on June 1, 2024. However, following feedback from the Maine Department of Marine Resources Commissioners and others, a compromise was reached, resulting in a seven-month delay and a new implementation date of Jan. 1, 2025.

Read the full article at National Fisherman

The story of how the lobster roll became New England’s most iconic food

July 26, 2024 — Few foods evoke summer in New England like the lobster roll. The sandwiches are as iconic as lighthouses and the dropped r’s of the northeastern U.S. region’s unique Yankee dialects. Once a lowly work lunch for fishermen, the lobster roll is in such demand today that Hannaford supermarkets has announced a $10 version of the coastal classic, available across stores until Labor Day.

“As New England tourism has grown, the rise of the lobster roll has gone along with it,” says Evan Hennessey, chef-owner of Stages at One Washington and the Living Room in Dover, New Hampshire. “It’s this incredible, flavorful, quintessential right-from-the-ocean New England food that—and here’s the key part—you can walk around and eat.”

History of the lobster roll

Lobster didn’t always have such cachet. The crustaceans were once so abundant that they could easily be caught in shallow waters. “For a long time, [lobsters] were just local food—stuff you ate if you lived on the coast,” says Boston University food historian Megan Elias.

Branden Lewis, chef and sustainability professor at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, Rhode Island, says that English and Portuguese sailors, shipwrights, and fishermen created the earliest iteration of the lobster roll by tucking the discarded trimmings of tail and claw meat between pieces of bread.

Lobster recipes didn’t gain cultural capital until the country’s nascent elite began vacationing along the East Coast, especially in states like Rhode Island, where they built summer “cottages.” The rolls were a mainstay until the early 1960s, when the country found itself besotted by the “proper” cooking techniques of Julia Child.

New England’s iconic sandwich came back into fashion in the 1990s, with the renewed interest in American regional foods. “By then, lobster is even more expensive,” Elias says. “There are even fewer of them. So it’s like, ‘Oh, it’s regional and it’s also hard to get, so it must be cool.’”

Read the full article at National Geographic

CONNECTICUT: Connecticut lobster industry forces fishermen into new career

July 3, 2024 — The New England lobster industry has played a vital role in generations of fishermen’s lives. Kids as young as six years old are following in their parent’s footsteps, hauling traps to be a part of something bigger than themselves.

Many lobstermen thought they would be on the water until the day they die, but in Connecticut, that isn’t the case.

Poor climate conditions have caused an almost total decline in the lobster population across the Long Island Sound over two decades, ending lobstering careers.

DJ King is a former lobsterman from Branford. His livelihood is still on the water, but not reliant on lobsters.

He says his love for trapping came early.

“I started with ten wooden traps, I was in a small boat, I would go out with my father, we pulled them by hand and caught a few every day,” King said.

What started as just a hobby quickly turned into a lifestyle.

“We did very well with lobsters back then, it was very lucrative, King said. “We would get around 600 or 800 a day usually. like 60-70 per 10 trawl, the guys couldn’t band them fast enough.”

But one day, after years of the good life, the traps came up empty.

“It never rebounded from that ‘99 year when we were catching hundreds daily,” King said. “Then all the sudden the pots were empty, or the lobsters were coming up dead. Even if they were alive, they wouldn’t make it back to the docks.”

Read the full article at FOX 61

MASSACHUSETTS: Lobstermen and Scientists See a Fishery in Flux

May 30, 2024 — This year, May 15 marked the beginning of the lobster fishing season on the Outer Cape. The fishery is not an insignificant one here. There are 42 fishermen on the Outer Cape who collectively land about 830,000 pounds of lobster every year, according to data on the Mass. Lobstermen’s Association website. This represents about 5 percent of the Massachusetts fishery.

While overall the fishery seems stable, some lobstermen are seeing changes that have them worried about its future. Scientists are looking into what role the changing climate may be playing in those changes, but they don’t have definitive answers.

“It’s horrible,” said Mike Rego, a lobsterman and owner of the F/V Miss Lilly who operates out of Provincetown. “Last year was the worst year I ever had.”

Dana Pazolt, another Provincetown lobsterman who owns the F/V Black Sheep, said that the last four years have been slim for lobsters around the Outer Cape. “You’ve got to hunt for them,” he said. “I can’t tell you why that is.”

The surface waters of the Gulf of Maine are warming at a rate of about one degree per decade, faster than 99 percent of the world’s oceans, according to the Gulf of Maine Research Institute.

Meanwhile, in other areas, warming has already had an effect — it played a major role in causing the collapse of the lobster fishery in Long Island Sound in 1999.

Lobsters do appear to be shifting their range north. From 1985 to 2016, Maine experienced a 650-percent increase in its lobster population, according to data from the Maine Dept. of Marine Resources. This may be due in part to the decline in Atlantic cod, a lobster predator, but it is also likely due to warming temperatures making lobster conditions more favorable farther north.

Read the full article at The Provincetown Independent 

MAINE: Maine’s wharf owners scramble to repair what they can before lobstering season starts

May 1, 2024 — Chris Hole was busy at work on a sunny Friday morning, taking apart his commercial fishing wharf like a game of Jenga.

After pulling up the surface wooden slats, Hole used a fork lift to lower large wooden beams down to the deck. Josh Saxton, Hole’s right-hand man, would then slip between the large gaps in the deck to put the support beams in place.

Hole owns Henry Allen’s Seafood, a wholesaler and retailer with a commercial wharf that was battered by the series of storms in January that swept away many working waterfronts along Maine’s coast. The storms flooded Henry Allen’s historic buildings and wiped out the dock’s seawall. At a quick glance from above, Henry Allen’s wharf doesn’t look all that bad. But most of the repair work is invisible, the pummeled structure hidden beneath the surface of the deck.

Hole is of course familiar with storms.

Read the full article at the Press Herald

How New England entrepreneurs are creating skincare from lobsters

April 28, 2024 —  Re-envisioning the fishing industry to make it more sustainable and environmentally friendly. It’s a movement that started in Iceland. And now, it has inspired a similar collaboration here in New England.

The New England Ocean Cluster in Portland, Maine is trying to harness the wonders of the ocean and power the blue economy.

It was spawned by Patrick and Janeen Arnold after a visit to Iceland.

“We found at the Iceland Ocean Cluster something new, something novel,” says Arnold. “An energy where people were sharing principles and values in business.”

The Ocean Cluster brings people with common goals together to spark innovation.

Read the full article at CBS News

MAINE: Maine fishers brought in USD 611 million in 2023

March 30, 2024 — Commercial fishers in the U.S. state of Maine earned USD 611 million (EUR 564 million) at the dock in 2023, a 4 percent year-over-year increase, according to preliminary data from the Maine Department of Marine Resources (DMR).

“The Maine seafood industry continues to be a powerful economic engine for our state,” Maine Governor Janet Mills said in a statement. “The dedication to sustainability and premium quality by our fishermen, aquaculturists, and dealers is a source of tremendous pride for everyone who calls Maine home.”

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

MAINE: Lobster alliance donates $10,000 to Working Waterfront Support Fund

March 30, 2024 — The Maine Lobster Community Alliance, a non-profit organization based in Kennebunk whose mission is to foster thriving coastal communities and preserve Maine’s lobstering heritage, has announced in a press release that it is donating $10,000 to the Working Waterfront Support Fund.

The fund was established following January’s devastating storms and historic flooding that caused widespread destruction and millions of dollars of damage in communities up and down the Maine coast. According to MLCA’s website, the fund “will be utilized to provide resources and support to fishing businesses and working waterfronts that suffered damages due to the storms.”

Read the full article at Penobscot Bay Pilot

MAINE: Maine lobstermen struggle to adapt to new electronic reporting rules. Their licenses are on the line.

March 25, 2024 — Alice Mayberry and Sue Kelley spend most of their days talking to lobstermen about what they’ve hauled in. Mayberry is riffling through paper logs. Kelley is texting until 9 p.m.

Then, they both log onto the Maine Department of Marine Resources’ database and plug in what the lobstermen did for the day.

Over the last several years, state and federal regulators started requiring more fishermen to report what they caught, and where. A few years ago, only a portion of harvesters needed to submit that information, and it could be sent in on a piece of paper.

Now, all fishermen who harvest 15 species of fish – pogies, scallops, lobster, halibut, mussels, eels and others – have to file their landings, and most must do so electronically.

Fishermen in Maine are gradually learning what they’re supposed to do. For lobstermen, adjusting has been particularly hard.

Regulators used to require a random 10% of lobstermen to report their landings. The weight and value of lobster hauled from local waters were measured and reported primarily by the dealers who first purchased the fish.

Read the full article at centralmaine.com