Saving Seafood

Government, conservation groups file appeal to reinstate seasonal lobstering ban

November 1, 2021 — The federal government and a group of conservation organizations filed an appeal this week of a recent court decision that stopped a planned seasonal closure to traditional lobstering in an area of the Gulf of Maine.

The closure, which would have gone into effect Oct. 18, was intended to help protect the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale and would have made traditional, rope-and-buoy lobstering off-limits in the lucrative 967-square-mile zone from October to January.

The Maine Lobstering Union, Fox Island Lobster Co. of Vinalhaven and Damon Family Lobster Co. of Stonington filed a joint lawsuit against the fisheries service last month in an effort to block the closure, arguing that regulators used flimsy science to justify the restricted area.

In his ruling, issued just two days before the closure would have been implemented, U.S. District Judge Lance Walker sided with the lobstering groups and said regulators had relied on “markedly thin” statistical modeling instead of hard evidence to prove the area they had planned to close was really a highly traveled area for the imperiled whale.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

 

Maine relies on its marine life, but climate change will alter what that means

October 28, 2021 — Steve Train used to finish work by 1pm. In those days, Mr Train—who has worked as a lobsterman in Maine for more than 30 years—didn’t have to travel far to find the critters. Now he sometimes wraps up closer to 4pm. Some lobsters are still close to shore, but rising temperatures have pushed many of them into deeper, cooler waters that take longer to reach. Where Mr Train will find the creatures has turned into something of a guessing game. “More of us are hunting all the time,” he says, as he sips a mezcal margarita from Luke’s Lobster, a waterfront restaurant in Portland’s historic Old Port. This is where he docks his boat, sells his catch and, three or four days a week, stops in for lunch (often a lobster BLT, lobster roll or fried haddock bites). Lobstering is more than a job, he says. “It’s a culture.”

Warming waters have done more than change lobstermen’s schedules—they have disrupted entire ecosystems, the Gulf of Maine among them. The Gulf of Maine’s waters have warmed faster than 99% of the world’s ocean over the past 30 years. Experts attribute some of that to changing currents. The effects of the Gulf Stream from the south have grown stronger and have begun to constrict the flow of the Labrador current, which delivers cold water from the North Atlantic to the Gulf of Maine. “The magnitude of change is really going to be dependent on how much water temperatures change,” says Kathy Mills, a research scientist at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute. So far, the heat has altered the patterns of the state’s two most profitable species, lobsters and soft-shell clams, with some experts and industry folk worried about the potential for further population declines. Maine’s overall commercial landings brought in more than $500m last year, but maintaining those profits will require flexibility—at the least, it means acknowledging the gulf may look vastly different in years to come.

Read the full story at The Economist

 

Judge is right that more data needed before part of ocean put off limits to lobster harvesting

October 22, 2021 — A federal judge’s order last week to temporarily stop the planned closure of a large swath of the Gulf of Maine to lobster fishing is welcome news to Maine’s lobster industry, but also to those who believe that data should guide decisions about protecting endangered North Atlantic right whales.

In August, federal fisheries regulators announced new rules for lobster fishing gear and the closure of 950 square miles of ocean about 30 miles off the coast from Mount Desert Island to Casco Bay to traditional lobster fishing from October to January. Ropeless fishing, a new and largely untested way of setting and retrieving traps using a smartphone, would still be allowed in this area under the rules. The closure was set to go into effect this week.

The new regulations came despite years of pleas from lobstermen, Maine elected officials and this editorial board that any decisions about measures to be taken to protect the whales needed to be made based on actual data about where and how whales are being injured, entangled and, too often, killed.

Without better data, Maine’s lobster industry was being asked to make substantial — and costly — changes that may not have addressed the biggest threats to right whales. Other threats include collisions with shipping vessels.

Read the full editorial at the Bangor Daily News

 

Directed herring fishery closed for rest of the year, incidental catch still allowed 

October 19, 2021 — The directed herring fishery has been closed for the rest of the year for the inshore Gulf of Maine, according to officials.   

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Herring Management Board voted late last month to set the number of landing days at zero for the second half of the herring season, meaning a vessel can’t go out fishing directly for herring.   

Fishermen are allowed to fish for other species and may land up to 2,000 pounds of Atlantic herring per trip as incidental catch only, said Emilie Franke, the fishery management plan coordinator at the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission.   

Herring is a prized bait fish for lobstermen in Maine, though many have resorted to other species, such as  pogies,  as  herring numbers have  declined  and quotas have tightened. Herring is considered overfished, but overfishing  by fishermen  is  not  currently happening, leaving officials searching for an answer on how to help the species  rebound. 

The New England Fishery Management Council met late last month to talk about how to move forward with the conservation of the species across New England. The council decided to go forward with an acceptable biological catch strategy that allows for sustainable harvest of the fish while accounting for the species role as a forage species  and baitfish. The rule works by allowing fishing mortality rate to fluctuate with the highs and lows of the species’ biomass, allowing flexibility depending on how the fish is doing. It also adds accountability measures.   

Read the full story at the Mount Desert Islander

 

Judge’s rejection of lobstering ban draws praise of industry, ire of environmentalists

October 18, 2021 — Lobster industry advocates and environmental groups offered starkly different reactions Sunday to a judge’s decision blocking a federal ban on lobstering in a section of the Gulf of Maine designed to protect the endangered right whale.

The ruling, by U.S. District Judge Lance Walker, said federal regulators relied on “markedly thin” analysis that didn’t provide hard proof of the whales’ presence in the roughly thousand-square-mile area off the Maine coast. Advocates for the lobster industry had asked for a stay of the three-month ban, arguing there wasn’t evidence that the critically endangered whales actually frequent the area.

Environmental groups accused Walker of relying on his own analysis of data rather than that of scientists. Lobstering advocates, on the other hand, praised the judge for offering a lifeline to the $1.4 billion industry, which is critical to Maine’s economy.

Read the full story and listen to the audio at the Portland Press Herald

 

Federal judge blocks lobster fishing ban in stretch of Gulf of Maine

October 18, 2021 — A federal judge in Maine on Saturday blocked a seasonal ban on traditional lobster fishing in a stretch of offshore waters in the Gulf of Maine that regulators say is needed to save the endangered North Atlantic right whale from extinction.

In his 28-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Lance Walker said regulators had relied on “markedly thin” statistical modeling instead of hard evidence to show the nearly thousand-square-mile area they had planned to close was really a hot spot for the imperiled whale.

While the area targeted for closure may be a viable habitat for the right whale, there is no hard proof the whales actually gather there, or even pass through that part of the Gulf of Maine, with enough frequency to render it a “hotspot,” Walker wrote.

The National Marine Fisheries Service had only just this year deployed acoustic devices along the Maine coast that can detect the presence of right whales through their song, Walker noted. When available, such evidence of a hot spot is preferable to statistical likelihoods.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

 

Squid a possible culprit in Gulf of Maine shrimp’s demise

October 14, 2021 — Maine’s shrimp fishery has been closed for nearly a decade since the stock’s collapse in 2013. Scientists are now saying a species of squid that came into the Gulf of Maine during a historic ocean heatwave the year before may have been a “major player” in the shrimp’s downturn.

In 2012, the Gulf of Maine experienced some of its warmest temperatures in decades. Within a couple of years, the cold-water-loving northern shrimp had rapidly declined and the fishery, a small but valued source of income for fishermen in the offseason, closed.

Anne Richards, a biologist at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and Margaret Hunter, a biologist with the Maine Department of Marine Resources, studied the collapse and found that it coincided with an influx of longfin squid, a major shrimp predator.

The squid is a “voracious and opportunistic” predator that Richards and Hunter believe expanded in the gulf during the heatwave at the same time the shrimp population was struggling because of warmer water temperatures.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

 

Maine lobster industry decries lack of clarity on enforcement of new whale-protection rules

October 12, 2021 — State and federal regulators say they are prepared to enforce the 967-square-mile area of the Gulf of Maine that will be closed to traditional lobstering for the next three months but have been tight-lipped about what the enforcement will look like or what the penalties might be for anyone who is found in violation of the closure area.

Environmentalists, who support the closure designed to help protect critically endangered North Atlantic right whales from becoming entangled in lobstering gear, say the lack of details isn’t surprising, but Maine lobster industry officials are frustrated by the silence.

According to Patrice McCarron, executive director of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association, the industry is still grappling with trying to understand why the area is even going to be closed in the first place. The closure goes into effect Oct. 18. 

“Now it’s happening and we’ve had zero correspondence on what the rules of operation will be, what the enforcement will be,” she said. “The entire closure has literally fallen from the sky, and we’ve been given very little information and (told) to get out of there. … Everything I’ve seen is Oct. 18, here’s the box (outlining the closure area), get your gear out.”

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

 

Maine lobster fishery has key sustainability label reinstated

October 4, 2021 — The Gulf of Maine lobster fishery has had a key sustainability label reinstated a year after it was suspended following the publication of a controversial set of new rules designed to protect the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale.

The American division of the Marine Resources Assessment Group announced last week that the Gulf of Maine lobster fishery is once again certified sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council. The certification is retroactive to Sept. 1.

That means wholesalers and retailers who sell U.S.-landed Gulf of Maine lobster can again use the council’s trademarked “eco-label” of a blue-and-white fish that signals to buyers that the product is sustainable, meaning it is not overfished, that the fishery is well managed and does not harm another overfished or endangered species.

The council’s certification is considered the gold standard of sustainable seafood, embraced by high-volume lobster buyers such as Whole Foods, Hilton, Royal Caribbean and Walmart.

Marianne LaCroix, executive director of the Maine Lobster Marketing Collaborative, said she was pleased with the reinstatement of the fishery’s Marine Stewardship Council certification, “but it hasn’t changed what we’ve always known – Maine lobster harvesting practices are among the most sustainable in the world.” 

Still, it can be a useful tool for customers who rely on such third-party sustainability marks to aid their purchasing decisions, she said.

Read the full story from Hannah LaClaire at Portland Press Herald

 

Gulf of Maine Research Institute will use $750K grant to expand region’s ‘blue economy’

October 4, 2021 — The Gulf of Maine Research Institute, a Portland-based marine nonprofit, was awarded $749,815 for its Blue Economy Initiative, which is developing a collaborative commercialization platform for the marine-related startup sector.

The money follows a federal grant of $749,856 awarded to the initiative in April to help seafood businesses recover from the pandemic.

The new funding, from the federal Economic Development Administration, aims to enhance the global competitiveness of the Gulf of Maine seafood industry, create high-quality jobs, and generate blue economy entrepreneurship, according to a news release.

“Between changing ocean conditions due to climate change and supply chain challenges brought on by the pandemic, Maine’s seafood and fishing industries need our support now more than ever,” U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-Maine 1st District, said in the release.

Read the full story at Mainebiz