Saving Seafood

From Carp to Pig-Hide: Bait Shortage Means Change for Lobsters’ Diet

May 23, 2019 — Gulf of Maine lobstermen are casting around far and wide for new kinds of bait, now that federal regulators have cut herring quotas by 70 percent. Possible solutions range from the mass importation of a nuisance fish from the Midwest, to manufactured baits to pig hides.

Fisheries managers estimate a 50-million pound “herring gap” in Maine over the next year. To help close it, they are turning to colleagues in Illinois.

On a rainy fishing day in the Illinois River, state invasive species coordinator Kevin Irons oversees the capture of dozens of fish — all freshwater carp, which were introduced to the Mississippi Basin decades ago. They have proliferated at an epic scale, crowding out native fish and damaging ecosystems.

“The big-head, the silvers and the grass carp, you also see some of the common carp — I like to call them Grampa’s carp, they’ve been around a long time,” says Irons. “You’ve got four different species of invasive fish here.”

Read the full story at Maine Public

MAINE: Belfast lobstermen fear Nordic Aquafarms’ discharge pipes will harm fishery

May 22, 2019 — Some Belfast lobster fishermen told the local Harbor Advisory Committee that they were concerned that dredging for installation of Nordic Aquafarms’ discharge and intake pipes along submerged lands could release mercury in the ocean sediment and pose a hazard to navigation.

Mercury contamination has closed lobster and crab fishing in part of Penobscot Bay in recent years.

The Belfast Town Council heard about the concerns at its May 7 meeting.

“The fishermen have concerns,” advisory committee member Dan Miller told the council. The committee doesn’t have any purview over Nordic Aquafarms’ proposal, he noted. “Our place is to ask you to make sure those concerns are in some way addressed by the appropriate agency.”

Miller said “a handful of fishermen” voiced concerns that dredging for installation of the pipes could stir up mercury. He noted that some testing for mercury has been performed in the area. Further testing would likely identify whether it’s a valid concern, he said.

“We would suggest that, if we run into mercury during the [installation] process, we would stop the process and look again,” Miller said. “But we won’t know until we get there, short of considerable testing.”

The committee also heard concerns that pipe operation could increase water temperature in the surrounding area and affect lobster fishing, he said.

With regard to the possibility of mercury being stirred up through dredging, “Is this something that we as a city should contact the state to have them address?” Councilor Paul Dean asked the city’s director of code and planning, Wayne Marshall.

Read the full story at MaineBiz

MASSACHUSETTS: ‘Lobster War’ hitting Whaling Museum theater

May 22, 2019 — The New Bedford Whaling Museum, in partnership with the New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center, is screening a documentary with claws.

“Lobster War” is an award-winning feature-length documentary film about a conflict between the United States and Canada over waters that both countries have claimed since the end of the Revolutionary War.

The disputed 277 square miles of sea known as the Gray Zone were traditionally fished by U.S. lobstermen.

But as the Gulf of Maine has warmed faster than nearly any other body of water on the planet, the area’s previously modest lobster population has surged. As a result, Canadians have begun to assert their sovereignty, warring with the Americans to claim the bounty.

“Lobster War – The Fight Over the World’s Richest Fishing Grounds” is directed by David Abel, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter at The Boston Globe, and Andy Laub, an award-winning documentarian, producers of the acclaimed Discovery channel documentary “Sacred Cod.”

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

BANGOR DAILY NEWS: Better information needed as Maine lobstermen take on challenge of protecting right whales

May 21, 2019 — In the early 2000s, the news appeared good for endangered North Atlantic right whales. Their population grew significantly, due to both rising numbers of births and fewer deaths from ship strikes and entanglements in fishing gear.

That good news has come to an end. Twenty of the rare whales died in just two years — 2017 and 2018, according to the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium. For the first time in nearly four decades of monitoring, it appears no right whale calves were born last year.

The consortium estimates there are only 411 right whales off the Atlantic coast.

Given these dire numbers, U.S. fisheries regulators have proposed dramatic declines in the amount of fishing lines in waters where the whales are believed to congregate and pass through.

Last month, a team devoted to reducing right whale deaths told Maine officials that the state must reduce the risk it poses to right whales by 60 percent.

The team recommended that Maine’s lobster fishery cut the number of vertical lines in the water by half. Vertical lines run between traps and buoys on the surface of the water to mark their location. The recommendations will be turned into proposed federal rules, which will be subject to public comments. The process could take up to two years.

Read the full opinion piece at the Bangor Daily News

Maine’s lobster exports to China plunge 84 percent due to trade war

May 16, 2019 — The latest data from the Maine International Trade Center indicates that the state’s lobster exports to China plunged dramatically in the wake of retaliatory tariffs placed on a wide range of U.S. goods.

The tariffs, implemented in July 2018, had an immediate affect on the state’s lobster industry. Prior to the tariffs, Maine had been on track to have a record-setting year, with USD 87 million (EUR 77.8 million) worth of lobster exported through June 2018, over double the USD 42 million (EUR 37.5 million) shipped through the same period in 2017.

Soon after tariffs were implemented, however, Maine’s exports to China nearly disappeared completely, and according to the latest data from the MITC exports have plunged nearly 84 percent since the tariffs were implemented.

The latest talk on the trade front doesn’t point to any improvement in those numbers any time soon. U.S. President Donald Trump threatened and then implemented further tariff increases on 10 May. In response, China fired back with its own increased tariffs, including additional tariffs on a number of seafood products.

Despite the threat of escalation, for many lobster exporters, the damage has already been done. Whether the tariffs increase or not, most of the business had already dried up.

“Retaliatory tariffs, or a move upward to 25 percent, doesn’t really change anything for U.S. exporters to mainland China,” Sheila Adams, the vice president of sales and marketing for Maine Coast Lobster, told SeafoodSource.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Finding consensus on whale protections a tough call in Maine

May 13, 2019 — Federal regulators have given Maine’s lobster industry its marching orders: Find a way to cut the number of surface-to-seabed fishing lines by 50 percent to help prevent the injury or death of even one of the endangered right whales that pass through the Gulf of Maine.

The National Marine Fisheries Service is allowing each lobstering state to develop its own plan to protect the whale, whose numbers have fallen to a little more than 400 in recent years. But it will be hard to find one way to make it work in Maine, where the $485 million-a-year fishery is known for its diversity.

“The devil will be in the details,” said state Department of Marine Resources Commissioner Pat Keliher.

Of the 4,500 people who lobster for a living along Maine’s coast, some fish with single traps at the end of each buoy line while others place multiple traps, from two or three to as many as 30, on a single weighted ground line, with both ends linked to the surface by a single buoy line.

Deciding how many traps to put on a trawl – the gear that connects a line of lobster traps – varies throughout each of the state’s seven lobster zones, depending on traditional fishing practices, shipping traffic, the geography of the ocean floor and the size of the lobster operation.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

New report finds many local species hard to buy in New England

May 13, 2019 — It’s not hard to find lobster, sea scallops, haddock, or cod at your local fishmonger in New England, but look for more locally sourced fish like scup, dogfish, and skate and you’re usually out of luck.

Authors of a new study released Monday by the nonprofit group Eating with the Ecosystem describe a stark discrepancy between what’s swimming in local waters and what’s available on local seafood counters.

“Our findings show that there are many local species that are underrepresented in the marketplace and yet many of these species are also quite abundant in our local waters,” program director and study coordinator Kate Masury told SeafoodSource in an email. “Species experiencing this kind of mismatch should be the first priority for a marketing boost as they have the most to gain from an economic benefit perspective and balancing their harvest with their ecological production can help alleviate impacts on marine food webs.”

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

Just Five Types of Fish Dominate our Fish Counters. It Doesn’t Have To Be This Way.

May 12, 2019 — Dozens of species of fish and shellfish are caught in New England’s waters. But only a handful show up in most seafood retailers. You can probably list them: cod, haddock, scallops, clams, lobster.

Now, it’s not just anecdotal. A citizen science initiative has found that five species dominate at New England seafood counters and that some of the species that are most common out in the ocean are the rarest in our markets.

That’s largely a reflection of our food tastes but it can have ecological – as well as economic – ramifications.

So, Eating with the Ecosystem – the group that ran the citizen science project – has also released a cookbook to help us enjoy a greater diversity of seafood. It’s called Simmering the Sea: Diversifying Cookery to Sustain Our Fisheries.

Read the full story at WCAI

MASSACHUSETTS: Lobstermen rally against delay in opening season

May 10, 2019 — South Shore lobstermen rallied Thursday morning at Town Wharf to protest the decision by the state Division of Marine Fisheries to delay the opening of the season until May 14 to protect right whales.

“There’s a lot of people that are suffering with this closure,” said rally organizer Sheryl Holmes, whose husband, Roscoe “Stoney” Holmes, is a commercial lobsterman who owns the F/V Haley’s Comet out of Plymouth.

The seasonal speed reductions and trap-gear bans imposed by the state to protect right whales typically end May 1, but have been extended first to May 8, and now to May 14.

Read the full story from the Cape Cod Times at the Patriot Ledger

Lobstering industry objecting to ‘unfair closure’

May 9, 2019 — Lobstering industry members plan to gather in Plymouth on Thursday to speak out against what they see as the unfair closure of lobstering in the waters south of Scituate.

Industry representatives on the South Shore say they have worked to implement fishing techniques to protect right whales but say their efforts have been ignored by regulators in favor of blanket policies. They plan to make the case that there have been no whale entanglements in certain parts of Cape Cod Bay.

In late April, the Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Team recommended measures that could protect critically endangered North Atlantic right whales.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times