Saving Seafood

Maine lobstermen get new bait option amidst herring quota cuts

July 12, 2019 — Maine lobsterman have gained a new option for baiting their traps as Cooke Aquaculture USA has secured permission from the state’s Department of Marine Resources to process and use whole blackbelly rosefish as lobster bait.

The new bait comes as the fishery’s main source of bait, herring, has faced a significant cut to quotas in 2019 and potentially beyond. The New England Fishery Management Council elected to slash the herring quota from nearly 50,000 metric tons (MT) to just over 15,000 MT – a 70 percent reduction – in the wakes of biomass surveys that indicated substantial declines in recruitment and biomass of the fish.

That quota cut means the lobster industry has to go without roughly 55 million pounds of bait in 2019; and the management council may cut quotas further in 2020 and 2021.

“Lobstering is an important part of the communities where we operate. Lobster fisherman are our friends, neighbors, and in many cases, family,” Glenn Cook, CEO of the Cooke Inc. family of companies, said in a release.  “When we learned about the bait shortage and its impact on the lobster industry in Maine, we began to explore possible solutions.”

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Lobster Bait Fish Coming to Maine From Uruguay Amid Shortage

July 11, 2019 — Maine’s lobster fishermen will be able to use a new species of bait fish to try to get through a shortage of herring that has troubled the industry in recent years.

Lobstermen typically bait traps with Atlantic herring, but federal fishery regulators have enacted dramatic cutbacks to the catch quotas for that fish. The Maine Department of Marine Resources said Thursday it has approved the blackbelly rosefish as a new species that can be sold and used as lobster bait in the state.

The blackbelly rosefish is an abundant species that ranges from Canada to South America. Cooke Aquaculture, a New Brunswick, Canada-based company, requested Maine’s approval to sell rosefish as bait, and the company announced plans to harvest the fish off Uruguay.

“We believe this is a solution to address concerns from the lobster fishery on the challenges they are currently facing on account of bait shortages,” said Glenn Cooke, chief executive officer of Cooke Inc., which includes Cooke Aquaculture.

Most of the U.S. lobster catch comes to the shore in Maine, where lobstermen landed nearly 120 million pounds (54 million kilograms) of the valuable seafood last year. Fishermen rely heavily on herring as a bait source, though they also use other species, such as menhaden.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at U.S. News

Federal regulations to save whales could hurt Maine’s lobster industry

July 11, 2019 — New federal regulations aimed at saving endangered whales could have unintended consequences for Maine’s lobster industry.

Now Maine’s congressional delegation is trying to stall them.

Maine’s lobstering industry will soon have to drastically change how they operate.

“It could put a few of the smaller guys right out of business, because they can’t compete with it,” lobsterman George Anderson said.

New federal regulations are forcing them to cut the number of buoy lines in the Gulf of Maine by half this September.

“Yes they do have to cut down on some of their end lines, but on the other hand it’s going to put a hardship on some of us,” Anderson said.

Read the full story at WGME

New RAS proposal entered for former Garbo Lobster facility in Connecticut

July 9, 2019 — Officials in Groton, Connecticut, U.S.A. announced recently a private company is interested in buying a recently shuttered lobster facility in the city and turning it into a land-based fish farm.

East Coast Seafood’s Garbo Lobster facility caught the eye of Deaderick SSB, a Delaware-based limited liability company, according to The Day.

The 34,700-square-foot former facility at 415 Thames Street, built in 2002, is located along the Thames River and is owned by Just in Case LLC under East Coast Seafood Group of Topsfield, Massachusetts, U.S.A., according to land and business records. East Coast, which owns Garbo Lobster, shuttered the lobster facility in January. The company said at the time it planned to shift Groton’s operations to a Prospect Harbor, Maine, facility that East Coast Seafood and Garbo Lobster acquired in 2012, as well as to its facility in New Bedford, Massachusetts.

Mark Branse, a lawyer hired by Deaderick SSB to work on local land-use issues, told The Day the company plans to purchase the property and raise fish in the facility.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

For lobster industry, a boatload of stresses

July 8, 2019 — This year’s delayed lobster season kicked off with a cold, rainy spring and bait worries, but lobstermen haven’t been idle. Instead, they’ve been hunting for a way to cope with looming North Atlantic right whale protections.

“The overall feeling around the docks this year is pretty glum,” said Jason Joyce of Swans Island. “Catch is low, expenses are high and (there are) stormy forecasts ahead thanks to wealthy, politically connected multinational environmental groups that have been targeting us as their latest fundraising villain.”

Lousy spring weather means many midcoast lobstermen have set only half their traps. Farther Down East, lobstermen have set their traps but the catches are light. Topping it off: Bait prices are about twice what they were last summer in some ports.

Underscoring those challenges is the persistent uncertainty about what right whale protections will do to Maine’s $485 million industry, a concern heightened by recent reports of six right whale deaths in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

Many of Maine’s 4,500 licensed commercial lobster fishermen have been following federal efforts to protect the endangered right whale, especially a mandate that the Maine fleet reduce its buoy lines by half to prevent entanglements.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Lobster dealers feel pinch in tariff trade wars

July 3, 2019 — A year ago this month, China imposed a sweeping array of retaliatory tariffs that effectively closed off the massive Chinese consumer market to U.S. seafood dealers — particularly lobster exporters such as Mortillaro Lobster of Gloucester.

Consider: Mortillaro estimates that during the first six months of 2019, the 25% Chinese tariffs have cost it more than a half-million pounds of lobster sales to China, valued at about $6 million.

“The impact has been huge,” Vince Mortillaro, one of the owners of the Gloucester seafood dealer, said Tuesday afternoon. “We’ve had to lay people off. We’re not losing a barrel-full right now, but we’re not really making any money, either. And it’s tough to come to work when the company’s not really making any money.”

And it’s not just China.

Mortillaro and other lobster exporters also have been stung by deep cuts in lobster sales to the European Union — primarily because of an exclusive trade deal between Canada and the EU that frees Canadian lobster exporters from any tariffs while imposing an 8% tariff on shipments from the U.S.

“We used to sell more to the EU than to China,” Mortillaro said. “Now we’ve got the double-whammy. We can’t sell to the 28 EU countries and we can’t sell to China.”

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Moulton, Ferrante: Trade war hurting lobstermen

July 1, 2019 — The U.S. trade war with China has turned into a war of another kind, as representatives at the state and federal levels are taking aim at tariffs that have rocked several sectors of the New England seafood industry.

In Washington, U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton, a Democratic candidate for president, filed legislation to expand disaster relief to fisheries — such as the New England lobster industry — harmed by retaliatory tariffs that have choked off lucrative trade with China.

The bill calls for amending the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act “to require NOAA to evaluate the impacts of duties imposed on American seafood” and to ultimately allow the federal Department of Commerce to consider the impact of trade wars on the fishing industry as a means of providing disaster relief.

A similar measure was filed in the U.S. Senate by Sen. Ron Wyden, the senior senator from Oregon.

“The president’s lack of strategy and the uncertainty in our local economy is the perfect storm for local fishermen who are already doing more with less,” Moulton said in a statement. “Until the president ends his misguided trade war, Congress should step up and provide some relief.”

In Boston, state Rep. Ann-Margaret Ferrante of Gloucester pushed for a hearing in Gloucester by a joint committee of the Massachusetts Legislature on the Trump administration’s trade policies with China “and its effects on the Massachusetts lobster industry and corresponding ports.”

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Baby lobster numbers spell trouble for shellfish population

July 1, 2019 — Baby lobsters are continuing to appear in high numbers off some parts of Canada while tailing off in New England, raising questions about what the valuable shellfish’s population will look like in several years.

University of Maine scientist Rick Wahle has documented trends in baby lobster density for years, and released new data for 2018 this month. The new data reinforce recent trends about lobsters that show upticks off sites in Atlantic Canada, such as some areas in Nova Scotia, Wahle said. Meanwhile, the Gulf of Maine reported below average numbers from Bar Harbor to Cape Cod, he said.

Young lobsters settle into the ocean bottom, where they take shelter as they grow. Wahle tracks where lobsters are settling in 23 areas from Rhode Island to Prince Edward Island, Canada. This year’s data showed high totals in Canadian locations such as St. Mary’s Bay, Nova Scotia, and the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence, but low numbers in Maine fishing areas such as the Midcoast region and Casco Bay.

American fishermen compete with Canada for the same species of lobster, which anchors one of the most lucrative fisheries in either country. Some scientists have said the shellfish appear to be moving north as waters warm.

“It’s as if this wave that has crested in Maine is now increasing in Atlantic Canada,” Wahle said.

New England’s commercial harvest of lobster has been strong in recent years, but it’s dependent on young lobsters growing to maturity. Some New England sites, such as those off Rhode Island, show few baby lobsters at all.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The Washington Post

Changes to lobster fishery to help whales might arrive 2021

June 28, 2019 — Changes to the Maine lobster fishery designed to help a critically endangered species of whale might arrive in 2021 after a lengthy rulemaking process.

A team assembled by the federal government has called for the removal of half the vertical trap lines from the Gulf of Maine to reduce risk to North Atlantic right whales. The Maine Department of Marine Resources has been meeting with lobstermen around the state to begin the process of crafting rules to achieve that goal.

The state held the last of several meetings with lobstermen about the new rules on Thursday in Freeport. Hundreds of members of the state’s lifeblood industry have attended the meetings.

Maine hopes to present a plan to the federal government by September, department spokesman Jeff Nichols said before the meeting. The industry is getting ready to grapple with the task of getting so much gear out of the water, said Patrice McCarron, executive director of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association.

“There’s definitely concern among lobstermen because they will be changing how they fish,” she said. “It’s not a simple task, but once guys are thinking it through and making changes, there seems to be viable strategies for each person.”

Read the full story at the Associated Press

A Life-Long Lobsterman Also Works Hard On Ways To Avoid Whales

June 28, 2019 — Rob Martin was five miles out on his boat, Resolve, lobstering with his crew, and made a call on his way back to port.

Martin wasn’t calling his buyer. He was joining a conference call for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Team, of which he is a member.

Martin intended to just listen, but they started talking about gear modifications, which he knows a good deal about.

They asked him to chime in as he was offloading, but there was quite a bit of background noise on his end.

“Can you hold on a second? I have to shut the boat down,” he remembers asking. “Actual fisherman here out fishing and coming in to talk!”

The conversation revolved around installing breakaway sleeves in vertical lines from traps to buoys so whales can snap them on contact and not become entangled.

Martin wasn’t required to make those changes, but he already had. He has been working for years to find a way to continue fishing and protect whales, like other proactive lobstermen. So when managers and others first started talking about “breakaway” lines he took the hint and started retrofitting his gear. In the 1990s, when regulators were looking at sinking lines to help avoid whales, he got ahead of that too. Sinking lines, weighted to drop to the bottom if they break free, are now a requirement.

Read the full story at CapeCod.com