Saving Seafood

Film Notes: ‘Lobster War,’ Screening in Woodstock, Documents a Changing Fishery

January 4, 2019 — Before deciding whether to see Lobster War: The Fight Over the World’s Richest Fishing Grounds at Woodstock Town Hall Theatre next week, Upper Valley cinephiles need to distinguish David Abel’s new documentary from Lobster Wars, plural.

While Lobster Wars, a six-part reality TV series that ran on the Discovery Channel in 2007, followed fishermen from the United Kingdom pursuing crustaceans over Georges Bank, the feature Lobster War (singular) focuses on American and Canadian lobstermen pursuing the creatures around an island off Maine’s Down East that both countries claim.

Abel is screening Lobster War, which does not yet have a distributor, at venues around New England. The veteran print journalist’s current tour, which follows a round of film-festival appearances, is scheduled to begin in the fishing town of Gloucester, Mass., tonight and to make its Vermont premiere in Woodstock on Wednesday.

“My first two docs were on cable, on network distribution deals that hemmed us in except for the odd festival,” Abel, who writes about environmental issues for the Boston Globe, said during a telephone interview on Wednesday. “This is the first time I’ve decided to go the theater route.

“It’s really gratifying to show your work, to meet folks who are really interested in these issues.”

Climate change is the issue at the center of Lobster War, which documents a dispute between fishermen from Maine and Atlantic Canada. Over the last decade, with ocean waters warming off the New England coast, lobsters have been migrating north and east in search of colder waters for breeding, many of them are now clustering in a 277-square-mile patch of ocean described in the movie as a “Gray Zone” around Machias Seal Island.

Read the full story at Valley News

MASSACHUSETTS: $63.5K to help reshape Gloucester’s fish industry

December 20, 2018 — When the Gloucester Fishing Community Preservation Fund was established in 2007, the Gloucester fleet already had transitioned away from its sizeable offshore groundfish fleet to a largely inshore fleet dependent on cod and other groundfish species in the Gulf of Maine.

More than a decade later, the demise of the Gloucester inshore fleet continues, fueled by regulation, environmental restrictions and the simple demographics of an aging and declining workforce.

“The aging-out of the fleet and attrition have really taken a toll,” said Vito Giacalone, GFCPF executive director. “We’ve now experienced two generations of fishermen who saw no value in continuing to fish.”

The seascape has changed dramatically and now the GFCPF, best known as a source for preserving and leasing permit privileges to Gloucester fishing vessels, is looking toward the future and its role in helping reshape the Gloucester fishing community.

The non-profit organization, with the assistance of U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton, became one of seven organizations in the country this week to receive fisheries innovation grants from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Scallops hold steady for New England, but sizes could shrink

December 7, 2018 —  The New England Fishery Management Council yesterday released information on the upcoming scallop season, including an estimated 60 million pounds in landings.

The council approved Framework Adjustment 30 to the Atlantic Sea Scallop Fishery Management Plan, which still needs to be approved by NMFS before the season kicks off on April 1, 2019.

Peter Handy, president and CEO of Bristol Seafood, speculated that a reduction in trips to Nantucket Light Ship South and Closed Area 1 may also reduce the volume of U10 and U12 product on the market.

Last season, about half the catch in these areas were larger scallops.

“Overall, it looks like the trips to areas that have the most plentiful big scallops was reduced from two down to one,” Handy reported in a press release. However, he added, it is important to note that scallop sizes can change year to year within the same area.

The Northern Gulf of Maine TAC increased about 5,000 pounds to 205,000. However, last year the council’s prediction for the 2019 season was 135,000 pounds. The default for 2020 is set at 170,000.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Scallop draggers get started for year in Down East Maine

December 4, 2018 —  Maine’s scallop draggers are getting started for the winter on the state’s eastern coast, where they hope to continue the industry’s steady growth.

The coastal state’s meaty scallops have enjoyed resurgence in recent years, as the 2017 harvest total was highest in two decades. Operators of scallop dragger boats can get started on the eastern coast Monday.

Draggers who harvest along the western coast can start Dec. 10. A more limited season in the Cobscook Bay area also gets started Monday. Cobscook Bay is regarded as the most fertile scalloping ground in the state and fishing there is subject to tight controls.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Bangor Daily News

NOAA seeks recreational fishermen’s input

November 29, 2018 — NOAA Fisheries is ramping up its plans to develop management strategies for the Northeast recreational groundfish fishery for 2019, beginning with three January workshops for stakeholder input.

The agency’s Gloucester-based Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office has scheduled the workshops for Jan. 8 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire; Jan. 10 in Narragansett, Rhode Island; and Jan. 12 in Plymouth. Times still are to be determined.

The workshops, beyond soliciting stakeholder comment, also will jump-start the campaign to develop new short-term and long-term management measures for the recreational fishing industry “that balance the need to prevent overfishing with enabling profitability in the for-hire fleet” and provide other opportunities for recreational anglers.

In the short term, regulators are seeking potential new management measures to achieve, but not exceed, recreational catch limits in the upcoming 2019 fishing season, including Gulf of Maine cod and haddock.

In the long term, NOAA is exploring how to use new data — such as the information culled from the Marine Recreational Information Program — in its management of recreational groundfish stocks. It also is seeking the most effective manner to use available research to reduce or avoid bycatch mortality, calculate dead discards and the best methods of release.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Maine fisheries and blueberries could be at stake due to climate change, report says

November 29, 2018 — Climate change has helped Maine’s lobster yield increase fourfold since the 1980s, as warming waters to the south have propelled lobsters north in search of colder waters. But if summer sea temperatures along Maine’s coast continue rising and cross a potentially perilous threshold, lobsters’ survival in a more temperate Gulf of Maine could be in doubt.

The Gulf of Maine has warmed faster than 99 percent of the world’s oceans, and the trend is expected to continue. The warming that has taken place so far, as well as the decline of cod, has proven favorable for Maine’s lobster yields in recent years, but if sea temperatures during the summer rise above 68 degrees Fahrenheit, lobster mortality will increase.

That’s one conclusion from a new report detailing the potential effects of climate change on Maine’s coast. The report, released earlier this month by the Climate Change Institute at the University of Maine, took a close look at how climate change could affect fishing and agriculture. It imagines five climate change scenarios, how they would unfold over the next two decades and the impacts from each one.

The report by Paul Mayewski, the institute’s director, and Maine State Climatologist Sean Birkel predicts an overall trend of warmer, wetter weather with rising sea temperatures, shorter winters, longer summers and more frequent storms.

These predictions are in line with the National Climate Assessment that the Trump administration published the day after Thanksgiving and came a week after Mayewski and Birkel’s report. The national assessment predicts an increase in extreme weather events due to climate change, and major economic losses and heightened health risks as a result.

A global or national climate change assessment might not be applicable to all states or even regions within a state, however, which is why UMaine’s Climate Change Institute has focused on specific regions of Maine, Mayewski said. Mayewski and Birkel used past climate change data collected through Birkel’s Climate Reanalyzer tool to make predictions about coastal Maine’s climate future, and they plan to do the same for other regions in the state.

“Our goal through reports like this is to give people a better idea of how the climate has changed in the past few decades, and understanding what the plausible scenarios are for future climate and how this might impact, in this case, fisheries and blueberries,” Mayewski said.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

Good Luck Finding Maine Shrimp This Winter

November 28, 2018 — Shrimp from Maine is certainly less well-known than its crustacean cousin, Maine lobster. One of the primary reasons is that over 80 percent of American lobsters caught in the U.S. are from the state; meanwhile, even in a good year, Maine accounted for just a sliver of U.S. shrimp production, which as a whole only accounts for a sliver of the shrimp consumed in America, most of which comes from Asia. But another reason you may not hear much about shrimp from New England is that, this year, literally none will make it to market at all.

According to the Associated Press, the situation for Northern shrimp, also known as Pandalus borealis, is so dire that the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) is even shutting down a research program that had previously allowed a limited amount of shrimp from the Gulf of Maine to make it to market.

Though the shutdown should assure that what little supplies of Northern shrimp were being sold will no longer be available, it’s not like the supply has suddenly collapsed. After years of restrictions, the commission shut down all but the “research set aside” program since the 2014 season. Now, even that program for New England shrimp fishing reportedly won’t be allowed until 2021 when the moratorium is set to end. Even then, extensions of the closure are possible as stocks will be reevaluated year by year.

As recently as 2011, ASMFC data shows that landings were near 15 million pounds, the highest they’ve been since 1997. And Northern shrimp stocks have collapsed and rebuilt before: In 1978, the fishery was closed due to a stock collapse, but grew steadily throughout the ‘80s. However, this time around, the ASMFC appears to worry that things are different due to climate change. No previous closure has ever lasted anywhere near this long, and the commission has noted that “long-term trends in environmental conditions have not been favorable for” Northern shrimp. As Portland, Maine’s Press Herald reported last year, waters in the Gulf of Maine are warming faster than 99 percent of the world’s oceans, according to the Gulf of Maine Research Institute. The gulf already has the warmest waters these cold water-thriving shrimp can survive in; the even warmer winter waters are making it difficult for the species to spawn.

Read the full story at Food & Wine

UMaine Coastal Maine Climate Futures report issued

November 28, 2018 — Climate change means Mainers can expect to see significant environmental changes in the next two decades and they should start to prepare by planning now, University of Maine researchers say.

Using weather data dating back more than a century — to 1895 — UMaine researchers are able to track climate change and predict what the state may see in the future.

The purpose of the report is to provide both an overview of Maine’s historical climate but to provide plausible climate scenarios for the next 20 years,” said Sean Birkel, a UMaine research assistant professor and Maine State Climatologist.

Birkel and Paul Mayewski, director of the Climate Change Institute, created the Coastal Maine Climate Futures report to help prepare Mainers for what they call “significant environmental changes” on the horizon.

Since January 1895, the average coastal temperature in Maine and the sea surface temperature have both increased by 3 degrees, and rainfall has increased by around six inches.

That’s been great for some industries, like agriculture and lobster in the Gulf of Maine, which have increased four-fold since the 1980s, but not so great for others, including the cod fisheries because cod cannot tolerate the warmer temperatures.

“All of this is the human impacts,” Birkel said.

The melting of the polar ice cap, which is due to increased greenhouse gas emissions, and increases in the frequency of El Nino warm and dry weather conditions, are key factors in the warming trend for Maine.

“In these images, we see how the end of summer Arctic sea ice extent has changed — 1980 on the left and 2016 on the right,” Birkel said pointing to images of ice on the northern pole.

“So as Arctic sea ice declines… It’s affecting the weather because there is more open ocean water, there is more absorption of heat,” he said. “There is also more heat exchange between the ocean and the atmosphere.”

Read the full story at WVFX

Shrimp still shuttered: Northern shrimp moratorium extended 3 years

November 28, 2018 — New England’s fishing industry wasn’t expecting a bountiful shrimp harvest this winter, as the fishery has been shuttered since 2014. But the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission went above in beyond in its November meeting, shutting the shrimp fleet down not only for 2019, but for ’20 and ’21 as well.

A 2018 benchmark assessment published in October showed a bleak future for the fishery. The report indicated the northern shrimp population remains severely depleted. Spawning stock biomass remains at the same low levels that have kept the fishery shuttered since the 2013 season.

Commissioners from New Hampshire and Massachusetts supported the closure, while Patrick Keliher, commissioner of the Maine Department of Marine Resources, reportedly wanted only a one-year closure.

The closure does not allow for any research quota in the next three years, a deal that has kept a small portion of Gulf of Maine shrimp in the marketplace each year.

“The stock is so low, biomass is so low and recruitment is so down — the 2018 recruitment was 2 billion. And while that sounds like a lot, that’s even below the median,” said Tina Berger, the commission’s director of communications. “Their rationale was, ‘Let’s close the resource for three years, and that way if we have a good year for recruitment, it would give that class time to grow into a fishable resource.’”

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Shrimp harvested in New England won’t be available for sale this year

November 27, 2018 — Platters filled with shrimp are traditional during the holiday season. Just don’t expect your host to serve shrimp from New England waters.

Schermerhorn’s Fish Market owner Michael Fitzgerald has plenty of shrimp from the Gulf, but federal restrictions have prevented shrimping from off the coast of Maine. If some small supplies of Maine shrimp were available, he believes the price would be astronomical.

Michael Fitzgerald said, “We’ve got some good pricing on it, it’s just unfortunate we just can’t get Maine shrimp. There are people that want Maine shrimp but we can’t get it. We will have shrimp. Our shrimp will be decent, not Maine shrimp, but good shrimp.”

Read the full story at WWLP