Saving Seafood

Maine lobster group re-engages with NOAA whale protection effort

October 31, 2019 — A lobster industry group in the US state of Maine has re-engaged with a federal government process to reduce risks to endangered right whales, The Center Square reported.

The Maine Lobstermen’s Association (MLA) said that it was encouraged by recent actions by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association’s (NOAA) National Marine Fisheries Service to address the group’s concerns regarding the agency’s Take Reduction Team (TRT) process to protect right whales.

“MLA is pleased that NOAA has taken our concerns seriously,” the group said. “MLA continues to work diligently with our members and in close collaboration with Maine’s Department of Marine Resources to identify management approaches that are both effective in minimizing risk to whales and proportionate to the risk from Maine fishery gear,” the MLA said.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

Decrease in Maine lobster catches this season raises concerns

October 31, 2019 — Early numbers show Maine’s lobster catch has declined as much as 40 percent this year; equaling roughly 50 million pounds.

State officials calculated these results using data gathered from September 2018 to September 2019. However, there are still a few months worth of data from lobster landings left out of these results.

The Maine Department of Marine Resources says that some locations had an uptick in catches after September, but as the season wraps up, lobstermen have reported that the pickings this year were substantially reduced.

Gene Robinson, a lobster captain off of Chebeague Island, has been fishing in Maine for the past 50 years.

“It was a wet, cold spring and the lobsters just never showed up,” said Robinson.

The cold spring may have stalled the shedding process in the early summer months when lobsters move toward the coast.

Read the full story at WCVB

Lobster processor expands into new markets thanks to high pressure processing machine

October 31, 2019 — Stonington, Maine, U.S.A.-based seafood processor Greenhead Lobster has upgraded its operations with a new Hiperbaric high pressure processing (HPP) machine.

The company is using the 420i Hiperbaric model for extracting lobster meat from shells at its recently opened production facility in Bucksport, Maine, it confirmed in a press release. The machine also works to fortify Greenhead Lobster’s food safety procedures, inactivating harmful foodborne bacteria and extending shelf-life.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

Despite trade war, US seafood companies still see positives in China

October 31, 2019 — Since the start of the trade war between the United States and China over a year ago, certain sectors of the seafood industry have seen sharp drops of trade between the two countries.

The United States and China have taken turns ramping up tariffs on each other’s products, starting at 10 percent tariff rates and escalating to 25 percent duties on most products, including seafood, traded between the two countries.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Maine lobster landings ‘are way off,’ down 40% from last year

October 28, 2019 — The state’s year-to-date lobster catch is “way off” this year, according to Maine’s top fishing regulator.

As of the end of September, Maine fishermen had landed less than 50 million pounds of lobster, according to Commissioner Pat Keliher of Maine Department of Marine Resources. That is 40 percent less than what had been landed by September 2018, and 38 percent off from the five-year average.

Keliher told the American Lobster Management Board on Monday that some of the year-to-date decline could be because lobsters molted late this year. The bulk of Maine’s lobster fleet catches new shell lobster, or lobsters whose new shells are just starting to firm up after shedding their old ones.

“Maine lobster landings are down significantly, below 50 million pounds to date,” Keliher told the board. “Our landings are way off. Now that doesn’t mean the sky is falling. That means we certainly had a very big delay in the shed.”

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Warming waters, local differences in oceanography affect Gulf of Maine lobster population

October 25, 2019 — Two new studies published by University of Maine scientists are putting a long-standing survey of the American lobster’s earliest life stages to its most rigorous test yet as an early warning system for trends in New England’s iconic fishery. The studies point to the role of a warming ocean and local differences in oceanography in the rise and fall of lobster populations along the coast from southern New England to Atlantic Canada.

One of the papers, published in the scientific journal Ecological Applications, was led by Noah Oppenheim, who completed his research as a UMaine graduate student in 2016, with co-authors Richard Wahle, Damian Brady and Andrew Goode from UMaine’s School of Marine Sciences, and Andrew Pershing from the Gulf of Maine Research Institute. They report that the numbers of young-of-year lobsters populating shallow coastal nursery habitats each year, and temperature, provide a reasonably accurate prediction of trends in the lobster fishery some four to six years later.

Their model predicted regional differences in the recent record-breaking boom over the past decade, and now suggests the Gulf of Maine lobster fishery may be entering a period of decline; in effect a “cresting wave” of lobster abundance that may be heading northward in the region’s changing climate.

“Our model projects that the Gulf of Maine’s lobster landings will return to previous historical levels,” said Oppenheim, who is now executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations and the Institute for Fisheries Resources in San Francisco. “These results don’t suggest a lobster crash, but this tool could give the  and policymakers additional lead time as they make decisions about their businesses and communities in the years ahead.

Read the full story at PHYS.org

Maine pushes own whale protection plan

October 24, 2019 — Maine’s fishery regulators, on behalf of the state’s vital lobster industry, appear to be willing to meet the right whale take reduction team halfway on the removal of lobster buoy lines — but only in federal waters.

The state’s Department of Marine Resources last week released its own draft plan as a counterweight to the take reduction team proposal to remove 50 percent of all vertical lobster lines from wherever Maine lobstermen set and haul — in Maine state waters and the federal waters three miles beyond.

The DMR proposal calls for removing 25 percent of vertical buoy lines set in federal waters by Maine commercial lobstermen.

It said it would eliminate the lines by mandating lobstermen engage in a fishing practice called “trawling up” in which more traps — in ascending numbers as they move further offshore — are attached to each vertical line.

DMR Commissioner Patrick Keliher said his agency’s plan protects the whales “by reducing risk where it occurs” and protects the state’s elemental lobster industry in the state waters where most permitted lobstermen ply their trade.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

MAINE: DMR floats new gear regs to protect whales

October 23, 2019 — As the battle over how best to protect endangered northern right whales continues to escalate, the Department of Marine Resources is proposing a new set of requirements for lobster gear that the department believes will help reduce injury to the whales without imposing severe, and some say dangerous, restrictions on fishermen.

Last week, DMR Commissioner Patrick Keliher announced that after “rigorous scientific analysis,” the department had come up with a new draft plan to address “both the risk to right whales and concerns of fishermen” that is “in keeping with the real risk the Maine fishery presents.”

Last March, the National Marine Fisheries Service announced that the risk of injuries to right whales in the Gulf of Maine had to be reduced by at least 60 percent.

To meet that goal, a group of fishermen, scientists and conservation group representatives known as the Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Team recommended that NMFS require Maine lobstermen to reduce the number of vertical lines used to connect their traps to the surface marker buoys by 50 percent.

The NMFS proposal was based on a scientific model that ostensibly showed the restrictions to be necessary to meet the 60 percent risk reduction goal.

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American

ASMFC 78th Annual Meeting Supplemental Materials Now Available

October 23, 2019 — The following was released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission:

Supplemental materials for the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s 78th Annual Meeting are now available at http://www.asmfc.org/home/2019-annual-meeting for the following Boards/Committees (click on “Supplemental” following each relevant committee header to access the information). For ease of access, all Board meeting supplemental materials have been combined into one PDF – http://www.asmfc.org/files/Meetings/78AnnualMeeting/78thAnnualMeetingCombinedSupplementalMaterials.pdf. Not included in the combined document are supplemental materials for the Executive Committee and the Atlantic Striped Bass Board; materials for both of which can be found at their committee headers.

Atlantic Herring Management Board – Correspondence to NOAA & ASMFC Regarding Herring Quota and Law Enforcement Violation

American Lobster Management Board – Lobster/Jonah Crab Reporting Requirements

Tautog Management Board – Update on Implementation of the Commercial Harvest Tagging Program

Atlantic Coastal Fish Habitat Partnership Steering Committee – Action Items

Atlantic Menhaden Management Board – Public Comment

Management and Science Committee – Revised Draft Agenda

Horseshoe Crab Management Board – Draft Fishery Management Plan Review

American Eel Management Board – Draft Fishery Management Plan Review

Weakfish Management Board – Draft Fishery Management Plan Review

Executive Committee – Revised Agenda and FY19 Audit

Habitat Committee – Aquaculture Impacts to Fisheries; Acoustic Impacts on Atlantic Fisheries Production

Shad and River Herring Management Board – Public Comment

Coastal Sharks Management Board – Draft Fishery Management Plan Review

Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board – Advisory Panel Recommendations; Law Enforcement Committee Review; Technical Committee Criteria for Conservation Equivalency with Addendum VI; Public Comment Summary and Submitted Comment on Draft Addendum VI

ISFMP Policy Board – Revised Draft Agenda and Meeting Overview; Habitat Management Series: Aquaculture Impacts to Fish Habitats along the Atlantic Coast

South Atlantic State/Federal Fisheries Management Board – Draft Addendum III to Amendment 1 to the FMP for Atlantic Croaker; Draft Addendum III to the Omnibus Amendment to the FMP for Spanish Mackerel, Spot, and Spotted Seatrout; Draft Fishery Management Plan Reviews for Black Drum and Spotted Seatrout; Public Comment

As a reminder, Board meeting proceedings will be broadcast daily via webinar beginning Monday, October 28th at 8:30 a.m. and continuing daily until the conclusion of the meeting (expected to be 12:15 p.m.) on Thursday, October 31st. The webinar will allow registrants to listen to board deliberations and view presentations and motions as they occur. No comments or questions will be accepted via the webinar. Should technical difficulties arise while streaming the broadcast the boards/sections will continue their deliberations without interruption. We will attempt to resume the broadcast as soon as possible.

Farming Seaweed And Shellfish Can Help Water Quality And Wild Fish Stocks, Report Finds

October 23, 2019 — Aquaculture is currently the third-most lucrative fishery in New England, after lobster and scallops. Oysters, and increasingly, kelp, are two of the most commonly grown foods.

Now, a new study says aquaculture could also be an important way to address issues like nutrient pollution and habitat loss. The study found that New England’s waters are among the top 20 locations in the world with the greatest opportunities for restorative aquaculture.

Aquaculture hasn’t been associated with environmental benefits, historically — in fact, it’s much more commonly known for pollution, when too many fish are crowded into coastal waters.

But it turns out that shellfish and seaweed, farmed properly, can dramatically improve water quality.

“Shellfish and seaweeds are at the bottom of the food web and they’re able to actually take up nutrients from the water column,” said Seth Theuerkauf, aquaculture scientist with The Nature Conservancy and lead author of that global assessment.

Read the full story at WGBH