Saving Seafood

Maine lobstermen win concession to fish in coral protection zone

June 22, 2017 — A deep-sea coral protection plan adopted Thursday won’t keep Maine fishermen out of their traditional Gulf of Maine fishing spots.

The New England Fisheries Management Council voted to ban all but lobstermen from fishing about 39 square miles of coral-rich area in two protection zones near Mt. Desert Rock and Outer Schoodic Ridge. About 50 Maine lobster boats from more than a dozen ports harvest more than $8 million worth of lobster from those areas, according to state estimates.

Marine Resources Commissioner Pat Keliher called the coral protection plan a good compromise.

“The Gulf of Maine coral motion is one I helped perfect,” Keliher said. “It gives adequate protection to the corals in certain areas of the Gulf of Maine and it exempts lobster gear, which has a lot of landed value and really a very low impact to the corals. We think it’s a good balance. … I would rather take a bite of the apple here one bite at a time instead of trying to do it all.”

Keliher noted that most fishermen avoid corals “like the plague” because it destroys their gear and costs them money.

Lobstermen turned out in big numbers at some of the public hearings on these proposed coral zones, but their anxiety faded once the council decided to choose a proposal that would allow lobster fishing in these areas as the preferred option. The council could have reversed course, but such a turnaround is rare for a board that works so closely with the fishing industry.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

MASSACHUSETTS: Martha’s Vineyard ‘Permit Bank’ Looks To Buoy Small Fishermen

June 21, 2017 — Out on the docks of Menemsha on Martha’s Vineyard, Wes Brighton rigged up lobster pots he planned to set the next day.

In an ideal world, he’d also be fishing for other species — like scallops and groundfish — but he can’t afford the expensive government-issued permits that would grant him the fishing rights.

“They’ve turned a public resource into a commodity, and they haven’t limited the people who can own that commodity to commercial fisherman,” Brighton said. “And so a fisherman who wants to go catch scallop quota inside of a small community, like we have here on Martha’s Vineyard, can’t access that … without coming up with a ton of money. “

The fishing boats and docks of Menemsha present a postcard view of Martha’s Vineyard. But through Brighton’s eyes, there’s more to the picture.

“Every time you look somewhere you are losing dock space on our own town dock, which has always been allocated to commercial fishing,” he said. “And just recently we lost a big chunk to a charter boat. It’s up to us to keep this fight because if we lose our tradition, we lose our heritage, and that’s something we just can’t let [happen].”

Read the full story at WBUR

For fish, the good and bad of warming ocean waters

June 19, 2017 — According to a recent study published in “Progress in Oceanography,” some fish species will thrive in warmer waters — and others, not so much.

Using a detailed climate model and historical observation data, researchers at NOAA and The Nature Conservancy modeled the shifting thermal habitats of over 50 species along the Atlantic coast, from North Carolina to the Gulf of Maine.

“So it’s basically a picture of the water temperature and the depths that individual species are most commonly associated with,” says lead author Kristin Kleisner, now a senior scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund’s Fisheries Solutions Center.

Ocean temperatures in the region are expected to increase 6.6 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit (3.7 to 5.0 degrees Celsius) by the end of the century, according to NOAA. For many species, like summer flounder, striped bass and Atlantic croaker, researchers found warming oceans could lead to increased habitat availability.

“Those are all species that are currently caught off the more southern portions of our coastline and they’re associated with warmer waters,” Kleisner says. “And these guys might do pretty well as climate changes and new areas of suitable thermal habitat open up for them.”

Kleisner is careful to point out that the study only considered water temperature and depth in its picture of thermal habitats. Other factors like ocean acidification could change the game for lobsters, for example, which otherwise stand to gain from warming waters. “That could be a pretty big wild card,” she says.

Meanwhile, for species like Atlantic cod, Acadian redfish and others found in northern coastal areas, the study’s picture “was not so rosy,” Kleisner says. That’s not to say these species won’t find suitable water temperatures in deeper waters, or further north, she adds — but their habitats may shift out of reach for some fishermen.

Read the full story at PRI.org

MASSACHUSETTS: Tarr proposal could buoy local lobster industry

June 20, 2017 — Tuesday is Lobster Day at the State House and lobster industry stakeholders are using the event to urge legislators to support a proposal to expand in-state processing of lobsters and lobster parts.

The proposal, contained in an amendment in the state Senate’s recently passed budget, would allow licensed Bay State wholesalers to process unfrozen raw lobsters, as well as allowing the sale of previously frozen raw in-shell tails and the importation of unfrozen shell-on lobster parts and tails.

“Right now, we depend on Canada for so much of our processing facilities,” said Beth Casoni, executive director of the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association, which supports the proposal. “This would allow us to do that processing here in Massachusetts, helping us to create jobs here and create markets for our lobster products.”

Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr, who championed the amendment in the Senate budget, said the bill would modernize the current law and help accelerate local economic activity for lobstermen, processors, restaurants and food stores. Tarr also represents two of the state’s biggest ports for lobsters: Gloucester and Rockport.

The House version of the budget, Tarr said, currently seeks funds for further study.

“We’re trying to convince the House to go beyond a study and include the actual action of expanding the different types of lobster processing allowed in Massachusetts,” Tarr said.

Currently, the sale of live, cooked and canned lobster is legal in Massachusetts, as is the processing and sale of frozen lobster tails. In 2012, the legislature changed the state law to allow the in-state processing of frozen cooked lobster tails — but no raw tails or other lobster parts.

Massachusetts lobstermen and seafood wholesalers have been required to sell or transport lobsters out of state for the majority of processing, leading to higher industry costs and limiting the creation of medium and high-skilled seafood processing jobs, Tarr said.

The initial rationale, he said, for the more restrictive regulations was to prevent poachers from taking short lobsters and mutilating them for the parts.

“The time between 2012 and now has given the Environmental Police the chance to develop enforcement methods to prevent that from happening,” Tarr said.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

Climate Change, and Cod, Are Causing One Heck of a Lobster Boom in Maine

June 15, 2017 — Maine has had a commercial lobster industry since the 1700s, and the lobster’s place in food has changed a lot during that time.

Today, Maine is faced with an unprecedented glut of lobsters–so many that the price of lobster is on the way down. But it wasn’t always so. And it may be different tomorrow.

In the 1600s and 1700s, writes Daniel Luzer for Pacific Standard, there were so many lobsters around Massachusetts Bay Colony, for instance, that they washed up on the beach in piles two feet high. “People thought of them as trash food,” Luzer writes. The ocean bugs were regarded as food for lower-class people and convicts, and used as fertilizer at times.

That began changing in the 1800s. Lobster prices–and interest in eating lobster–began to go up and down according to price, culinary innovations (like cooking lobster alive rather than dead) and availability. A century and a half later, he writes, “lobster was firmly established as a delicacy; lobster was something movie stars ate when they went out to dinner.”

On the coast of Maine, lobster culture became a way of life. But all was not well. .In the early twentieth century, once-abundant lobster had become rare, writes the University of Maine’s Lobster Institute, and “there were plenty of rumors about lobstermen turning to rum-running along the Maine coast during Prohibition days.”

According to Gwynn Guilford for Quartz, lobster stocks dwindled and the number of boats fishing lobster went up–a pattern, she writes, that looked like that of “other fisheries on the eve of collapse.” But today, Maine is in the midst of a lobster boom.

Maine now produces 80 percent of American-caught lobster, writes Justin Fox for Bloomberg View, and more than seven times the average take in a pre-2000 year.

Read the full story at Smithsonian.com

NOAA grant would fund study of tuna, lobster, climate change

June 12, 2017 — The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is recommending more than $1.3 million in federal funding for fisheries research projects in Maine.

The money would fund five projects. The largest grant of nearly $300,000 would fund a University of Maine project to evaluate the life history of yellowfin tuna in the northwest Atlantic Ocean.

Another grant of nearly $290,000 would go to the Gulf of Maine Research Institute to address the issue of “choke species” in the era of climate change. Choke species are fish with small quotas for commercial fishermen. Catching too many of them can force fishermen to shut down operations.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Alva Review-Courier

Shucks Maine Lobster plans to build processing plant in Gorham

June 12, 2017 — Shucks Maine Lobster plans to build a 28,000-square-foot processing plant in Gorham that will employ up to 80 people.

The Gorham Planning Board voted Monday to approve plans for construction of the facility at 65 Olde Canal Way in the Olde Canal Business Park. The plant could open by May 2018.

John Hathaway, president of the Richmond-based company, said he is excited to expand his company and join the Gorham business community. Depending on the season, the company will employ as many as 80 workers at the new plant, he said.

“This is a huge opportunity for us to expand into Gorham,” Hathaway said.

Shucks Maine Lobster, founded 10 years ago, is the only lobster processor in the country to use a high-pressure process to humanely kill lobsters and remove raw meat from the shells, Hathaway said. He purchased a high-pressure machine after seeing oyster processors use the system in Louisiana, the company website said. Hathaway dubbed his machine, which is 16 feet tall and weighs 80,000 pounds, the “Big Mother Shucka.”

Shucks Maine Lobster products are shipped worldwide. The company, which now employs more than 80 people, is part of the $1.6 billion lobster industry in Maine, which last year saw a record haul of 130 million pounds of lobster valued at $533 million.

The opening of the Gorham plant will allow the company to purchase a second, larger high-pressure processing machine, Hathaway said.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Scandinavian biologists see threat in crossbreeding by American, European lobsters

June 7, 2017 — Scandinavian biologists say American and European lobsters are crossbreeding and their offspring can survive in European waters, but it is too early to tell if the hybrids can reproduce.

Susanne Eriksson of the University of Gothenberg in Sweden and Ann-Lisbeth Agnalt of the Institute of Marine Research in Norway presented their findings on the threat that American lobsters found in the northeast Atlantic Ocean pose to their smaller European cousins Tuesday during the second day of the International Conference and Workshop on Lobster Biology & Management in Portland.

“American scientists said your lobsters couldn’t survive in European waters, but we have proof they are not only surviving, but competing with the European lobster for food, shelter and mates,” Eriksson said. “They are crossbreeding, the hybrid eggs are hatching, and the larvae are surviving in our tanks, and in our oceans. We don’t know if they can reproduce yet, that’s a year or two away, but we know the males can produce sperm.”

Last year, Sweden asked the European Union to list the American lobster as an invasive species after scientists there found evidence of crossbreeding. The EU bans the import of invasive species, so a listing would have put an end to the $200 million annual export business. The evidence persuaded the forum of EU scientists who study alien species to support a ban, but not the EU politicians who must approve such a listing.

The EU said it might one day explore other protective measures that would not be so disruptive to trade if Sweden returns with further proof of an invasion.

That’s why Scandinavia is continuing to look at how American-European hybrids will fare in the northeast Atlantic, especially once they hit sexual maturity.

Read the full story at The Portland Press Herald 

Sen. King tells researchers that data is the key to protecting lobster industry

June 6, 2017 — Calling proposed cuts in federal science funding “unacceptable,” U.S. Sen. Angus King told lobster researchers Monday that data is the key to protecting Maine’s most valuable fishery.

Maine’s independent senator asked the 250 biologists, oceanographers and fishery managers at a global conference on lobster biology in Portland this week to give him data on the impact of the changing sea environment on lobster, including temperature, salinity and acidification, and whether that is prompting a migration of Maine’s $533.1 million a year fishery to Canada.

“If lobsters are moving toward Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, that’s a serious practical issue that will get the attention of politicians,” he said. “It’s when you start seeing jobs go away that politicians start saying ‘Gee, we’d better do something about this.’ Are they moving, if they are why, and if they are, what’s the timing? Is it five years? Twenty years? A hundred years?”

But federal funding for scientific research is under fire. President Trump’s budget calls for a 17 percent cut to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversees the national fisheries programs and funded almost a fifth of Maine Department of Marine Resources’ annual budget. It would eliminate the Sea Grant program, which funds research by the University of Maine’s Rick Wahle, conference co-chairman, among others.

“The lobster industry in New England is valued at close to $500 million and yet we know very little about how ocean acidification may affect this species,” Libby Jewett, NOAA’s ocean acidification director, said last fall when awarding Wahle’s team a $200,000 grant for lobster research. “These projects should help move the needle forward in our understanding and, as a result, enable broader resilience in the region.”

King said it is unlikely that Trump’s budget, containing what he considers drastic cuts in scientific funding, will pass Congress.

“The last thing we should be doing on a federal level is cutting research funding,” King said. “That is one of the most important functions of the federal government, whether it is climate change or cancer. It’s how we solve problems. To cut research, and particularly to cut research when you get the feeling that the motivation is that we don’t want to know, is unacceptable. … Congress understands this.”

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

MAINE: Portland to host international lobster conference this week

June 5, 2017 — Scientists will meet in Portland this week to discuss how a changing ocean environment and global economy is affecting the biology and business of lobsters.

More than 250 biologists, oceanographers, fishery managers and industry members from 15 nations plan to attend the 11th International Conference & Workshop on Lobster Biology and Management, said University of Maine marine scientist Rick Wahle, a co-chairman of the symposium.

It is only the second time the U.S. has hosted the event, Wahle said. The first was in Florida in 2000. Since then, the American lobster fishery has exploded, he said.

“It was about time,” Wahle said. “It’s been hosted all over the world, but never in New England, which we all know to be one of the world’s lobster hot spots.”

American lobster is the country’s most valuable fishery, Wahle said. While they can be found as far south as the Carolinas, 80 percent of America’s lobster haul comes out of Maine waters. In 2016, Maine commercial lobstermen trapped more than 130 million pounds, or $533.1 million worth, of the greenish-brown creatures, making it a record-breaking year in both volume and value.

But they aren’t the only lobsters out there. Scientists at the conference will present research on the tiny orange-pink Norway lobster, the clawless Florida or Caribbean spiny lobster, and the European lobster, the species that almost sparked a European Union-American trade war in 2016. There will also be panel discussions on commercially important lobster-like species, such as the spiny lobsters of Australia and New Zealand.

As the host species, however, the American lobster will be the star of this year’s conference, as will the New England fishing system, Wahle said.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald