Saving Seafood

Celebrate International Year of the Salmon with Us on February 28 in Bangor, Maine

February 22, 2019 — The following was published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration:

In partnership with NOAA Fisheries’ Maine Field Station and the Maine Discovery Museum, the Maine Science Festival is hosting a pop-up event called Salmon in Maine as part of the International Year of the Salmon.

We hope you will join us at the Maine Discovery Museum on Main Street in Bangor for a special after-hours event featuring artist Karen Talbot’s Maine’s River Run Fish. Karen’s exhibit features 15 beautifully created paintings of 12 diadromous fish (those that spend part of their lives in both fresh and saltwater) along with three other important river run fish in Maine.

Details
When: Thursday, February 28, 7-9 p.m. The talks will begin at 7:45 p.m.

Where: Maine Discovery Museum, 74 Main Street, Bangor, Maine.

What: The Museum, in partnership with NOAA Fisheries, will open its Main Street Gallery for this special after-hours gallery event, featuring artist Karen Talbot’s Maine’s River Run Fish.

In addition to the art exhibit, the event will include brief presentations on the history of salmon in Maine by Catherine Schmitt from the Schoodic Institute at Acadia National Park, words from retired biologist Ed Baum about salmon recovery efforts, and information from Karen Talbot about her work melding the scientific with the artistic to tell the story of Maine’s river run fish, and salmon in particular.

The event is free and open to the public, and you are encouraged to bring guests.

We hope to see you there!

Questions? Contact Sarah Bailey, Maine Field Station, 207-866-7262

Maine weighs lottery to issue first new scallop licenses since 2009

October 18, 2017 — BANGOR, Maine — Nearly a decade after halting new licenses for scallop fishing to protect the stock from depletion, Maine is considering how to encourage new people into the fishery.

Prices for scallops remain historically high, and Maine’s scallop fishermen are getting older, prompting the state to contemplate adopting a lottery system for new licenses. The average age for licensed scallop fishermen in Maine is 51.

Maine’s Department of Marine Resources stopped issuing new scallop fishing licenses eight years ago, when the state fishery was floundering from declining stocks. A new fishery management scheme the state developed and implemented since then has helped stocks recover.

The department now wants to develop a system to start issuing new licenses again but, at the same time, protect the long-term stability of the fishery. DMR officials have said they would like to reduce the number of licenses in the fishery while simultaneously letting new people in, but they are not looking to reduce the number of licenses by a specific amount.

There are approximately 630 licensed scallop fishermen in Maine. Nearly 90 percent drag for the shellfish with nets by boat while the rest dive to collect them by hand.

Read the full story at Bangor Daily News

MAINE: Taking Down Dams and Letting the Fish Flow

October 24, 2016 — BANGOR, Maine — Joseph Zydlewski, a research biologist with the Maine Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit of the United States Geological Survey, drifted in a boat on the Penobscot River, listening to a crackling radio receiver. The staccato clicks told him that one of the shad that his team had outfitted with a transmitter was swimming somewhere below.

Shad, alewives, blueback herring and other migratory fish once were plentiful on the Penobscot. “Seven thousand shad and one hundred barrels of alewives were taken at one haul of the seine,” in May 1827, according to one historian.

Three enormous dams erected in the Penobscot, starting in the 1830s, changed all that, preventing migratory fish from reaching their breeding grounds. The populations all but collapsed.

But two of the dams were razed in 2012 and 2013, and since then, fish have been rushing back into the Penobscot, Maine’s largest river.

“Now all of a sudden you are pulling the cork plug and giving shad access to a truckload of good habitat,” Dr. Zydlewski said. Nearly 8,000 shad have swum upstream this year — and it’s not just shad.

More than 500 Atlantic salmon have made the trip, along with nearly two million alewives, countless baby eels, thousands of mature sea lamprey and dozens of white perch and brook trout. Striped bass are feeding a dozen miles above Bangor in waters closed to them for more than a century.

Nationwide, dam removals are gaining traction. Four dams are slated for removal from the Klamath River alone in California and Oregon by 2020.

Just a few of these removals have occurred on such large rivers, which play an outsize role in coastal ecosystems. But the lessons are the same everywhere: Unplug the rivers, and the fish will return.

Read the full story at the New York Times

Former Canadian Mountie accused of smuggling narwhal tusks awaits trial in Maine

March 17, 2016 — A retired Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer is in U.S. custody awaiting trial on charges stemming from the smuggling of narwhal tusks.

Gregory Logan, 58, of St. John, New Brunswick, waived the right to a detention hearing Wednesday in Bangor after being extradited to face charges of money laundering after pleading guilty in Canada to smuggling narwhal tusks, prosecutors said.

U.S. prosecutors say Logan smuggled 250 tusks worth $2 million across the border into Maine in hidden compartments in his vehicle.

Narwhals are medium-sized whales known for spiral tusks that can grow longer than 8 feet. They are protected by the U.S. and Canada. Their tusks, like elephant tusks, are valued for their use in carvings and jewelry-making.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The Portland Press Herald

How Maine lobsters’ future could depend on seaweed that surrounds them

January 4, 2016 — As the global focus on climate change shifts from negotiations in Paris to taking action to limit the globe’s average temperature increase, the focus is decidedly terrestrial. The text of the climate accord finalized last month isn’t exceedingly detailed when it comes to climate change mitigation strategies, but it devotes special attention to the importance of the world’s forests.

Meanwhile, there’s only one mention in the document’s 32 pages of a natural feature that covers 71 percent of the Earth’s surface, contains 97 percent of its water and produces at least half of its oxygen.

Oceans — which dissolve about a quarter of the world’s climate change-causing carbon dioxide — are key to any effort to combat climate change. And, of special importance to a coastal state such as Maine, oceans and the creatures that live in them are particularly susceptible to the consequences of climate change, from sea level rise to the increasing acidity of the world’s oceans.

There have been several reminders of that reality over the past year.

Read the full editorial at the Bangor Daily News