March 26, 2025 — Demonstrations and discussions focused on alternative lobster fishing gear will take place on April 1, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Hosted by the Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries in partnership with the Maine Department of Marine Resources, the demos will take place at the Stonington public landing/Hagen Dock while the discussions will be held at MCCF at 13 Atlantic Ave.
March 18, 2025 — The Maine Lobstermen’s Association (MLA) annual meeting took place at the Maine Fishermen’s Forum and was anything but routine this year.
As industry leaders gathered to discuss the latest challenges and victories in the state’s lobster industry, they also took a moment to recognize the end of an era—Kristan Porter, the longtime MLA board president and Cutler fisherman, announced his retirement from the role, along with board vice president Craig Stewart from Long Island, and Laurin Brooks who fishes out from Kennebunk.
Lawsuits, Offshore Wind, Industry Resilience
Among the key updates shared, the MLA’s acting COO, Patrice McCarron, reaffirmed their stance against offshore wind development, highlighting progress in its legal battle with Monterey Bay Aquarium, and urged lobstermen to stay engaged in policy discussions, especially regarding the controversial gauge increase.
“You may have also heard the good news: the Monterey Bay Aquarium lawsuit will get the green light to go forward,” McCarron said. “We haven’t won the case, but we do now have the green light so that we would be expecting discovery and possibly going to trial in the near future.”
The lawsuit, a defamation case launched by the MLA and the Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association (MCFA), challenges the Aquarium’s controversial decision to red-list Maine lobster over concerns about North Atlantic right whale entanglements. The case moving forward signals a significant step in the industry’s ongoing fight for fair representation.
The MLA also addressed other regulatory battles, including a pushback on federal electronic tracking mandates. “We certainly know where people are; we no longer have to guess, but they should not be running 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” McCarron stated. “You guys should not be tracked when using your vessels for personal reasons.”
The Maine lobster fishery continues to grapple with bait shortages and federal policy shifts, but as the meeting made clear, the industry is far from standing still.
March 5, 2025 — Maine’s outgoing commissioner of marine resources is warning about the dire impacts of newly imposed tariffs on Canadian imports.
Maine sends about $200 million worth of lobster each year to Canada, where it’s processed and sent back to the U.S. or to third markets.
Marine Resources Commission Pat Keliher said the tariffs could trigger major cuts in what Maine lobstermen are paid for their catch that could “cripple” the state’s iconic fishery.
March 3, 2025 — Last year was a good year for commercial fishermen in Maine.
According to preliminary data released Friday by the Maine Department of Marine Resources, Maine’s commercial fisheries harvest was valued at $709,509,984 in 2024, up $74 million from 2023.
A large part of the jump in value was thanks to a $46 million jump in the value of the lobster catch.
Maine lobstermen took home $528,421,645 in 2024, thanks to a $6.14 per pound price, despite a catch that declined by more than 10 million pounds. The boat price paid to lobstermen in 2024 was the second-highest on record.
March 3, 2025 — Maine lobster landings were at a 15-year low, at about 86 million pounds in 2024.
It’s a 10 million pound decline from the previous year, according to preliminary data released Friday by the Maine Department of Marine Resources. The 2024 decrease also comes after landings dropped by another 10 million pounds from 2022 to 2023.
Fishermen set 285,000 fewer traps in the water in 2024 compared to the previous year, the data show.
Spruce Head fisherman Bob Baines said landings are leveling off and fluctuating after a few years of record harvests. He believes the fishery is still in good shape.
“There’s only a certain amount of lobsters every year available to be caught; we’re very good at it,” he said Friday from the Maine Fishermen’s Forum in Rockport. “And since the biomass has gotten smaller, there’s just less lobsters to be caught.”
March 3, 2025 — The US lobster industry’s catch keeps sliding as fishermen contend with the northward migration of the valuable crustaceans.
The industry is based mostly in Maine, where lobsters are both a cultural signifier and the backbone of the coastal economy. The state’s haul of lobsters has declined every year from 2021, when it was nearly 111 million pounds, to 2023, when it was less than 97 million pounds.
That decline extended into 2024, when the haul was about 86.1 million pounds, according to data released by state regulators on Friday. That is the lowest figure in 15 years. A series of major storms that damaged waterfront communities and disrupted fisheries was a key factor in the reduced catch, officials said.
Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat, praised the industry for its perseverance.
March 3, 2025 — A group of lobster fishermen can sue one of the world’s largest seafood watchdog groups for defamation, a federal court has ruled, over a report that described Maine lobster as an unwise choice for consumers.
The threat to a rare whale species from getting tangled in fishing gear has prompted Monterey Bay Aquarium in California to caution against eating a variety of lobster that New England fishermen have harvested for centuries.
Seafood Watch, a conservation program operated by the aquarium, placed lobster from the U.S. and Canada on its do-not-eat “red list” in 2022. Some retailers pulled lobster from stores after the recommendation.
February 28, 2025 — The wind is whipping the sides of the dock on this bright, cold afternoon in Jonesport.
“I think my fingers are too frozen.”
Brooke Hachey of the Sunrise County Economic Council is leading a demonstration of a kind of “on demand,” sometimes called “ropeless” lobster fishing gear.
In a bid to protect North Atlantic right whales from extinction, many scientists are promoting this kind of alternative lobster fishing gear that minimizes the risks of entanglement.
While some lobstermen in Massachusetts have agreed to use this new gear in exchange for accessing closed areas of Cape Cod Bay, most Maine lobstermen have been reluctant — if not outright resistant — to the new technology.
February 28, 2025 — I first visited Stonington, Maine, in the summer of 2003 to write a story for Yankee about the community’s proudly held identity as a fishing town. Even then, Stonington was an anomaly. While other main streets and harbors along the Maine coast had become the shiny domain of tourist shops and pleasure boats, here, on the rocky outermost tip of remote Deer Isle, lived just over 1,000 people whose lives were still largely built around what they hauled from the sea.
The challenges Stonington faced back then—tighter regulations, increasing costs, wild swings in the price of lobster—still confront the town more than two decades later. But now it’s increasingly feeling the threat of climate change, too. Early last year, two powerful storms slammed into the island, cutting off Stonington from the mainland, devastating businesses, and swamping the public pier. The Gulf of Maine’s warming waters, meanwhile, are putting the very survival of the state’s signature lobster industry at risk. Even for a community long accustomed to dealing with headwinds, these latest developments beg the question: What will it take for New England’s largest lobster port to endure?
Last June, I returned to Stonington to find out.
Robbie Eaton is ready to get on the water.
It’s pushing 5:30 on a Thursday morning in early June, and for the past half hour the 24-year-old has been prepping his boat, the Legacy, a mint-green 35-footer docked at the Stonington Fish Pier. It’s not quite summer but it’s starting to feel like it, warming up even at this hour, and the surrounding harbor is quiet, a testament to just how early the workday starts around here. In Maine’s largest lobster port, many of its 350 boats motored off nearly two hours ago.
Read the full article at NewEngland.com
February 27, 2025 — The waters off New England had another warm year but didn’t heat up as fast as earlier this decade, bucking a trend of higher warming worldwide, said scientists who study the Atlantic Ocean near Maine.
The Gulf of Maine, which touches three New England states and Canada, emerged as a test case for climate change about a decade ago because it is warming much faster than most of the world’s oceans. The gulf is home to some of the country’s most valuable seafood species and is critical to the American lobster industry.
The gulf’s annual sea surface temperature last year was 51.5 degrees Fahrenheit (10.8 degrees Celsius), according to the Gulf of Maine Research Institute in Portland. That was more than 0.88 F (0.49 C) above the long-term average from 1991 to 2020, the institute said in a report released this month.