Saving Seafood

Restricted waters test of on-demand lobster gear in southern New England

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.

Read the full articles the National Fisherman

MAINE: Rock lobster concert to raise funds for Maine industry

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.

Read the full article at Bangor Daily News

Luke’s Lobster introducing BIPOC youth to lobster industry through Lift All Boats Project

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.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

A new program to research American Lobster fishery’s sustainability

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.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

MAINE: New bill would expand state waters in attempt to protect Maine lobstermen from federal regulations

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.

Read the full article at Maine Public

Defamation suit marks shift in fight over lobstering

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.”

Read the full article at Penobscot Bay Pilot

MAINE: Maine lobster industry threatened by loss of eelgrass

March 29, 2023 — A critical marine habitat is rapidly declining off the Maine coast.

It’s happening so fast that experts said it’s been cut in half in only about four years.

Mike Doan, a staff scientist at Friends of Casco Bay, is concerned about the recent loss of eelgrass in Casco Bay.

“Eelgrass is a true flowering perennial, a true plant, not a seaweed,” Doan said. “It’s found just offshore, just below low tide out to about 20 feet of water.”

A 2022 report conducted by the Maine Department of Environmental Protection shows staggering results.

Read the full article at Bangor Daily News

MAINE: Maine lawmakers consider bill to keep funding lobster legal defense

March 26, 2023 — Maine’s lobster industry is asking the state to continue bankrolling its legal defense fund by diverting a cut of its licensing fees intended to market the state’s signature crustacean into its court battles to fight federal whale protections that threaten the fishery’s future.

“We’re in the fight of our lives here,” House Minority Leader Billy Bob Faulkingham said. “Without the fishermen, there is no lobster to market. If we don’t win our lawsuits, there won’t be any fishermen left. That hurts all of Maine. It’s really that simple.”

The Winter Harbor Republican and lobsterman made his pitch for funding Thursday to the Marine Resources Committee at a public hearing on his bill, L.D. 710. It would give 20% of the industry’s license surcharges — about $380,000 a year — to the legal defense fund through 2030.

The fund was created to cover legal fees incurred by the Maine Lobstermen’s Association and the Maine Lobstering Union in the fight to overturn the National Marine Fisheries Service’s new whale protections and defend against environmental groups that want even tougher protections in place.

Originally, Faulkingham had sought a $1 million contribution over two years from the general fund, but after discussions with state officials, he changed it to a 20% cut of a marketing surcharge paid out of Maine lobster licenses, for a total of $2.3 million.

Read the full article at Yahoo Life

Lobsters may weather warmer waters better than expected, study finds

March 26, 2023 — New research completed in Atlantic Canada has found that North American lobsters may be able to cope with warming waters better than expected.

The research was presented at the 30th annual meeting of the Fishermen and Scientists Research Society, the CBC reported. According to the study, lobsters acclimated to warmer water are better able to tolerate higher temperatures than lobsters more used to cold water.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

MASSACHUSETTS: Cape Lobstermen Would Rather Wait Than Switch

March 23, 2o23 — A 21-year-old North Atlantic right whale known as Porcia was observed in Cape Cod Bay on March 18. The whale was seen swimming with her 2023 calf by her side. And last week, before this first mother-calf pair of the season was spotted, Scott Landry, director of the disentanglement team at the Center for Coastal Studies, estimated there were already between 30 and 40 right whales in the bay.

That means Cape Cod lobstermen are on land, waiting out the whales.

Elsewhere in Massachusetts waters, however, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is running an experiment that gives lobster fishermen exempted fishing permits to work in areas that are otherwise restricted. What they are testing is something called on-demand fishing gear — gear operated via an app to minimize the time that lengths of rope stay in the water.

Landry wants to see “our absolute reliance on rope to harvest our food” go away. But for the time being Cape Cod Bay is not the site of any on-demand gear experiments.

Lobsterman Mike Rego, who lives in Truro, is glad about the cautious approach. He sees the strict closures, though they shorten his season, as too important. “I don’t want to lose four months of my fishing season, but I don’t want to kill a whale either,” he said. “The whales are protected while they’re here. Why jeopardize any of that?”

The North Atlantic right whale is a critically endangered species with only some 340 animals remaining in the world. The majority of those whales feed in Cape Cod Bay during their thousand-mile spring migration from their calving grounds off the coasts of Georgia and Florida to Canada, where they summer.

Read the full article at The Provincetown Independent