Saving Seafood

Maine scientists, academics condemn Trump’s decision on climate accord, see consequences for state

June 2, 2017 — Maine scientists, academics and physicians were dismayed by President Trump’s decision Thursday to withdraw from the Paris climate accord, saying his action will endanger the health of Mainers and harm the state’s fisheries and agriculture.

The move will make the United States look ridiculous in the eyes of world leaders who are trying to effect change, one prominent scientist said.

“China and Europe will become the heroes and we will look like fools,” said Paul Mayewski, director of the Climate Change Institute at the University of Maine.

Mayewski has led more than 55 expeditions to some of the remotest polar and high-altitude locations on Earth, has been published in more than 450 scientific publications, and led climate-change research programs in Antarctica, Greenland and Asia.

Mayewski said that while countries such as China are taking steps to reduce carbon emissions, the U.S., under Trump’s leadership, stands to lose credibility because it remains the second-largest producer of carbon dioxide in the world. He noted that Syria and Nicaragua were the only countries that did not sign the Paris climate agreement.

“We’re giving up, at least politically, the high road on being a leader in climate change,” he said.

Mayewski said Mainers could be harmed by the president’s decision. As temperatures continue to rise and weather patterns become more unstable, extreme heat will make more people vulnerable, especially the sick and the elderly. Climate change also will impact tourism and lobstering, Mayewski said. Health care costs also could increase.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Maine environmental advocates warn of ‘crippling’ cuts in Trump budget

May 26, 2017 — President Donald Trump has not backed off on a wide range of federal budget cuts and program eliminations that critics have for months warned would devastate Maine’s economy and environment.

The cuts to discretionary programs would disrupt scientific research and social services, hack funding to public broadcasting and Maine universities and scientific research institutions, and disrupt the economic prospects of fishing, forestry and former mill communities.

“It’s pretty much a full-on attack on environmental protection in America and would have a crippling impact here in Maine, because we depend so heavily on clean air, clean water, and a brand identity that is defined by our environment,” says Pete Didisheim, advocacy director at the Natural Resources Council of Maine. “There hasn’t been any positive motion with this final budget, if anything it’s gotten slightly worse.”

If the White House has its way, it would mean the end of the University of Maine’s Sea Grant program – which provides research and technical expertise to fishermen and other marine trades – the likely closure of the Wells Reserve at Laudholm Farm, the end of a successful partnership program to clean-up Casco Bay and beach water quality testing statewide.

Pine Tree Legal Assistance, which provides legal aid to indigent citizens to pursuit civil suits and whose volunteers helped uncover the national “robo-signing” mortgage scandal, would lose its funding from the federal Legal Services Corporation, which is also slated for elimination.

Read the full story at CentralMaine.com

Warming water threatens fishing ports

May 22, 2017 — The continued warming of the Gulf of Maine is expected to pose additional threats to the region’s commercially important species of seafood — and by extension to the fishing communities that harvest them, according to a new study.

The study, jointly compiled by researchers at NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center and the Nature Conservancy, draws the link between the region’s unprecedented warming and concerns about the ability of species to find new, sustainable habitats.

“These changes will directly affect fishing communities, as species now landed in those ports move out of range, and new species move in,” said the authors of the study that appears in journal Progress in Oceanography.

The migration of a spectrum of species could create “economic, social and natural resource management challenges” throughout the region, according to the study.

“The projections indicate that as species shift from one management jurisdiction to another, or span state and federal jurisdictions, increased collaboration among management groups will be needed to set quotas and establish allocations,” the researchers concluded. 

At the heart of the concern is the startling rate at which the Gulf of Maine is warming.

Previous research has shown the region’s surface waters are warming faster than 99 percent of the Earth’s oceans and the study’s researchers project the region will continue to warm “two to three times faster than the global average through the end of this century.”

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

Gulf of Maine will become too warm for many key fish, report says

May 22, 2017 — A new study by federal fisheries scientists predicts the warming of the Gulf of Maine will cause a dramatic contraction of suitably cool habitat for a range of key commercial fish species there. On the other hand, lobsters are more likely to find hospitable areas.

The study by seven scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, used a high-resolution global climate model and federal fisheries survey data to model how key fisheries species would likely be affected by predicted warming over the next 80 years.

The results confirmed previous research using other models and methods that found that the Gulf of Maine can be expected to become increasingly uncomfortable for many of the cold-loving species that have thrived here for all of recorded history but are at the southern ends of their ranges. Those include cod, haddock, redfish, plaice and pollock.

“The main message here is how important it is to understand the potential magnitude of the changes that you see when you get a finer, higher-resolution view of the implications of changing sea temperatures,” says co-author Michael Fogarty, chief of the ecosystem assessment program at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center.

The scientists caution that the research analyzes just one factor – albeit an important one – the distribution of thermally appropriate habitat for each of 58 species. Their results predict the changes in the amount and location of such habitat but don’t account for many other factors that can influence the future populations of the species themselves, such as what happens to what they eat or what likes to eat them, or how the increasing acidity of the ocean – another product of climate change – will affect each.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

ASMFC American Lobster Board Approves 5% Increase in Egg Production for the Southern New England Lobster Stock

May 11, 2017 — The following was released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission:

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s American Lobster Management Board approved moving forward with the goal of increasing egg production for the Southern New England (SNE) stock of American lobster by 5%. This increase in egg production can be achieved through a suite of management tools including gauge size changes, trap reductions, and seasonal closures. The recreational fishery is only subject to changes in the gauge size should any be proposed. In making its decision, the Board took into consideration the extensive public comment, which overwhelmingly supported status quo, and the fact that stock declines are largely a result of climatic changes, including increasing water temperatures over the last 15 years.

The next step in the process will be for the Lobster Conservation Management Teams (LCMTs) in Areas 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 to develop area-specific proposals on how to achieve the 5% increase in egg production.  As established through Amendment 3 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for American Lobster, LCMTs are composed of lobster industry members who are charged with recommending area-specific measures for Board consideration and approval. The LCMT proposals will be submitted for Technical Committee review in June and Board consideration in August. Once area-specific measures have been approved, the Board will consider final approval of Addendum XXV.

In its deliberation on the SNE lobster stock, the Board discussed the need to consider changes to the current management goals and reference points, noting changes in the marine environment may limit the ability to rebuild the stock to levels seen in the 1990s. The Board will continue to discuss these issues, particularly as the Commission’s Climate Change Work Group develops recommendations regarding the management of stocks impacted by changing climate conditions.

Decades of trawl surveys help Bering Sea climate change research

May 9, 2017 — There’s a new tool to help scientists and others interested in monitoring how Bering Sea fisheries respond to a changing climate.

Biologist Steve Barbeaux of the Alaska Fisheries Science Center has created hundreds of graphics mapping where 22 species of fish spend their time during different life stages.

The data comes from annual trawl surveys dating back to 1984, but Barbeaux says that information was hard to analyze as a whole.

“To understand the true impacts of climate change we have to look across all of these life stages to get a true picture of what’s going on,” Barbeaux said. “It potentially could be beneficial at one stage of life, but harmful at another stage of it’s life.”

Barbeaux started small — looking at greenland turbot, a species that is greatly impacted by temperature changes. When the fish develop from larvae to juveniles, they depend on a cold pool in the Bering Sea. But without it:

“You get high natural mortality,” Barbeaux said. “So for [the greenland turbot] the impact really is at that settlement stage. Versus pollock where that impact has more potentially to do with their midlife stage.”

Read the full story at KTOO

Get used to paying $20-plus for a lobster roll

May 8, 2017 — The market price for a lobster roll at Red’s Eats is $26.50, the highest it’s been in 79 years.

Yet tourists in line at the iconic lobster hut on the Sheepscot River this week didn’t blink. They came for a taste of Maine and were willing to pay for the experience. And they did, handsomely.

“The quantity and quality is well worth it,” said Jan Braida polishing off a roll with her husband Tony. The day before, these vacationing Ohioans spent $23.95 on a lobster roll in Kittery and say sampling Maine’s famed sandwich is the reason they are here.

The sky-high price of fresh lobster meat this spring sent a jolt through lobster roll purveyors such as Red’s and mobile eatery Bite into Maine in Greater Portland.

Deborah Gagnon, owner of Red’s Eats, is paying $45 a pound for fresh lobster meat. Other vendors have been quoted more than $50 for picked knuckles, tails and claws.

“When I was opening in April and heard the price, I was like ‘ohhhh, somebody hold me up,’” said Gagnon, whose signature overstuffed rolls deliver more than a typical lobster’s worth of meat. Despite the increase, she’s not prepared to skimp. “No matter how high the lobster price is, I have to have it. Visitors all over the world come here. If we don’t have it, it’s like ‘what the heck?,’” she said.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

New rules for lobstering in southern New England up for vote

May 8, 2017 — New restrictions on lobster fishing are up for a vote early next week as regulators try to slow the loss of the valuable crustaceans from southern New England waters.

Scientists have said populations of lobsters off of Connecticut, Rhode Island and southern Massachusetts have declined as waters have warmed. A board of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission is scheduled to vote on new management measures Monday and Tuesday.

Fishing managers are considering tools like trap reductions, changes to the legal harvesting size of lobsters and seasonal closures to try to preserve the population. Some lobster fishermen have opposed the possibility of new measures, saying such a move would kill off what remains of a once-vibrant fishery.

“Any further reductions in traps would be hard to accommodate, given that there are so few fishermen left in (southern) Massachusetts and Rhode Island,” said Beth Casoni, executive director of the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association.

Most U.S. lobster is brought to shore in Maine, on New England’s north end, and Canada’s fishery also contributes a lot of lobster to American markets. Maine has had record high catches in recent years, and the price of lobsters to fishermen and consumers has been high, too. The U.S. lobster fishery was worth more than $620 million at the docks in 2015, a record, and Maine had a record year in 2016.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Concord Monitor

Maine’s future depends on immediate action on climate change

May 3, 2017 — On Saturday, more than 2,000 Mainers marched to the State House in Augusta to demand action on climate change at both the state and federal levels. They made a compelling case that the future of the state is riding on the actions governments at all levels take right now to address the global threat.

“I have been a lobster fisherman out of Friendship Harbor for over 30 years. During that time I’ve seen firsthand the impacts of climate change to not only the Gulf of Maine, but also to our evolving fisheries, and to the coastal communities that depend upon them,” said Richard Nelson, speaking at the rally. “The Gulf of Maine, long battling ocean warming, now also faces off with climate change’s ugly stepsister: ocean acidification. Acidic waters make it more difficult for shellfish to produce their shells, and makes lobsters more vulnerable to prey and have less energies for reproduction. These changes will affect the oceans and the fishing communities that rely on them.”

The event was one of many People’s Climate Marches held across the country over the weekend in protest of the environmental policies of the Trump administration and to demand action to address carbon pollution and climate change.

Read the full story at the Maine Beacon

No shrimp today: Maine’s waters are warming and it’s costing fishermen money

April 20, 2017 — David Goethel wishes he could retire.

At 63, he’s been fishing off the Gulf of Maine for over 34 years. Shrimp used to be plentiful there. Back in 2000, Goethel remembers seeing 100 commercial boats out in the harbor. Now, he’s just one of a handful of local fisherman struggling to make a living.

“There was life on the docks, there were people working,” lifelong fisherman Arnold Gamage, 64, agrees. “Now, it looks like a ghost town.”

Maine’s fishing industry has been declining for years due to factors like overfishing and increased regulation, but there’s another culprit eating away at profits: Maine’s ocean waters are warming — and it’s killing northern shrimp.

Goethel, Gamage and other fishermen used to look forward to shrimping as a way to augment their income in the cold New England winters.

“Now, I see a lot of those same people, they’ve got 4-wheel trucks and they’re trying to plow snow to take in some kind of income,” Goethel says.

Regulators at the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission banned commercial shrimping in 2014. The goal was to give northern shrimp a chance to repopulate. While the ban has helped, regulators are still worried about the species’ survival.

Read the full story at WGNO