May 18, 2023 — Lawmakers in Maine are getting behind a drive to pay lobster fishers to comply with potential new fishing regulations.
Lobster and crab fishermen face the prospect of tough new rules designed to protect vanishing North Atlantic right whales. The rules would require harvesters to use new kinds of gear, and change when and where they can fish.
May 15, 2023 — The American Lobster Management Board of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission has approved new measures that could be used to provide additional protections to spawning lobsters. Addendum XXVII establishes a trigger mechanism that would automatically put into place annual gauge and escape vent sizes to increase the proportion of the population of lobsters that are “able to reproduce before being harvested, and to enhance stock resiliency by protecting larger lobsters of both sexes,” the board reported in a press release following its vote.
The vote on adoption came at the ASMFC’s 2023 Spring Meeting on May 2 in Arlington, Va.
According to Caitlin Starks, Senior Fishery Management Plan Coordinator at ASMFC, if lobster surveys register a decline in “recruit” stock of 35 percent or more from a reference level (equal to the three-year average from 2016 to 2018), a multi-year series of incremental changes to gauge and vent size will be initiated in the following fishing year.
Currently, the minimum gauge size for a lobster in Maine is 3-1/4 inches. This means that a lobster must be at least 3-1/4 inches from eye socket to edge of the carapace at the tail in order to be kept. Lobsters that are smaller than this size must be thrown back into the ocean.
The first change, coming in the spring following the year in which the trigger is reached, increases the minimum gauge size to 3-5/16 inches, up 1/16th inch. The next year’s (Year 3) change would increase that to 3-3/8, representing another 1/16th inch increase. In Year 4, required escape vents would increase in size as well.
Patrice McCarron, policy director of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association, said her group opposed Addendum XXVII because it would create a size disparity with lobsters caught by Canadian fishermen and exported to the United States.
May 9, 2023 — An Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission board has enacted new rules that could change the size of lobsters Maine fishermen can legally harvest in the hope that the changes will ultimately preserve the fishery.
The American Lobster Board has passed a policy that will put new size limits in place if data shows a 35% decrease in the local lobster population compared with counts from previous years.
If the fishery reaches that trigger point, the regulations would increase the minimum size of lobsters that lobstermen can keep.
The board has passed the policy in order to “improve the resiliency” of the lobster population in Maine waters by increasing the number of younger, breeding lobster that go unharvested. The policy comes amid data showing that warming waters related to climate change, which were at first a boon to Maine’s lobstering industry, could soon be its downfall.
May 8, 2023 — An Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission board has approved new measures that could change the minimum and maximum catch sizes for lobster in certain parts of Maine.
The fisheries commission said it will gradually implement changes to measurement sizes by fractions of an inch in certain parts of the Gulf of Maine — but only if it observes a 35 percent decline in the young lobster population through trawl and trap survey data.
Recent assessments have shown a 23 percent decline in juvenile lobsters, said Pat Keliher, commissioner of the Maine Department of Marine Resources.
May 3, 2023 — The largest deployment of on-demand, or “ropeless” fishing gear in southern New England recently concluded with up to 30 federally permitted lobster and Jonah crab vessels fishing waters closed to traditional trap and vertical-line setups. The collaboration between the National Marine Fisheries Service, its Northeast Fisheries Science Center, and southern New England pot and trap fishermen is an effort to test a potential long-term solution to prevent whale entanglements.
Participating fishermen were allowed 10 trawls each, using different designs of on-demand gear, activated by acoustic signals for retrieval, in federal waters of the South Island Restricted Area and the Massachusetts Restricted Area. Testing ran from Feb. 1 to April 30 under an Exempted Fishing Permit issued to the NOAA Northeast Fisheries Science Center.
“It’s been nice because a couple of years ago fishermen would say ropeless would never work,” Henry Milliken, a supervisory research fishery biologist at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center. “Now they say it will be the technology that keeps them on the water.”
No participating fishermen responded to requests for comment and NMFS refused to release the names of participating fishermen. There have been allegations of harassment and threats levied at fishermen on both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts who have participated in prior on-demand and ropeless tests.
April 17, 2023 — Todd Erickson, bassist and singer for the band Holy Smoke, has been a musician all his life. His son, Eliot Erickson, is taking a different path.
At 22-years-old, this is the younger Erickson’s third season lobstering out of Portland Harbor aboard his own boat, the Lisa Lee.
With the lobstering industry under pressure from increased federal regulation, blacklisting by environmental groups and looming wind power projects, Todd Erickson knew he wanted to help his son, somehow.
So he’s doing what he knows how to do best: put on a show and rock-n-roll like crazy.
On Sunday, May 7th, rock and lobster will combine for Band Together: A Concert to Celebrate Maine’s Lobstering Heritage. Featuring four bands and two comedians, the show kicks off at 2 p.m. at the Portland Elks Lodge on outer Congress Street.
All proceeds from the show will go to the Maine Lobstermen’s Community Alliance, a Kennebunk-based, non-profit organization supporting the Maine Lobstermen’s Association’s Save Maine Lobstermen campaign.
Through that campaign, the Lobstermen’s Association filed suit against the National Marine Fisheries Service and the Secretary of Commerce in Sept. 2021, challenging a 10-year whale plan that Maine lobstermen believed would decimate the industry. The lawsuit is now in appeal.
April 12, 2023 — Saco, Maine, U.S.A.-based Luke’s Lobster restaurant chain has taken the initiative to increase BIPOC youth involvement in the Maine lobster industry through its growing Lift All Boats mentorship program, which gives students a chance to take part in the industry.
Luke’s Lobster began the Lift All Boats Project in summer 2022 with four high school students in Portland, Maine from diverse backgrounds . The students worked on the water with local fishermen in Portland and representatives from Luke’s Lobster to learn about the lobstering processes and network to seek potential future employment opportunities.
April 11, 2023 — Sea Grant is accepting applications for the American Lobster Research Program 2023. Applications must be submitted to Grants.gov until May 10, 2023.
Sea Grant announced the launch of the American Lobster Research Program 2023, which will support collaborative projects that address priority research needs to enhance the understanding of and address impacts to the American lobster fishery.
According to Sea Grant “applications are sought from research teams and encourage partnerships between industry, state agencies, and/or academia that address population dynamics, including but not limited to distribution and abundance in regards to ecosystem changes; life history parameters, including but not limited to temperature effects, ocean acidification, and other changing climate conditions; species interactions and behavior; and/or social, behavioral, or economic research including but not limited to impact studies, assessments, and policy analyses regarding measures under consideration for inclusion in the Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Plan.”
The institution says the program aims to address impacts to the American lobster fishery in the Gulf of Maine, Georges Bank, and southern New England, and applications must be submitted to Grants.gov by 11:59 p.m. Eastern time May 10, 2023. Eligible applicants are any individual; any public or private corporation, partnership, or other association or entity (including any Sea Grant College, Sea Grant Institute or other institution); or any State, political subdivision of a State, Tribal government or agency.
April 8, 2023 — Maine lawmakers are considering a new bill that would claim state control over a larger swath of coastal waters.
State Sen. Eric Brakey, the bill’s sponsor, said the proposal is intended to protect Maine lobstermen from what he says are overly burdensome federal regulations, particularly those aimed at protecting endangered right whales.
“LD 563 would throw the yolk of these federal regulators off our Maine lobstermen by extending Maine’s claim to the sovereignty of our oceans from three miles to 12 miles, subjecting our lobstermen to the rules of Maine regulators, accountable to Maine people, rather than Washington, DC regulators who seem accountable to no one,” he told the Legislature’s marine resources committee Thursday.
April 3, 2023 — A University of Maine Law School professor says it’s unlikely a judge or jury will actually settle the science around lobstering’s impact on North Atlantic right whale mortality in a recently filed defamation lawsuit against Seafood Watch and the Monterey Bay Aquarium Foundation.
Instead, Dmitry Bam explained, the case—if it ever reaches trial—will probably turn on whether the aquarium’s seafood sustainability program was negligent or reckless about the evidence it actually used to claim that scientific data demonstrate that lobstering harms the endangered whale species.
Last fall, Seafood Watch put American lobsters on its red list of foods to avoid because it “is caught or farmed in ways that have a high risk of causing harm to wildlife or the environment.” Among the findings in a summary of its decision-making, the organization noted that nearly nine out of every 10 right whales bears scars from entanglement with fishing gear. Furthermore, “90% of entanglements cannot be linked to a specific gear type, and only 12% of entanglements can be linked to a specific location.”
It concluded that, given recent declines in an already low right whale population, lobstering in the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank poses an unacceptable risk to the species.
The Maine Lobstermen’s Association fired back in its March 13 lawsuit that the aquarium’s claims “are in fact not supported by science, and that the aquarium’s false statements have caused substantial economic harm to plaintiffs, as well as to the Maine lobster brand and to Maine’s long-standing reputation for a pristine coastal environment protected by a multi-generational tradition of preserving resources for the future.”