Saving Seafood

Sen. Susan Collins questions lobster tariffs and Grey Zone dispute

April 10, 2019 — Disputes between U.S. and Canadian fishermen in the so-called Gray Zone of the waters around Machias Seal Island as well as lobster tariff disputes with China were the subject of questioning by Sen. Susan Collins (R – ME) during a recent Commerce Appropriations Subcommittee hearing.

Lobstermen who work in the Gray Zone are increasingly frustrated that their Canadian counterparts who fish in the same areas are not required to follow the same regulations (such as v-notching egg-bearing females and a maximum size limit), according to a statement, and thus are undermining American protections and threatening the sustainability of the stock.

Because Canada does not impose such conservation measures on its fisheries, a v-notched or oversized lobster tossed back by a Maine lobsterman can be caught by a Canadian lobstermen yards away and brought to market.

Read the full story at the Mount Desert Islander

ASMFC: Area 1A 2019 Effort Controls

April 9, 2019 — The following was released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission:

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Herring Management Board members from Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts set effort control measures for the 2019 Area 1A (inshore Gulf of Maine) fishery for Period 1 (June), Period 2 (July and August), and the September portion of Period 3.

The Area 1A sub-annual catch limit (sub-ACL) is 3,850 metric tons (mt) after adjusting for the research set-aside, the 39 mt fixed gear set-aside, and the 8% buffer (Area 1A closes at 92% of the sub-ACL). Additionally, in October 2018, the Atlantic Herring Management Board implemented quota periods for the 2019 fishery, with the Area 1A sub-ACL allocated between the Periods as follows: Period 1 – June (16.1%); Period 2 – July-August (40.1%); Period 3 – September-October (34.0%); and Period 4 – November-December (9.5%).

Days Out of the Fishery

Period 1 (June)

  • There will be zero landing days in Period 1.
  • Quota from Period 1 will be rolled over into Period 2. This results in a new Period 2 quota of 2,175 mt

Period 2 (July and August); and Period 3 (September only)

  • The fishery will start on July 14 in Maine and July 15 in New Hampshire and Massachusetts
  • Vessels with an Atlantic herring Limited Access Category A permit that have declared into the Area 1A fishery may land herring four (4) consecutive days a week. One landing per 24 hour period. Vessels are prohibited from landing or possessing herring caught from Area 1A during a day out of the fishery.
    • Landing days in New Hampshire and Massachusetts begin on Monday of each week at 12:01 a.m., starting July 15.
    • Landings days in Maine begin on Sunday of each week at 6:00 p.m., starting July 14
  • Small mesh bottom trawl vessels with an Atlantic herring Limited Access Category C or Open Access D permit that have declared into the fishery may land herring five (5) consecutive days a week.

Weekly Landing Limit

Period 2 (July and August); and Period 3 (September only)

  • Vessels with a herring Category A permit may harvest up to 160,000 lbs (4 trucks) per harvester vessel, per week.

At-Sea Transfer and Carrier Restrictions

Period 2 (July and August); and Period 3 (September only)

The following applies to harvester vessels with an Atlantic herring Category A permit and carrier vessels landing herring caught in Area 1A to a Maine, New Hampshire, or Massachusetts port.

  • A harvester vessel can transfer herring at-sea to another harvester vessel.
  • A harvester vessel may not make an at-sea transfers to a carrier vessel.
  • Carrier vessels may not receive at-sea transfers from a harvester vessel.
  • Carrier vessel is defined as a vessel with no gear on board capable of catching or processing fish, while a harvester vessel is defined as a vessel that is required to report the catch it has aboard as the harvesting vessel on the federal Vessel Trip Report.

Fishermen are prohibited from landing more than 2,000 pounds of Atlantic herring per trip from Area 1A until July 14 or 15, 2019, depending on the state. Landings will be closely monitored and the fishery will be adjusted to zero landing days when the period quota is projected to be reached.

Please contact Kirby Rootes-Murdy, Senior Fishery Management Plan Coordinator, at krootes-murdy@asmfc.org or 703.842.0740 for more information.

A PDF of the announcement and meeting motions can be found here –http://www.asmfc.org/files/AtlHerring/M19_25AtlHerringDaysOutMeasures_April2019.pdf

Senator Collins Urges Senior Administration to Develop Gray Zone Fishing Agreement with Canada

April 9, 2019 — SEAFOOD NEWS — Senator Susan Collins of Maine, a senior member of the Appropriations Committee, took issues affecting Maine’s lobster industry to the Commerce Appropriations Subcommittee hearing this week – specifically the “Gray Zone” and the ongoing trade war with China.

The Gray Zone sits approximately 10 miles off the coast of Maine, around Machias Island. Canadian and Maine lobstermen both work in the area, but do not follow the same regulations, which has caused disputees. Maine Lobstermen mark the tails of egg-bearing females and return them to water in an effort to allow them to lay eggs and continue reproducing. Maine lobstermen also abide by size limits, and toss back oversized lobsters to keep the stock strong. Canada lobstermen do not have to follow the same conservation measures, so those notched and oversized lobsters are able to be caught by Canadian lobstermen just yards away.

“Each country manages their lobster and other fisheries in that area through separate and often conflicting regulations,” Senator Collins explained. “The implications of these regulatory discrepancies are very concerning and very unfair to Maine’s lobstermen.”

Dr. Neil Jacobs, Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere, committed to working with Senator Collins to “explore the possibility of developing a fisheries management agreement between the U.S. and Canada that would provide for cooperative management of the Gray Zone.”

Besides the issue with the Gray Zone, Senator Collins also spoke out on the ongoing trade war with China, urging the Senior Administration to make some progress with the dispute.

“The retaliatory tariff of 25% that China has levied on U.S. lobster has been very detrimental to the industry,” explained Senator Collins. “What is the status of the trade talks with China, and what hope can you provide to my lobster exporters who are struggling day in and day out, having lost that very lucrative market to our Canadian neighbors?”

While no guarantees were made, Gil Kaplan, Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade said that they have been “making progress” and are “optimistic about an agreement.”

This story was originally published on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

A Fitting Strategy To Save Lobstermen’s Lives

April 9, 2019 — The Atlantic off the coast of New England is not a forgiving force. Water temperatures in the three miles from shore where most lobstering is done only reach the low 60s in the summer. They’re close to freezing in the winter.

That cold water is the ideal habitat for the lobster that create a nearly-half-billion-dollar industry in Maine alone. It’s also an easy place to get killed.

“Drowning would be the worst way to die – lonely and terrible,” one lobsterman told researchers from the Northeast Center for Occupational Health & Safety (NEC) in 2016. “I have a terrible fear of drowning. You’d go down, struggle, come back up, struggle, take water, go down, struggle, come back up, struggle, go down . . .”

In boats whose starboard sides are fitted with block pulleys hanging over the edge of a gunwale low to the water, a lobsterman pulling traps from the ocean floor is perpetually looking at his next paycheck – and his potential grave.

If he goes overboard, the shock of hitting the water will make him gasp for air and hyperventilate. If the involuntary gasp happens when his head is underwater, he will drown quickly. If he manages to avoid immediately sucking in sea water, within minutes the constriction of blood vessels in his arms and legs will make it difficult or impossible for him to swim or keep himself afloat.

Read the full story at Forbes

How eating sea bass and crab can help Maine lobstermen

April 8, 2019 — A group of Rhode Island fishermen who witnessed southern New England’s near-shore lobster fishery evaporate and its offshore fishery diminish dramatically in their time on the water came to last month’s Maine Fishermen’s Forum in Rockland to give lobstermen here a bit of seasoned advice: Embrace ecosystem change while you’re in a good position to do so.

These southerly neighbors acknowledge the Maine lobster fishery is currently rockin’. Preliminary numbers released by the Maine Department of Marine Resources set the value of last year’s 119 million-pound lobster haul at $484.5 million, up from $438 million generated by 112 million pounds of lobster harvested in 2017. Both years are down, though, from the all-time high lobster landings of 132 million pounds (worth $541 million) set in 2016.

The two-species Rhode Island fishermen told their Maine counterparts they should be targeting are Jonah crab and black sea bass. The former have long lived in offshore waters in the Gulf of Maine and the latter, a tasty fish historically found in the mid-Atlantic region, are showing up farther north because of warming waters.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Proposal to license more lobstermen put off to next year

April 5, 2019 — A proposal to let dozens of new lobstermen into Maine’s signature fishery is going to be put off until at least 2020.

More than 200 people are waiting for a state license to harvest lobster, and the annual haul has grown in volume and value this decade. Earlier this year, state Rep. Joyce McCreight, a Democrat of Harpswell, proposed bringing people into the fishery if they’ve been waiting for 10 or more years.

McCreight said she’s going to withdraw the bill from the current legislative session and consider bringing it back in the next session, which starts in January. The lobster industry is facing too much uncertainty to bring more than 50 new fishermen in at once, she said.

Lobstermen have had several productive years in a row, but this year the business is facing a bait shortage and potential new fishing rules to protect rare whales.

“We’re going to soon have info about whales and bait. Let’s see what we get,” McCreight said. “I’d like to have a bill — let’s not kill it.”

Many members of the lobstering industry were skeptical of McCreight’s proposal from the beginning and some said holding it over until the next session is a good idea. Bringing new fishermen into the business could have also hurt the state in ongoing discussions with regulators about new whale protection rules, said Kristan Porter, president of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association.

Read the full story at the Associated Press

Jonah Crab Moves Mainstream In Gulf Of Maine After Decades As Lobster Bycatch

April 2, 2019 — Regulators are taking comments on plans to expand a lucrative new crab fishery that’s stirring interest in the Gulf of Maine.

Jonah crabs are a native species that, until recently, was mainly caught as bycatch – by accident – in lobster pots.

Now, as warming waters push the lobster fishery north, more fishermen – especially in southern New England – are targeting Jonah crabs on purpose to supplement their income.

New Hampshire Fish and Game biologist Josh Carloni says in Northern New England and the Gulf of Maine, lobster is still king – but that could change.

Read the full story at New Hampshire Public Radio

Lifejackets for Lobstermen seeks to change culture and save lives

April 1, 2019 — Life jackets save lives. That’s the simple message that Lifejackets for Lobstermen is trying to spread across port cities in Massachusetts and Maine.

The message may seem intuitive, but according to statistics from the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, it’s not.

From 2010-14, lobster fishing deaths ranked the highest in occupational fatalities in East Coast Fisheries and in 80 percent of those deaths, from either falls overboard or vessel disasters, none of the recovered victims was wearing a life jacket.

In response to this trend, the Northeast Center for Occupational Health and Safety: Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing (NEC) used a grant from NIOSH to work with 181 lobstermen in Massachusetts and Maine to find out what they could do to increase life jacket use.

They gave the lobstermen one of nine different styles of life jacket at random and asked them to use it for a month and share their input on things like comfort and their ability to work while wearing it.

The study and the feedback they received led to their project Lifejackets for Lobstermen.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

Bait crisis could take the steam out of lobster this summer

April 1, 2019 — The boom times for the U.S. lobster industry are imperiled this year because of a shortage of a little fish that has been luring the crustaceans into traps for hundreds of years.

Members of the lobster business fear a looming bait crisis could disrupt the industry during a time when lobsters are as plentiful, valuable and in demand as ever. America’s lobster catch has climbed this decade, especially in Maine, but the fishery is dependent on herring — a schooling fish other fishermen seek in the Atlantic Ocean.

Federal regulators are imposing a steep cut in the herring fishery this year, and some areas of the East Coast are already restricted to fishing, months before the lobster season gets rolling. East Coast herring fishermen brought more than 200 million pounds of the fish to docks as recently as 2014, but this year’s catch will be limited to less than a fifth of that total.

The cut is leaving lobstermen, who have baited traps with herring for generations in Maine, scrambling for new bait sources and concerned about their ability to get lobster to customers who have come to expect easy availability in recent years.

“If you don’t have bait, you’re not going to fish. If the price of bait goes up, you’re not going to fish,” said Patrice McCarron, executive director of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association. “We have to take the big picture, and make sure our communities continue to have viable fisheries.”

Read the full story from the Associated Press at Boston.com

U.S.-Canada ‘Lobster War’ film to be screened in Waterville

April 1, 2019 — The waters off Machias Seal Island along the Maine coast are beautiful, but the war between U.S. and Canadian fishermen fighting over territory where climate change has caused the lobster population to explode is decidedly ugly.

That conflict is portrayed in vivid detail in “Lobster War: The Fight Over the World’s Richest Fishing Grounds,” an award-winning documentary film co-directed and produced by David Abel, a Boston Globe reporter, and Andrew Laub, a writer, editor, filmmaker, cinematographer, visual effects artist and soundtrack composer.

The film will be shown at 7:15 p.m. Sunday at Railroad Square Cinema in Waterville. Abel will engage in a question-and-answer session with the audience via Skype after the showing.

The 2018 film focuses on the clash between the U.S. and Canada over 277 square miles of ocean off the 20-acre Machias Seal Island that both countries have claimed since the end of the Revolutionary War, according to Abel. U.S. lobster fishermen traditionally fished the so-called Gray Zone, but as the Gulf of Maine has warmed faster than nearly any other water body on Earth, the lobster population there has grown significantly, prompting Canadian fishermen to assert their sovereignty there, he said. Fighting between Canadian and American fishermen over the territory has been ongoing, with threats of violence and sabotage.

Abel, an environmental reporter who has long covered fisheries issues, said in a telephone interview Wednesday that “Lobster War” shows how the warming waters of the Gulf of Maine are affecting lobster, Maine’s iconic species, whose population for the last 15-plus years has boomed, partly as a result of climate change.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald