Saving Seafood

Facing a Dying Industry, Two Young New Hampshire Fishermen Head Out Anyway

January 25, 2018 — It’s a feeling many in today’s economy can relate to: starting out in a career is just harder than it used to be.

One group that’s very familiar with that idea is commercial fishermen. In New Hampshire, dozens of boats used to head out every morning to fish for cod and haddock. Today that number is down to just a handful.

For our series The Balance, which looks at the cost of living in New Hampshire, Jason Moon tells us about two young fishermen who, in spite of the odds, are trying to live a vision of an iconic New England profession.

It wasn’t always Zach Griggs’ plan to become a fisherman. Along the way, he tried other things, too.

“I went to community college for a year-and-a-half and I realized I don’t like book-work.” says Griggs. “I realized I like working.”

But more than just working, Griggs realized he liked this kind of work. The way you get paid for exactly what you catch, the way each day is different.

“The sun rises every day but none of them are the same,” says Griggs. “It’s like, every day you haul the nets, it’s not going to be the same thing as you hauled yesterday. When I did dry wall, I knew I had screw every day and a screw-gun ‘bzzz, bzzz, bzzz.’ Miserable.”

Griggs is 28, but he’s already spent about 8 years in the fishing industry.

About four months ago, he decided to make a bet on staying in for even longer. He took out a loan and bought a boat, the Bridget Leigh. It’s a 44-foot white fishing boat that Griggs knows well. He’s been a deckhand on it for the past 6 years.

It should be an exciting moment – striking out on his own like this. But sitting in his new captain’s chair, Griggs sounds deflated.

“This is about what it’s good for, right here, right now, without permits,” says Griggs, “Sitting on it, hanging out. That’s pretty much all it’s been doing.”

Turns out, being a New Hampshire fisherman isn’t what it used to be.

On a recent night at the Rye Harbor, I met with Griggs and a couple of friends onboard the Bridget Leigh to talk about the state of New Hampshire’s fishery.

One of those friends is Lucas Raymond. At 25 years old, Raymond is New Hampshire’s youngest commercial fisherman. And like Griggs, he can’t imagine doing anything else.

Read the full story at NHPR

 

Study: Warming Gulf of Maine endangering lobster stock

January 24, 2018 — Is the lobster boom on the decline in the Gulf of Maine because of warming waters? A newly released study by a Maine-based marine research group suggests that is the case.

The study, released Monday by the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, touched on many of the same climate issues that have left researchers and lobster stakeholders anxious about the future.

“In the Gulf of Maine, the lobster fishery is vulnerable to future temperature increases,” GMRI said in the statement released with the study. “The researchers’ population projections suggest that lobster productivity will decrease as temperatures continue to warm, but continued conservation efforts can mitigate the impacts of future warming.”

The study, compiled with the University of Maine and NOAA Fisheries, said the anticipated decline highlights the need for vigilant conservation within the Gulf of Maine lobster fishery, especially since scientists say the gulf’s waters are warming faster than 99 percent of the rest of the world’s oceans.

Researchers said they expect the lobster population to decline from recent highs — GMRI pegs the peak year at 2010, when it estimated the Gulf of Maine lobster stock contained 518 million lobsters — to levels more in keeping with traditional lobstering years.

It estimates the population could shrink to about 261 million lobsters in 2050.

“The 30-year outlook for the Gulf of Maine fishery looks positive if conservation practices continue,” GMRI said. “In their 30-year projection, the researchers anticipate average populations similar to those in the early 2000s.”

Beth Casoni, executive director of the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association, said lobster stock assessments in the Gulf of Maine have shown the annual settlement of young lobsters — when they transition from floating in open waters as plankton to settling on the bottom to begin the seven- to eight-year stretch it requires to mature — has declined from previous assessments.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

 

Research Concludes Maine Conservation Technique Helped Drive Lobster Population Boom

January 24, 2018 — Lobster conservation techniques pioneered by Maine fishermen helped drive a population boom that’s led to record landings this century. That’s the conclusion of new, peer-reviewed research published today.

The paper also finds that lobstermen in southern New England could have used the same techniques to prevent or at least slow the collapse of their fisheries — even in the face of climate change — but they didn’t.

Cape Elizabeth lobsterman Curt Brown has been hauling traps since he was a kid. He says he quickly learned that when he pulled up a female lobster, covered in eggs, he was looking at the fishery’s future.

Maine lobstermen throw back lobsters like these, which produce eggs at a high rate, but other lobstermen do not

“You get used to seeing lobsters and then you see a lobster with eggs and it’s whole new animal,” he says. The underside of the tail is just covered with eggs.”

Since 1917, Maine lobstermen like Brown have used a technique known as “V-notching”: when they found an egg-bearing female in their traps, they would clip a “V” into the end of its tail, and throw it back. The next time it turns up in someone’s trap, even if it’s not showing eggs, the harvester knows it’s a fertile female, and throws it back. Later, the lobstermen also pushed the Legislature to impose limits on the size of the lobster they can keep — because the biggest ones produce the most eggs.

“I use my measure right here, right on the measure, at the end of the measure, is a little tool in the shape of a ‘V,'” Brown says. “So you just grab the lobster underside of the tail just like that and it cuts a V-notch right in the tail. Quick, painless, throw her back in and let her do more of her job.”

And those fertile females have been doing that job very well in Maine. Since the 1980s, lobster abundance here has grown by more than 500 percent, with landings shooting up from fewer than 20 million pounds in 1985, to more than 120 million pounds in 2015 with a value of more than a half billion dollars.

Read the full story at WNPR

 

Gulf of Maine lobster population past its peak, study says, and a big drop is due

January 23, 2018 — The Gulf of Maine lobster population will shrink 40 to 62 percent over the next 30 years because of rising ocean temperatures, according to a study published Monday.

As the water temperature rises – the northwest Atlantic ocean is warming at three times the global average rate – the number of lobster eggs that survive their first year of life will decrease, and the number of small-bodied lobster predators that eat those that remain will increase. Those effects will cause the lobster population to fall through 2050, according to a study by researchers at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, the University of Maine and the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration.

Looking ahead 30 years, the researchers predict a lobster population “rewind” to the harvests documented in the early 2000s. In 2002, 6,800 license holders landed 63 million pounds of lobster valued at $210.9 million. By comparison, 5,660 license holders harvested 131 million pounds valued at $533.1 million in 2016.

“In our model, the Gulf of Maine started to cross over the optimal water temperature for lobster sometime in 2010, and the lobster population peaked three or four years ago,” said Andrew Pershing, GMRI’s chief scientific officer and one of the authors of the study. “We’ve seen this huge increase in landings, a huge economic boom, but we are coming off of that peak now, returning to a more traditional fishery.”

Industry leaders have been girding themselves for a decline in landings ever since the recent boom began. While not everybody believes the decline will happen that fast or fall so much, most lobstermen admit the impact that warming water has had on their fishery, said Dave Cousens, the president of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association. It drove up landings by pushing lobsters into the Gulf of Maine, and over time it will drive lobsters out to colder offshore waters or the Canadian Maritimes, he said.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

 

New study: Industry conservation ethic proves critical to Gulf of Maine lobster fishery

January 22, 2018 — A new study, led by scientists at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute and colleagues at the University of Maine and NOAA, demonstrates how conservation practices championed by Maine lobstermen help make the lobster fishery resilient to climate change.

For generations, lobstermen in Maine have returned large lobsters to the sea and have designed a special way of marking egg-bearing lobsters to give them further protection. This conservation culture distinguishes the Gulf of Maine fishery from southern New England, where fishermen have not historically taken the same steps to preserve large, reproductive lobsters.

The study, funded by the National Science Foundation and published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), shows how warming waters and contrasting conservation practices contributed to simultaneous record landings in the Gulf of Maine fishery and  collapse in southern New England.

Led by Dr. Arnault Le Bris, the research team used advanced computer models to simulate the ecosystem under varying conditions, allowing them to understand the relative impacts of warming waters, conservation efforts, and other variables. Their results show that, while temperature change was the primary contributor to population changes, conservation efforts made a key difference in population resiliency.

Impacts of warming

Over 30 years (1984-2014), ocean temperatures increased rapidly in both regions. Warming in both regions shifted optimal summer ocean temperatures northeast, causing the southern New England  population to decline and the Gulf of Maine population boom. The researchers estimate that, during this 30-year period, the Gulf of Maine population increased by 515%, while the southern New England population declined by 78%. Challenges associated with warmer temperatures include decreased survival of larval lobsters, increased incidence of shell disease, and increased predation.

Read the full story at PHYS.org

 

US cod catch could soon make a comeback, NOAA says

January 19, 2018 — Atlantic cod catch in the United States was recorded at an all-time historical low in 2016, but a rebound for the fishery may be on the horizon, according to officials from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Once a hallmark of New England’s commercial fishing sector, the Atlantic cod fishery has suffered plummeting catch volumes due to overfishing and environmental changes over recent years, The Associated Press reported, via The Bangor Daily News. However, cod stocks are showing some promising signs for the upcoming season, NOAA officials said, and quotas are on track to increase slightly in spring of 2018.

Cod fishermen in the Gulf of Maine and on Georges Bank can expect a bump in their quotas come 1 May. That’s a step in the right direction, Ben Martens, executive director of the Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association, said.

“The quotas are so constraining that there’s not a lot of opportunity and interest in targeting cod,” Martens told the Associated Press. “But we’re headed in the right direction.”

Considered a “choke species” by fishermen, once cod quotas are reached, fishing must cease outright. As such, many fishermen have been avoiding cod altogether, the AP reported.

Recent marine analysis has indicated more abundance of cod in the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank, Jamie Cournane, groundfish plan coordinator with the New England Fishery Management Council, an arm of NOAA, told the AP. Such figures have prompted the council to propose doubling the commercial cod quota for both New England areas to nearly 3.9 million pounds, a move that’s still awaiting U.S. Department of Commerce approval, Cournane said.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

Gulf of Maine sea turtle could come off ‘endangered’ list

January 18, 2018 — Federal ocean managers say it might be time to move the East Coast population of the world’s largest turtle from the United States’ list of endangered animals.

An arm of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has received a petition from a fishing group asking that the Northwest Atlantic Ocean’s leatherback sea turtles be listed as “threatened” but not endangered under the Endangered Species Act. The giant reptiles, which can weigh 2,000 pounds, would remain protected under federal law, but their status would be changed to reflect some improvement in the overall health of their population.

According to the Sea Turtle Conservancy, the number of nesting leatherback females worldwide is between 34,000 and 36,000.

NOAA officials have said the agency has reviewed the petition from New Jersey-based Blue Water Fishermen’s Association and found “substantial scientific and commercial information” that the status upgrade may be warranted. The agency now has about eight months to make a decision about the status of the turtles.

Leatherbacks live all over the world’s oceans and have been listed as endangered by the U.S. since 1970. They can be seen regularly during the summer in the Gulf of Maine, where they feed on a variety of jellyfish and occasionally get tangled in fishing lines.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

 

Maine: Lobstermen reject big changes in harvester reporting rules

January 17, 2018 — ELLSWORTH, Maine — Ask any lobsterman about the details of where and how he catches his bugs — what kind of bait he uses, how deep he sets his gear, how many traps on a trawl, how long those traps soak between hauls — and you’re likely to get a fisheye, if not a poke in the nose, in response.

Still, that’s the kind of information the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission wants to collect from lobstermen and Jonah crab fishermen working in the Gulf of Maine and, no surprise, the idea is unpopular.

Last Thursday, about 40 fishermen came to Ellsworth High School for a public hearing on an ASMFC proposal to increase the number of harvesters required to fill out trip-level logbooks filled with data the commission says it needs to manage the lobster and Jonah crab fisheries, primarily in the Gulf of Maine.

The Department of Marine Resources already requires 10 percent of Maine’s licensed lobster fishermen, chosen annually by lottery system, to file detailed trip-level reports of their fishing activities on a monthly basis. Lobster dealers also are required to file landings reports with DMR.

According to Megan Ware, the ASMFC fishery management plan coordinator running last week’s hearing, the commission has two main concerns about the way harvesters report data now.

First, she said, the reports don’t identify in sufficient detail exactly where fishermen are trapping the lobsters they catch, and the commission particularly wants to collect more information about lobsters landed in “nearshore” and “offshore” waters — between three and 40 miles from the coast.

Second, the 10 percent of Maine harvesters required to file reports aren’t necessarily representative of the harvesters who actually land lobsters. No one has to report two years in a row, no matter how big the harvester’s landings, and because the selection process is entirely random, it may include harvesters who fish part time or who are retired and don’t fish at all.

There is another issue with the 10 percent reporting level, Ware said. Maine harvesters account for 83 percent of lobsters landed along the East Coast, so their data is particularly important to fisheries managers.

The opposite side of that coin, though, is that even at a reduced collection level Maine’s data overwhelms the data reported by the other lobster-fishing states.

Read the full story at the Ellsworth American

 

Why New England’s cod catch is at an all-time low

January 15, 2018 — PORTLAND, Maine — America’s catch of cod is at an all-time low, but the fishery might finally experience a rebound in the coming fishing year.

Atlantic cod were once the backbone of New England’s commercial fishing fleet, but catch has plummeted in the wake of overfishing and environmental changes. The 2016 catch, which is the most recent to be fully tabulated, was the lowest in recorded history, according to statistics from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

But NOAA officials said there are some positive signs for the cod stock, and quotas are set to increase slightly this spring after years of heavy cutbacks. Fishermen seek cod in the Gulf of Maine and on Georges Bank, and both areas are scheduled for quota bumps on May 1.

“The quotas are so constraining that there’s not a lot of opportunity and interest in targeting cod,” said Ben Martens, executive director of the Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association. “But we’re headed in the right direction.”

The U.S. cod fishery, based mostly in Massachusetts and Maine, brought in more than 100 million pounds (45.4 million kilograms) of fish per year in the early 1980s and bottomed out at 3.2 million pounds (1.45 million kilograms) in 2016. Scientists have blamed factors including years of heavy harvest and warming oceans for the collapse of the stock.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Boston Globe

 

Massachusetts: Fed’s offshore oil plan raises local concerns

January 12, 2018 — The possibility of having an offshore oil rig a handful of miles from Cape beaches is drawing concern from elected officials and preservation groups.

The Trump administration at the turn of the new year released its draft proposal that would enable energy companies to lease large swaths of ocean and drill for oil and gas in federal waters off both coasts and in the Gulf of Mexico.

Federal waters typically begin three miles from shore.

“Reckless does not begin to describe the Trump Administration’s decision to expand offshore oil and gas drilling coast-to-coast. This unprecedented move ignores concerns expressed by military leaders and the deep and widespread bipartisan opposition voiced by municipal and state representatives,” Rep. William Keating (D-Ninth Congressional District) said in a Jan. 5 statement.

“Allowing this drilling threatens the safety of our waterfront communities, the health of our oceans, and the future of our climate – not to mention the havoc it could wreak on the local economies of coastal communities, like those across New England, who count on fresh fish and clean beaches for their seafood and tourism industries,” he added.

The five-year plan is detailed in a document titled “2019-2024 National Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Draft Proposed Program, and is online at boem.gov.

The proposal, a few hundred pages long and broken into geographic territories, shows Massachusetts in the northern Atlantic section. The draft proposes two leases in the north Atlantic.

Read the full story at the Wellfleet Wicked Local