May 15, 2024 — Saco, Maine, U.S.A.-based restaurant chain Luke’s Lobster has expanded its Lift All Boats program, Luke’s Lobster Chief Innovation Officer Ben Conniff told SeafoodSource at 2024 Seafood Expo North America, which took place 10 to 12 March in Boston, Massachusetts U.S.A.
The program was first launched in the summer of 2022 and was designed to encourage Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) youth involvement in Maine’s lobster industry.
March 7, 2024 — America’s lobster fishing business dipped in catch while grappling with challenges including a changing ocean environment and new rules designed to protect rare whales.
The lobster industry, based mostly in Maine, has had an unprecedented decade in terms of the volume and value of the lobsters brought to the docks. But members of the industry have also said they face existential threats from proposed rules intended to protect the North Atlantic right whale and climate change that is influencing where lobsters can be trapped.
Fishermen from Massachusetts, Rhode Island and other Northeast states also harvest lobsters with traps from the cold waters of the Atlantic Ocean, but about 80% comes to the docks in Maine in a typical years.
Maine fishermen’s catch in 2023 fell more than 5% from the year that preceded it, and the total of 93.7 million pounds of lobsters caught was the lowest figure since 2009, according to data released Friday by the Maine Department of Marine
March 6, 2024 — “Every year, there is a new issue facing the industry,” Tristan Porter, president of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association (MLA), said as the trade organization opened its 70th annual meeting during the Maine Fishermen’s Forum on March 1.
For lobstermen and the commercial lobster fishery, there are three big issues facing the industry: protecting North Atlantic right whales, maintaining a sustainable fishery and the federal leasing in the Gulf of Maine for floating offshore wind energy — plus the myriad of federal and state regulations and public hearings and, at times, lawsuits, that go with them.
Lobstermen had been facing implementing measures to achieve a 90 percent risk reduction to right whales that would have curtailed fishing in 2023, but this was put on pause until 2028 through a federal omnibus spending bill in December 2022.
“You’re fishing now because of the Consolidated Appropriations Act,” Patrick Keliher, commissioner of the Department of Marine Resources (DMR), told the hundreds of fishermen in attendance.
Then, in June 2023, a federal court ruled in favor of the MLA, which had sued the National Marine Fisheries Service, or NOAA Fisheries, regarding the data used to determine the risk of vertical fishing lines to right whales. That risk calculation would further restrict the lobster fishery — possibly out of existence.
“We did not have the money to do this, but the industry stepped up,” said Patrice McCarron, the MLA’s policy director.
March 4, 2024 — Last year’s lobster catch in Maine fell more than 5% for a total yield of 93.8 million pounds, new data from the Maine Department of Marine Resource showed Friday, as climate change and regulations put in place to protect a rare whale species continue to impact the fragile industry.
Fishermen in Maine, who are responsible for catching more than 90% of the nation’s lobsters per year, caught 93.8 million pounds of the crustacean in 2023 (the lowest level since 2009) and were paid $4.95 per pound, up significantly from the $3.97 per pound paid to fishermen last year.
The sharp rise in price paid harvesters a total of $464.4 million, almost $72 million more than in 2023 despite the lower catch, indicative of a widely fluctuating value that involved prices spiking to $6.70 per pound in 2021 before falling to less than $4 in 2022.
The lobster industry in the state has been in flux for a decade as lobster populations move north toward Canada and away from the United States in search of cooler waters—the Gulf of Maine is warming faster than 99% of the world’s ocean surface, according to the University of New England.
New England’s fishermen have also been increasingly impacted by regulations put in place to protect right whales—one of the most endangered species of all large whales—that impact when and for how long fishermen can be on the water.
The decline in catch continues to build on a trend in the Maine lobster industry since harvesters caught a record high 132.6 million pounds in 2016, and 2023 marked the second year in a row the total catch has declined.
March 4, 2024 — Maine lobstermen raked in $464 million at the docks last year, rebounding from the worst year the fishery had seen in a decade, according to the annual report released Friday by the Maine Department of Marine Resources.
The increase in the value of Maine’s famed fishery comes even as lobstermen reported the smallest catch in 15 years, at 94 million pounds. The jump in value was partly due to the second-highest boat price on record, $4.95 per pound.
The dwindling number of landings isn’t necessarily a surprise, though. State officials and members of the lobstering community say the decrease reflects the impacts of high costs of operating the fishery last year. And the dip in poundage indicates how lobstermen navigated the challenging obstacles.
“Fishermen are now very strategic about how they fish. Expenses are through the roof, so you can’t afford to be out if you’re not making money,” said Patrice McCarron, a lobsterman and policy director with the Maine Lobstermen’s Association. “That causes the number of trips to go down and is going impact the amount of lobster that we all brought in.”
March 4, 2024 — America’s lobster fishing business dipped in catch while grappling with challenges including a changing ocean environment and new rules designed to protect rare whales.
The lobster industry, based mostly in Maine, has had an unprecedented decade in terms of the volume and value of the lobsters brought to the docks. But members of the industry have also said they face existential threats from proposed rules intended to protect the North Atlantic right whale and climate change that is influencing where lobsters can be trapped.
Maine fishermen’s catch in 2023 fell more than 5% from the year that preceded it, and the total of 93.7 million pounds of lobsters caught was the lowest figure since 2009, according to data released Friday by the Maine Department of Marine Resources. The figure tracks with the up-and-down year lobster fishermen experienced, said Dave Cousens a fishermen based out of Criehaven island and a former president of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association.
March 2, 2024 — The Lobster Institute’s U.S.- Canada Lobster Town Meeting took place in mid-January to open dialogue within the lobster industry in the Northeast of the United States and Canada. The event included various industry members, including commercial fishermen, scientists, policymakers, managers, and association representatives. Together, these individuals came to discuss matters that are shaping the lobster fishery.
The focused sessions at the meeting included lobster markets and the implications of gauge size changes in the United States, climate change, offshore wind development, and innovations in gear.
Session 1 was focused on lobster market issues and the impact of the U.S. minimum gauge size increase. In October, National Fisherman shared that if the bigger gauge is enacted, lobstermen will need to find ways to address the state of Maine’s inequities with Canada if this change is implemented within the states. The lobster abundance index passed a predetermined threshold of a 35% decline in recruit abundance indices and, as such, triggered the minimum gauge increase in hopes of enhancing spawning stock biomass.
Initially, the change was to be implemented on June 1, 2024. However, comments from the Maine Department of Marine Resources (DMR) and others have delayed the increase to January 1, 2025. They hoped the delay would provide additional time for the Maine lobster fishery to work with Canadian fisheries officials on management measures that support the equity of fishermen and stock resiliency on both sides of the border.
February 27, 2024 — Lobstermen and the agency that oversees them — the Maine Department of Marine Resources (DMR) — sparred a little over state data on lobster populations that lobstermen said does not reflect what they see when fishing, when the Zone B Lobster Council met Feb. 21 at the Mount Desert Island High School library.
The DMR estimates the number of baby lobsters, called “year of young,” through trawl and ventless trap surveys to project future adult populations and manage the fishery — and to adhere to interstate fishery rules from the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC), an interstate board managing fisheries for 15 states, including Maine.
Last May, the ASMFC’s American Lobster Board approved a “trigger” measure that would raise the minimum size of legally caught lobsters and, eventually, the size of trap vents when the annual lobster year of young abundance, also called “recruit,” declined by 35 percent.
Larger trap vents allow larger lobsters to escape traps, and a higher minimum size means smaller, previously legal lobsters are thrown back. Both measures are used to help maintain a healthy population.
At the time, it looked like it would take a couple of years to reach that trigger, but instead the trigger came quick, in late 2023, when data showed a 37 percent decline in settlement, DMR Commissioner Patrick Keliher said. He was able to leverage a seven-month delay to implement the trigger until Jan. 1, 2025.
February 20, 2024 — The Maine Lobster Community Alliance (MLCA), a non-profit based in Kennebunk whose mission is to foster thriving coastal communities and preserve Maine’s lobstering heritage, announced today 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.
February 16, 2024 — The young whale never had it easy.
Only 1½ years old, the whale struggled to swim nearly from the start. A rope corkscrewed around the base of its fluke in 2022 dug into its skin and made every fin stroke punishing. Researchers knew the whale would eventually die of exhaustion if nothing was done.
When scientists spotted the female whale — dubbed #5120 — in Cape Cod Bay in Massachusetts last winter, they wanted to intervene. But bad weather made any attempt at disentangling it impossible.
By this winter, it was too late. Its carcass washed ashore on Martha’s Vineyard last month. That’s when scientists were able to pinpoint where the trouble started.
Purple markings on the rope around the whale indicated it came from Maine waters, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service, also called NOAA Fisheries. It is the first time a North Atlantic right whale, one of the most endangered marine mammals on Earth, was found dead while entangled in rope from the state’s famed trap pot fishery for lobster and crab.