Saving Seafood

At Meeting, Maine Lobstermen Say They Aren’t Harming Threatened Coral Beds

May 30, 2017 — The fragile deep-sea corals that populate the canyon walls and basins in the Gulf of Maine provide habitat for many species of fish as well as baby lobster, crabs and squid. But the New England Fisheries Management Council has concluded that the northeast coral beds are threatened when they are disturbed by commercial fishing operations and is weighing new restrictions that could affect Maine.

The council held a public hearing in Ellsworth Thursday night, where lobstermen spoke in support of a plan that protects coral colonies while still allowing them to haul their traps.

Most of the lobstermen who spoke agree that the coral beds in the Gulf of Maine play an important role in the overall health of the marine ecosystem. And most, such as Cranberry Isles fisherman Jack Merrill, think that Maine lobstermen and the coral beds have been getting along well for decades.

“It is evident to me that the marine corals in these zones appear to be thriving, which means that they are successfully coexisting with the trap fishery that has been there for many years,” he says.

The major coral beds are located off the Georges Banks. There are two areas about 25 miles off the Maine coast that have been identified as coral protection zones: the Outer Schoodic Ridge off the southeast Hancock County coast and Mount Desert Rock off Mount Desert Island.

The area is regularly fished, and Maine Department of Marine Resources Commissioner Pat Keliher says he supports an alternative plan that would prohibit trawlers from working the ocean bottom in the two targeted regions, but would also allow lobster trap fishing in the regions.

“Lobster fishing is the economic backbone of the Down East coastal communities, and each of these proposed coral protection areas represents an important fishing ground for over 50 vessels from approximately 15 communities, and many of these vessels fish these areas throughout the majority of the year,” he says.

Read the full story at Maine Public

JUSTIN FOX: Maine Is Drowning in Lobsters

May 26, 2017 — In his famous 1968 essay “The Tragedy of the Commons,” biologist Garrett Hardin singled out ocean fishing as a prime example of self-interested individuals short-sightedly depleting shared resources: “Professing to believe in the inexhaustible resources of the oceans,’ they bring species after species of fish and whales closer to extinction.”

The whales have actually been doing a lot better lately. Fish in general, not so much.

Then there’s the Maine lobster. As University of Maine anthropologist James M. Acheson put it in his 2003 book “Capturing the Commons: Devising Institutions to Manage the Maine Lobster Industry”:

“Since the late 1980s, catches have been at record-high levels despite decades of intense exploitation. We have never produced so many lobsters. Even more interesting to managers is the fact that catch levels remained relatively stable from 1947 to the late 1980s. While scientists do not agree on the reason for these high catches, there is a growing consensus that they are due, in some measure, to the long history of effective regulations that the lobster industry has played a key role in developing.”

Two of the most prominent and straightforward regulations are that lobsters must be thrown back in the water not only if they are too small but also if they are too big (because mature lobsters produce the most offspring), and that egg-bearing females must not only be thrown back but also marked (by notches cut in their tails) as off-limits for life. Acheson calls this “parametric management” — the rules “control ‘how’ fishing is done,” not how many lobsters are caught — and concludes that “Although this approach is not supported by fisheries scientists in general, it appears to work well in the lobster fishery.”

Read the full opinion piece at Bloomberg

New England fisheries group considers banning lobster boats from a portion of Gulf of Maine

May 25, 2017 — A New England fisheries management group is considering changes to regulations regarding lobstering in an area of the Gulf of Maine.

The New England Fishery Management Council is considering whether lobster traps should be kept off of coral within a 18-square-mile portion of the Gulf in order to protect habitat for other marketable fish stock.

According to a report in the Portland Press Herald, the move could jeapardize a $4 million dollar portion of the state’s lobster fishery, an amount taken by more than 100 lobster boats.

The council held a series of public meetings, including one in Portsmouth Wednesday night, seeking input according to the council’s calendar.

Read the full story at NH1

What did your lobster eat before you ate your lobster? And why should you care?

May 23, 2017 — If you like lobster – and care about maintaining the fishery as both a cultural and economic resource in Maine – should you care what it ate before it made it to your plate?

Lobsters get a bad rap for being scavengers, says veterinarian scientist Robert C. Bayer, executive director of the University of Maine’s Lobster Institute in Orono. In fact, they have rather discerning chemosensory apparatus housed in the short antennae on their heads and tiny sensing hairs all over their bodies.

With a sense of smell more akin to a dog’s than a human’s, lobsters can sniff out a single amino acid that tags their favorite food. For Maine lobsters, that’s herring. So lobstermen favor it as bait up and down the coast.

In 2016 the state’s lobster fishery hit record numbers in volume (over 130 million pounds) and value ($530 million). With so many traps in play, herring became the second-most valuable fishery in Maine, weighing in at $19 million last year. The hike in its value corresponded with the demand from hungry lobsters just as there was a drop off in herring landings in New England.

Earlier this month, interstate marine fisheries regulators approved new rules to avoid another bait shortage. To space out the catch, herring fishermen are now subject to a weekly limit on the amount they can bring to shore. Bayer says it takes one pound of herring to produce one pound of lobster. That same input/output ratio, when used in fin fish aquaculture, has been rendered an unsustainable practice.

Read the full story at CentralMaine.com

The story behind an alleged fraud worth millions in Nova Scotia’s lobster industry

May 23, 2017 — In June of 2015, three men stepped out of a summer day thick with flies and into the Beaverdam Lake, N.S., cottage of lobster dealer Wayne Banks.

It wasn’t a casual visit.

They had arrived unannounced at his doorstep, claiming that in the space of about 10 days, someone had ripped them off to the tune of $1.6 million.

“Have a seat, you fellas,” said Banks. “I think I know why you’re here. But there ain’t nothing I can tell you.”

The secret recording of that conversation, later provided to CBC News by one of the men, offers a glimpse into a large alleged fraud case, one that reveals the money and high stakes at play in Canada’s most lucrative lobster industry.

Only later would local RCMP team up with the federal Serious and Organized Crime unit to launch a joint investigation into what they called a complex criminal operation, one some feared could have broader ramifications on the industry.

But on that June day two years ago, one name threaded its way through the conversation — Wayne Banks’s younger brother, convicted fraudster Terry Banks.

“How many families get destroyed because of Terry f–king Banks again?” said one of the visiting men in exasperation.

“I don’t understand why Terry’s still alive. I don’t.”

Last week, RCMP charged Terry Banks, 51, with four counts of fraud over $5,000 and three counts of theft over $5,000 involving allegations he was part of a scheme that stole about $3 million from four different seafood companies.

His 69-year-old brother, Wayne, faces six fraud and theft charges. A third man — Chris Malone, 52 — is charged with one count of theft and one count of fraud. All three men return to court Aug. 24.

None of the allegations has been proven in court.

RCMP Supt. Martin Marin said Tuesday that those charged had a “substantial reach and influence on the local, national and international seafood market.”

“Had this fraudulent activity continued, Nova Scotia’s economy and seafood industry could have been negatively impacted,” he said in a news release.

Read the full story at CBC News

CLARKE: In hot water

May 19, 2017 — As the president claims that climate change is a “Chinese hoax” and members of Congress deny that it even exists, those of us who live by the sea can testify firsthand to its impacts. They include bigger storms, accelerated sea-level rise and warmer waters. In America’s first seaport, those are game changers to our way of life. They affect our community’s character, soul and livelihood, especially in the commercial fishery.

The biggest long-term threat to fishing in the northwest Atlantic is not excessive regulations, national marine monuments, or overfishing — it’s hot water. Cold water species like cod, and even lobsters and northern shrimp, have to put up with living conditions so uncomfortable that they may be leaving home and heading north.

A recent issue of the journal “Science” shows that over the last 10 years, temperatures in our front yard, the Gulf of Maine, have increased three times faster than almost all of the earth’s oceans. Gulf surface temperatures increased four degrees between 2005 and 2013 and scientists tell us they could go even higher. That spells disaster for the Gulf’s ecosystem.

The world’s oceans absorb most of the heat humans produce, but when we deposit too much heat into the atmosphere and adjacent waters below, sea life pays the price. With nature out of balance, fisheries shift, oceans acidify, and life-sustaining oxygen levels decrease.

Especially alarming is what we are seeing at the lower levels of the food chain. As water temperatures spike, copepods are disappearing. These tiny plankton-like crustaceans anchor the Gulf’s food chain and when they leave, the chain starts to unravel from the bottom up and fish productivity suffers.

Read the full story at The Gloucester Times 

NEW YORK: Lobstermen: Additional Regulations Will Deal Death Blow To Industry

May 18, 2017 — The lobster population in the Long Island Sound is at a record low — so says a multi-state commission that will soon make changes to how and when lobsters can be harvested from the sound.

As CBS2’s Carolyn Gusoff reported, lobstermen from Connecticut to Long Island warn this could be the end of their struggling industry.

At Northport Fish And Lobster Company, the tanks are filled with fresh lobsters, but not from the nearby Long Island Sound.

“Most of our lobsters are coming from Maine and Canada right now because all the lobsters have been dying for the last 10 years,” chef Brett Kaplan explained.

Northport Harbor once buzzed with dozens of lobster boats, but now has just a handful. Most of the twenty lobstermen left harvesting the sound from Long Island and Connecticut gathered in East Setauket to tell New York state regulators that tighter restrictions will be the last straw in an already decimated industry.

“You’re sacrificing the lobstermen for the lobsters. They get paid to manage the fisheries and are doing it at our expense,” lobsterman and Northport Mayor George Doll said.

“We will be done. Lobster fishing in Long Island sound will be no more, it will be a distant memory and it’s unacceptable,” lobsterman Mike Kalaman added.

Read the full story at CBS New York

New rules crafted to avert another lobster bait shortage

May 17, 2017 — Interstate regulators approved a host of new rules in the Atlantic herring fishery in an attempt to avoid another bait shortage like the one that befell the lobster industry last year.

Herring are the most important bait for the lobster fishery, which is based in New England. Herring was frequently expensive and scarce last summer, especially north of Cape Ann, and the shortage sent ripples through the lobster supply chain.

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission approved new rules last week. The commission says the rules are intended to stabilize the rate of catch in the near-shore area of the Gulf of Maine, a critical fishing area for herring boats.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Gloucester Times

Driven By Lobster, Value of Maine Fisheries Landings Rises

May 10, 2017 — Landings of finfish and shellfish in Maine accounted for over $588 million in revenue in 2015, the most recent year for which statistics are available, and more than 39,000 jobs, according to numbers released Tuesday by NOAA Fisheries.

The total landings in Maine for 2015 were up more than $40 million compared to 2014 and up more than $112 million compared to 2013.

Rita Curtis, a NOAA Fisheries division chief for economics and social analysis, says American lobsters drive Maine fisheries.

“Maine lobster was up again, about $40 million. Prices were up we’ll say about 10 percent, more or less. Soft shell clams were up,” she says.

Curtis says, across the board, there was a lot of good news for Maine.

Read the full story at Maine Public

New rules aim to boost herring supply prized as lobster bait

May 9, 2017 — Interstate fishing authorities took steps Monday to try to keep New England lobster pots full of fresh bait during the peak season.

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission adopted many of the same measures that Maine implemented last year to try to “stretch out” the limited quota of inshore Atlantic herring into late summer, when lobster boat captains in Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts are clamoring for what many fishermen say is the best, and formerly cheapest, kind of lobster bait.

The commission voted to allow regulators to set weekly herring quotas, to limit fishing to certain days of the week, and to give the three states that regulate the inshore herring fishery in the southern Gulf of Maine the ability to limit or ban the use of so-called “carrier vessels” that transfer herring landed by a licensed boat so it can keep fishing instead of heading back to port to unload its haul.

The measures will create a level playing field for herring fishermen from the three states, give states the flexibility they need to give small fishing boat fleets the opportunity to land herring even in a more restrictive market, and, most importantly, supply the states’ lobster fisheries with much needed bait, said Terry Stockwell of the Maine Department of Marine Fisheries, who proposed the measures.

The three states will meet on May 23 to discuss which herring restrictions they will enact in the inshore summer herring fishery.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald