Saving Seafood

Center for Coastal Fisheries to lead groundbreaking research effort

July 5, 2018 — A new collaborative research effort involving the Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries, NOAA Fisheries and the Department of Marine Resources could lead to significant changes in the way fisheries are managed in the Gulf of Maine.

In the works for more than two years, the research consortium will be known as the Eastern Maine Coastal Current Collaborative, or EM3C, Paul Anderson, new executive director of the Stonington-based Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries said last week.

The collaborative is the product of a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement among the three parties signed last November, Anderson said.

Known in the bureaucratic world as a “CRADA,” the agreement is “a federal tool for engaging non-governmental entities” in joint scientific projects and it took a long time to come into being.

“Robin worked a couple of years to get it,” Anderson said, referring to center co-founder and retired executive director Robin Alden.

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American

US border patrol boat strayed into Canadian waters chasing migrants: fishermen

July 5, 2018 — A US border patrol boat strayed into Canadian territorial waters while chasing “illegal immigrants” off the coast of Maine and Nova Scotia, Canadian fishermen said Wednesday.

Laurence Cook, chair of the Grand Manan Fishermen’s Association, said on Facebook that a US border patrol launch out of Maine attempted to stop a Canadian fishing vessel in Canadian waters.

Grand Manan is a Canadian island in the Gulf of Maine, right off the coast that hosts the border between the United States and Canada.

Cook said the incident took place on June 24 near Machias Seal Island, a tiny and rocky outcrop a dozen miles (kilometers) south of Grand Manan with rich lobster grounds, and whose sovereignty is disputed by Washington, although the Canadian Coast Guard maintains a lighthouse there.

According to Cook, the Canadian fishing captain, Nick Brown, informed the US vessel that “he was a Canadian vessel legally fishing in Canadian waters.”

“Typical American bullies,” said Cook, who said he was “not surprised to see the Americans trying to push people around.”

Ties between Canada and the United States have been strained since President Donald Trump slapped tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum, citing US national security, with Trump calling Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau “very dishonest” and “weak” after a spat at the G7 meeting in Quebec last month.

Read the full story from the Agence France-Presse at Yahoo.com

New Hampshire fishermen face declining prices

July 2, 2018 — Local commercial fishermen say the price per pound they earn for their catch has dropped in recent years as their industry continues to struggle financially.

Fishermen say they have been selling their fish at prices several cents per pound less than in years past, citing strict catch quotas, a decline in businesses that buy their fish and a rise in imported fish as causes for the drop in their earnings.

Hampton fisherman David Geothel said prices for small American plaice, a species of flounder on which he relies in the face of strict cod catch limits, have dropped from $1.40 to $1.50 per pound in previous years to between 40 and 70 cents per pound now. Grey sole, or witch flounder, another species he targets frequently, has gone from $1.50 to $1.80 per pound down to 80 cents to $1.10 per pound.

Jamie Hayward, a gillnetter out of Portsmouth, said he has seen monkfish prices drop by 60 percent from what they were in years past. He and Goethel both said the drop in prices is another blow to fishermen struggling with strict regulations they say are upending their industry. There were once dozens of fishermen in New Hampshire, but now Goethel said less than 10 are actively groundfishing.

“It has potential to be the end, to be honest with you,” Hayward said of the prices and what they could mean for commercial fishing.

Read the full story at the Hampton Union

Maine lobster industry braces for looming bait shortage

July 2, 2018 — Maine’s lobster industry is on watch as fisheries regulators weigh whether to make significant cuts to herring catch limits, which could drive up bait costs that have already seen a sharp increase over the past decade.

Maine’s lobstermen draw their bait from the Atlantic herring stocks, which are managed by the New England Fishery Management Council and National Marine Fisheries Service.

In recent updates, the council said it planned on setting a significantly lower herring catch quota in 2019 than in 2018. The catch limit for 2018 was 111,000 metric tons, the same as it was in 2017. But the herring fleet landed many fewer fish than that last year, harvesting just 50,000 metric tons.

The council also called for a reduction to the catch cap for the rest of 2018 amid concerns about low densities and slow replenishment in the fish stock.

“The decline of the most important forage stock in New England is a significant blow, not only for the lobster industry that uses it for bait, but also for those species that rely on herring as forage like groundfish, tuna, whales, and seabirds,” Ben Martens, executive director of the Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association, wrote in a recent post. “Without this motion, rumor has it that the herring fishery would need to be capped at 15 metric tons in 2019, far lower than the 100-metric ton fishery that has operated in recent years.”

A herring stock assessment group held meetings in late June to try to determine its next steps and come closer to determining what quota it might propose. The group should release more details about the expected catch limits in the fall.

“Everyone’s worried about the quota and what that’s going to be,” said Kristan Porter, a Cutler lobsterman and president of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association. “There’s bait around right now, but what happens in the fall? We just don’t know.”

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

Fishermen feeling bait price squeeze

June 28, 2018 — “We made no money this spring,” said Bass Harbor fisherman Justin Sprague.

The cost of operations for lobstering continues to increase while the boat price of lobster has hardly budged. The cost of herring, the preferred bait for most Maine lobsterman, has gone up especially sharply.

“We don’t have any margin at this point,” Sprague said. “It’s frustrating, to say the least.”

Bruce Colbeth manages the C.H. Rich lobster wharf in Bass Harbor.

“By the time these guys pay for fuel, bait and stern men, there ain’t too much left for them,” he said. “I remember six years ago you could sell (herring) bait for $26 a bushel. Now it’s doubled.”

Herring bait is sold in trays. Fisherman Chris Goodwin said he paid almost $80 per tray for herring bait the last time he stocked up.

A ton of bait can be divided into about 13 trays, Cody Gatcomb of C.H. Rich explained. A tray of fish bait is equivalent to 1.5 bushels, Colbeth said. He saw a recent 3-cent per pound increase at his operation.

That adds up fast.

At the moment, not considered prime season, C.H. Rich Co. is selling between 350 and 400 trays of herring bait a week, Colbeth said. Once the season begins in July, they can expect to sell up to 800 trays of bait each week.

Some fishermen have reserved barrels of herring bait for the upcoming season in preparation for a possible shortage, Gatcomb said.

Read the full story at the Mount Desert Islander

ASMFC Schedules Peer Review for Northern Shrimp Benchmark Stock Assessment for August 14-16, 2018

June 25, 2018 — The following was released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission:

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Northern Shrimp Benchmark Stock Assessment will be peer-reviewed on August 14 – 16, 2018 at the Residence Inn Portland Downtown Waterfront, 145 Fore Street, Portland, Maine 04101. The assessment will evaluate the condition of the Gulf of Maine northern shrimp resource and inform management of the stock. The peer review is open to the public, except for any discussions of confidential data when the public will be asked to leave the room.

Confidential data (see NOTE below) are data such as commercial landings that can be identified down to an individual or single entity. Federal and state laws prohibit the disclosure of confidential data, and ASMFC abides by those laws. Each state and federal agency is responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of its data and deciding who has access to its confidential data.  In the case of our stock assessments and peer reviews, all analysts and, if necessary, reviewers, have been granted permission by the appropriate agency to use and view confidential data. When the assessment team needs to show and discuss these data, observers to our stock assessment process are asked to leave the room to preserve confidentiality.

Additionally, the public and all other workshop participants will be asked to leave the room during the Peer Review Panel’s final deliberations.

For more information, please contact Patrick Campfield, Science Director, at pcampfield@asmfc.org or 703.842.0740.

NOTE: In determining what data are confidential, most agencies use the “rule of 3” for commercial catch and effort data. The “rule of 3” requires three separate contributors to fisheries data in order for the data to be considered non-confidential. This protects the identity of any single contributor. In some cases, annual summaries by state and species may still be confidential because only one or two dealers process the catch. Alternatively, if there is only one known harvester of a species in a state, the harvester’s identity is implicit and the data for that species from that state is confidential.

Fish wars loom as climate change pushes lobster, cod, and other species north

June 22, 2018 — Over the past 50 years, as Atlantic waters have warmed, fish populations have headed north in search of colder temperatures. Lobsters have migrated 170 miles and the iconic cod about 65 miles, while mid-Atlantic species such as black sea bass have surged about 250 miles north, federal surveys show.

But fishing limits and other rules, by and large, haven’t shifted with them.

The rapid movement of fisheries, in New England and around the world, has outpaced regulations and exacerbated tensions between fishermen in competing regions and countries, threatening to spark conflicts that specialists fear could lead to overfishing.

“This is a global problem that’s going to be getting worse,” said Malin Pinsky, an assistant professor of ecology at Rutgers University, who led a recently released study on the movement of fisheries in the journal Science.

With climate change expected to accelerate in the coming years, new fisheries are likely to emerge in the waters of more than 70 countries and in many new regions, the study found.

Fishing quotas in the United States have been traditionally set by councils overseeing specific regions, based on the belief that fish don’t move much.

Read the full story at the Boston Globe

Trump rescinds Obama-era ocean policy

June 22, 2018 — In another strike at his predecessor’s legacy, and one that could have long-term consequences for New England, President Trump this week rescinded an executive order by President Obama that established the first national ocean policy, which made protecting coastal waters and the Great Lakes a priority.

Trump said his executive order would cut bureaucracy and benefit business, while environmental advocates denounced his decision, saying it strongly favors commercial interests over conservation.

Trump’s order could alter New England’s plans to protect the Gulf of Maine and other waters in the region. It replaces the National Ocean Council, which brought together a host of federal departments and committees that work on ocean issues, with a new “streamlined” committee that will focus on science and technology and resource management.

It will also eliminate nine regional planning bodies around the country, which the White House called “unnecessary.”

“Claims that the ocean is being abandoned are not supported by the facts,” said Drew Minkiewicz, an attorney at the Fisheries Survival Fund in Washington, D.C., which represents the scallops industry.

He supported the elimination of the regional planning bodies, which he argued had failed in its mission to bring together competing interests, such as offshore wind-farm developers and fishermen, who have been at odds over plans to build turbines off Martha’s Vineyard.

Eliminating the groups “will not lead to less coordination amongst the federal government because they were not doing their stated job,” he said.

Officials at the National Ocean Industries Association, which represents offshore drilling and wind companies, praised Trump’s order, saying Obama’s policies were “uber-bureaucratic” and “caused consternation, uncertainty, and concern for the offshore energy industry.”

Read the full story at the Boston Globe

Climate Change Brought a Lobster Boom. Now It Could Cause a Bust.

June 21, 2018 — At 3:30 in the morning on a Friday in late May, the lobstermen ate breakfast. Outside, their boats bobbed in the labradorite water, lit only by the dull yellow of streetlamps across the bay. It was windy, too windy for fishing, but one by one the island’s fishermen showed up at the Surfside cafe anyway. Over pancakes and eggs, they grumbled about the season’s catch to date.

Some of the lobstermen said it was just too early in the season. Others feared that it was a sign of things to come. Since the early 1980s, climate change had warmed the Gulf of Maine’s cool waters to the ideal temperature for lobsters, which has helped grow Maine’s fishery fivefold to a half-billion-dollar industry, among the most valuable in the United States. But last year the state’s lobster landings dropped by 22 million pounds, to 111 million.

Now, scientists and some fishermen are worried that the waters might eventually warm too much for the lobsters, and are asking how much longer the boom can last.

“Climate change really helped us for the last 20 years,” said Dave Cousens, who stepped down as president of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association in March. But, he added, “Climate change is going to kill us, in probably the next 30.”

Read the full story at the New York Times

Greenland Salmon Agreement Touted as Path to Save Fish

June 21, 2018 — Conservation groups say they are optimistic that an agreement with Greenland will help endangered wild Atlantic salmon begin to recover.

The salmon are considered endangered in the Gulf of Maine by the U.S. government. The North Atlantic Salmon Conservation Organization held a meeting in Portland last week to try to broker a deal to keep more of the fish alive.

Greenland fishermen continue to fish for the salmon, while U.S. commercial fishermen do not. The NASCO meeting resulted in a deal in which Greenland will reduce its annual quota for the fish from nearly 100,000 pounds to about 66,000 pounds. It also suspends Greenland’s commercial harvest of the fish.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at US News