Saving Seafood

MAINE: Lobster ‘shack’ keeping Portland waterfront working

June 12, 2019 — In Portland in the summer, you can pretty much find lobster on every block along the water. One week ago, the latest fishing shack opened at the end of Portland Pier. But Luke’s Lobster is anything but a shack; and it’s not just another restaurant taking up waterfront space.

The owner, Luke Holden; his chef, Zac Leeman; and quite a few members of his staff come from fishing families, so preserving a working waterfront has been the focus of their brand new space – starting with fixing up the docks and making the space useful again.

Order a lobster, and it comes directly from one of the holding tanks adjacent to the restaurant; a lobster that came directly from one of the boats tied to the docks surrounding the deck of Luke’s Lobster. Visitors can sit, sip a cocktail and watch their catch come in.

These guys take their waterfront relationship seriously, with a slogan “No middlemen, just lobstermen.” Even their coasters reflect that.

Read the full story at News Center Maine

New restrictions considered to help protect whales off coast of Maine

June 11, 2019 — Dozens of lobstermen showed up for tonight’s meeting at Kennebunk High School.

They say the proposed restrictions are way too tough and could severely hurt Maine’s lobster industry.

The Department of Marine Resources is looking to remove hundreds of lobstermen’s vertical lines from the Gulf of Maine.

These lines are what connect the buoy to the trap.

Experts say right whales, which are near extinction, are getting entangled in them.

Roughly 411 right whales are estimated to be alive today.

While the department confirms no right whale deaths have occurred in the Gulf of Maine, the state still has to play its part due to federal law.

The department says the goal is to reduce the risk of entanglement deaths by sixty percent.

Lobstermen say if right whales aren’t getting hurt in their lines, it shouldn’t be their responsibility.

Read the full story at WGME

‘Why not lobsters?’: Mainers plead with Trump to help an industry suffering from his trade war

June 7, 2019 — The mild-mannered independent senator from Maine, Angus King, got angry as he watched President Trump announce a $16 billion bailout two Thursdays ago to help farmers who are losing money because of the U.S. trade war with China.

A guy from Idaho wearing a “Make Potatoes Great Again” hat stood appreciatively at the president’s side. So did producers of corn, soybeans, wheat and pork. They’re all getting another round of handouts from the Department of Agriculture.

But many of King’s constituents have also been suffering, and they’re getting the shaft from their government. Lobster exports to China, which had been booming for years, have plummeted 84 percent since Beijing imposed retaliatory tariffs last July, according to new data from the Maine International Trade Center. The growing Chinese middle class is eating more lobsters from Canada, which now cost them a quarter to a third less but taste no different.

“We’ve got an industry that’s suffering exactly the same kind of negative effects,” King said in an interview. “Why not lobsters? There’s no logical distinction that I can see. … I’m sure a lot of people in Maine had the same reaction I did watching that press conference: What are we, chopped lobster?”

To be sure, chopped lobster from Maine sounds delicious – especially if it’s thinly coated in mayonnaise and stuffed into a hot dog bun that’s been lightly toasted in butter. But, in all seriousness, King’s frustration underscores the degree to which Trump and his political appointees in Washington have been picking winners and losers. The lobster industry has been one of the losers.

Read the full story at The Washington Post

Possible whale-protection strategies? Lobster trap reductions, more traps on one line

June 6, 2019 — The Maine Department of Marine Resources is in the midst of a first round of meetings with the lobster industry, to discuss strategies to cope with an expected 50% cut in the number of “endlines” in the water.

Endlines are the vertical lines that connect lobster traps that are on the ocean bottom with a buoy at the sea surface. The buoy identifies where the traps are, and the vertical lines are used to haul up the traps.

The agency is holding the meetings with Maine’s seven Lobster Management Zone Councils during June to facilitate the development of a proposal that meets targets established by the Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Team for protecting right whales, according to an agency news release.

The team has recommended broad measures for Maine that include removing 50% of vertical lines from the Gulf of Maine and the use of weak rope in the top of remaining vertical lines. The measures put forward by the team are driven by federal laws designed to protect whales. The laws are the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

Read the full story at MaineBiz

Maine’s fishing community braces for new wave of catch limits and monitoring

June 6, 2019 — Setting fishing limits for Atlantic herring for the next two years, further discussions about how to monitor the groundfish catch, and proposals for regulating and setting catch limits for scallops are among the topics the New England Fishery Management Council will discuss during three days of meetings beginning June 11 in South Portland.

The council, charged with managing New England’s fisheries, is made up of 18 voting members including the regional administrator of the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) Fisheries in the Greater Atlantic Region, the five principal state officials with marine fishery management responsibility or their designee, and 12 members nominated by governors of New England coastal states and appointed by the secretary of commerce.

Among the topics of most interest to Maine fishermen are setting Atlantic herring catch limits for 2020 and 2021.

Final numbers won’t be available until they are discussed Tuesday, but Janice M. Plante, public affairs officer for NEFMC, said, “The catch limits at best will be about the same as this year or a little bit lower.”

The 2020 numbers will be set, but 2021 numbers may be updated following a stock assessment update, she said.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

MAINE: Lobstermen at state hearing wary of regulations to protect whales

June 5, 2019 — In private conversations, local fishermen all tell David Horner, a longtime Southwest Harbor lobsterman, the same thing: they’d be willing to fish fewer traps to get the whale advocates off their backs, but not if their sacrifices are going to be exploited by other fishermen.

If the state wants to cut the number of traps each fisherman can set to reduce the number of buoy lines in the water, and protect right whales from entanglements, Maine can’t keep letting new lobstermen into the fishery or allow people in other territories to fish here, Horner said.

“Behind the scenes, they all say exactly the same thing,” Horner, the chairman of the local lobster zone council, said at a state hearing on new right whale protection regulations. “Fishermen could accept (a trap cut), I think, but not if we are going to have more people coming in to fill the gap, especially those from outside.”

The Maine Department of Marine Resources kicked off a monthly series of public information sessions on the new whale rules Tuesday. More than 100 lobstermen from the local zone, which runs from Franklin to Frenchboro, turned out.

Carroll Staples, a third-generation Swans Island lobsterman, agreed with Horner, saying that any kind of concessions made by existing lobstermen to reduce the number of buoy lines in the water to protect whales will help only if the state actually caps the number of people in the fishery.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

How ocean mapping changed the way a seafood giant fishes

June 5, 2019 — North America’s largest shellfish company showcased some of its advanced ocean-mapping technology Tuesday at an Oceans Week conference in Dartmouth, N.S., illustrating how it is making the industry more efficient and sustainable.

Geographic information systems, or GIS, has transformed the way Clearwater Seafoods fishes, said Jim Mosher, the company’s director of harvest science.

Ocean mapping reduced the fuel bill in its offshore lobster fishery by shaving nearly 10,000 kilometres a year in vessel transiting, or movement in the fishing ground, he said.

In the scallop fishery, this technology reveals areas that should be closed because scallops are too young to harvest.

Read the full story at CBC

MAINE: Two seafood companies team up to fund UMaine lobster research

June 4, 2019 — A $75,000 gift from two seafood companies will fund a fourth field season for a University of Maine deep-water lobster settlement monitoring program.

The deep-water research is an extension of the American Lobster Settlement Index, which was initiated in 1989 by Rick Wahle, a research professor in the School of Marine Sciences who was named director of the Lobster Institute last fall. The index includes collaborators and monitoring sites from Rhode Island to Newfoundland.

The original surveys were conducted by divers, which confined data collection to shallower waters. In 2016, Wahle expanded monitoring to include greater depths with a novel collector deployed from fishing vessels. The addition of this data helps scientists evaluate how temperature affects the nursery potential of seabed for larval lobsters, and subsequent bottom movements by older juveniles.

Maine Sea Grant sponsored the first two years of deep-water monitoring in collaboration with Ready Seafood Co. of Portland and the Maine Department of Marine Resources. When the Maine Sea Grant project ended, Ready Seafood stepped in with a $75,000 gift to support a third research field season in 2018.

Read the full story at MaineBiz

Maine Lobster Marketing Collaborative creates promotional “Content Hub”

May 30, 2019 — The Maine Lobster Marketing Collaborative has announced the creation of a new tool for retailers, distributors, and more to promote lobster, the state’s most valuable seafood product.

The Content Hub, located on the MLMC website, contains logos, infographics, fact-sheets, videos giving details about the industry, high-quality photos, and more. The hub, according to MLMC Executive Director Marianne LaCroix, is intended to aid anyone buying or selling the product and journalists looking for information.

“The Maine Lobster Marketing Collaborative (MLMC) developed its new Content Hub to support the promotional efforts of Maine lobster distributors, foodservice operators, retailers, restauranteurs and anyone selling or promoting Maine lobster worldwide,” she said. “The digital library of assets aims to ensure those buying and selling Maine lobster have a cohesive, easy-to-navigate resource packed with the tools and information needed to both promote and make informed decisions about lobster products.”

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Maine’s congressional delegation asks feds to reduce impact of right whale protections on lobster industry

May 30, 2019 — Maine’s congressional delegation wrote Tuesday to federal officials to express concern that ongoing efforts to decrease the death of right whales will have a significant impact on Maine’s lobster industry.

The delegation asked National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration leaders to ensure that decisions made by the Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Team are based on “sound” and “comprehensive” science, that risk reduction standards are equitable across the United States and Canada, and that the lobster industry is consulted throughout the decision-making process, according to a release from Maine’s four members of Congress.

The new efforts to protect right whales are driven by the federal Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Because of the current endangered status of right whales, if Maine fails to come up with a plan to protect the whales, NOAA will determine what action is taken, according to Patrick Keliher, commissioner of the Maine Department of Marine Resources.

The task force set a goal of reducing right whale mortality by 60 percent to 80 percent, and met last month with a group of approximately 60 fishermen, scientists and conservationists joining state and federal officials to discuss ways to further reduce serious injury and mortality of endangered North Atlantic right whales caused by trap/pot fishing gear.

They hope to agree on measures that would reduce serious injuries and deaths of right whales caused by fishing gear in U.S. waters from Maine to Florida to fewer than one whale per year, the level prescribed by the Marine Mammal Protection Act, according to NOAA.

Read the full story at Bangor Daily News