Saving Seafood

Get used to paying $20-plus for a lobster roll

May 8, 2017 — The market price for a lobster roll at Red’s Eats is $26.50, the highest it’s been in 79 years.

Yet tourists in line at the iconic lobster hut on the Sheepscot River this week didn’t blink. They came for a taste of Maine and were willing to pay for the experience. And they did, handsomely.

“The quantity and quality is well worth it,” said Jan Braida polishing off a roll with her husband Tony. The day before, these vacationing Ohioans spent $23.95 on a lobster roll in Kittery and say sampling Maine’s famed sandwich is the reason they are here.

The sky-high price of fresh lobster meat this spring sent a jolt through lobster roll purveyors such as Red’s and mobile eatery Bite into Maine in Greater Portland.

Deborah Gagnon, owner of Red’s Eats, is paying $45 a pound for fresh lobster meat. Other vendors have been quoted more than $50 for picked knuckles, tails and claws.

“When I was opening in April and heard the price, I was like ‘ohhhh, somebody hold me up,’” said Gagnon, whose signature overstuffed rolls deliver more than a typical lobster’s worth of meat. Despite the increase, she’s not prepared to skimp. “No matter how high the lobster price is, I have to have it. Visitors all over the world come here. If we don’t have it, it’s like ‘what the heck?,’” she said.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

New rules for lobstering in southern New England up for vote

May 8, 2017 — New restrictions on lobster fishing are up for a vote early next week as regulators try to slow the loss of the valuable crustaceans from southern New England waters.

Scientists have said populations of lobsters off of Connecticut, Rhode Island and southern Massachusetts have declined as waters have warmed. A board of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission is scheduled to vote on new management measures Monday and Tuesday.

Fishing managers are considering tools like trap reductions, changes to the legal harvesting size of lobsters and seasonal closures to try to preserve the population. Some lobster fishermen have opposed the possibility of new measures, saying such a move would kill off what remains of a once-vibrant fishery.

“Any further reductions in traps would be hard to accommodate, given that there are so few fishermen left in (southern) Massachusetts and Rhode Island,” said Beth Casoni, executive director of the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association.

Most U.S. lobster is brought to shore in Maine, on New England’s north end, and Canada’s fishery also contributes a lot of lobster to American markets. Maine has had record high catches in recent years, and the price of lobsters to fishermen and consumers has been high, too. The U.S. lobster fishery was worth more than $620 million at the docks in 2015, a record, and Maine had a record year in 2016.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Concord Monitor

Southern New England Lobstering Changes up for Vote

May 5, 2017 — New restrictions on lobster fishing are up for a vote as regulators try to slow the loss of the valuable crustaceans from southern New England waters.

Scientists say populations of lobsters off of Connecticut, Rhode Island and southern Massachusetts have declined as waters have warmed. A board of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission is scheduled to vote on new management measures Monday and Tuesday.

Fishing managers are considering tools like trap reductions, changes to the legal harvesting size of lobsters and seasonal closures to try to preserve the population.

Most U.S. lobster is brought to shore in Maine. That state has had record high catches in recent years. The price of lobsters has been high, too.

Read the full story at New England Cable Network

Harsher penalties for lobstermen who cheat get legislative support

May 4, 2017 — A legislative committee voted unanimously Wednesday to toughen penalties on lobstermen who fish too many traps or use “sunken trawls,” as part of an industry-supported effort to crack down on lawbreakers.

“I do think this is going to get people’s attention and will hopefully make people realize that it doesn’t pay to cheat,” said Patrice McCarron, executive director of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association.

Lawmakers are considering a suite of requests from the Maine Department of Marine Resources for more enforcement tools and tougher sanctions against violators in an industry worth more than $500 million last year.

A bill unanimously endorsed by the Marine Resources Committee, L.D. 575, would allow DMR’s commissioner to order longer license suspensions for lobstermen who violate the laws on the first offense and, in several cases, permanently revoke the licenses of repeat offenders.

For instance, violators caught fishing more than the legal limit of 800 traps or fishing “sunken trawls” without marker buoys would face a minimum three-year suspension – up from the current one year – and could lose their licenses for up to 10 years. Removing or “scrubbing” the eggs from female lobsters would result in a minimum four-year license suspension, and “molesting” other fishermen’s traps could result in a suspension from two to six years. The current maximum for molesting gear is three years.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Maine’s future depends on immediate action on climate change

May 3, 2017 — On Saturday, more than 2,000 Mainers marched to the State House in Augusta to demand action on climate change at both the state and federal levels. They made a compelling case that the future of the state is riding on the actions governments at all levels take right now to address the global threat.

“I have been a lobster fisherman out of Friendship Harbor for over 30 years. During that time I’ve seen firsthand the impacts of climate change to not only the Gulf of Maine, but also to our evolving fisheries, and to the coastal communities that depend upon them,” said Richard Nelson, speaking at the rally. “The Gulf of Maine, long battling ocean warming, now also faces off with climate change’s ugly stepsister: ocean acidification. Acidic waters make it more difficult for shellfish to produce their shells, and makes lobsters more vulnerable to prey and have less energies for reproduction. These changes will affect the oceans and the fishing communities that rely on them.”

The event was one of many People’s Climate Marches held across the country over the weekend in protest of the environmental policies of the Trump administration and to demand action to address carbon pollution and climate change.

Read the full story at the Maine Beacon

JERRY FRASER: Big lobster is watching

April 28, 2017 — It’s been a while since Red Bridges paid me $1 a day to bait lobster traps. Nine years old and not especially tall, I couldn’t reach deep in the bait barrel, so Red would pitchfork the redfish into a bushel basket for me. Between his having to do that and my eating half his lunch — unless he brought cold bean sandwiches — I was probably getting 99 cents more than I was worth.

Another benefit was cussing. Red was by no means vile in his use of language but he could cuss with the best of them and if, for example, our gear wound up with another fisherman’s, he would let loose with a stream I would later reprise for my friends. Of course, on the rare occasions his wife came along for the day, sitting in her lawn chair on the back deck, you’d have thought we were a couple of altar boys.

This was the 1960s. Lobstermen at Perkins Cove in Ogunquit, Maine, fished a couple hundred wooden traps, if that, from wooden boats. They built their own traps and knitted their own heads. Bait was $5 a barrel and the bait man delivered twice a week. Electronics typically consisted of a flasher, and not everyone had a radio.

Some things haven’t changed. Lobstering has always had pirates who harvest shorts and v-tails or regard buoy color as a notion whose significance varies with the visibility. In years past the state of Maine was seldom called in to adjudicate disputes. Fishermen sorted things out on their own in accordance with local tradition. In some cases, a word to the wise was enough, particularly if delivered by someone who might have been described as an “elder statesman.” Sometimes more assertive remedies were necessary. Occasionally, a dispute could result in an all-out trap war.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Spiny Lobster Public Hearing Scheduled via Webinar – May 9, 2017

April 28, 2017 — The following was released by the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council: 

The spiny lobster fishery managed in federal waters from North Carolina to Texas by both the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council and the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council.  The South Atlantic Council will hold a public hearing via webinar on management measures proposed in Regulatory Amendment 4 to the Spiny Lobster Fishery Management Plan. Proposed actions would:

  • Modify the Maximum Sustainable Yield, Acceptable Biological Catch, Annual Catch Limit and other parameters for spiny lobster.
  • Extend the prohibition on use of recreational spiny lobster traps in federal waters off the coasts of Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina (they are currently prohibited in both state and federal waters off the coast of Florida).

Council staff will provide an overveiw of the regulatory amendment beginning at 6:00 PM, answer questions, and then take formal public comment. Written comments are also being solicited and must be received by May 19, 2017.   

Presentations, public hearing documents, and information on how to register for the webinar and submit public comments are now available from the Council’s website. 

Read more here

MELISSA WATERMAN: Marine Matters: A Feeling of Relief Down East

April 27, 2017 — Well, they did it. At its April 17 meeting in Connecticut the New England Fisheries Management Council reaffirmed the economically vital place that lobster fishing has in this state by exempting lobstermen from restrictions that may flow from the council’s Omnibus Deep Sea Coral Amendment.

The decision qualifies as a Big Deal. The council has been considering ways to protect deep-sea corals found within the Gulf of Maine and along the continental shelf for several years. Protecting a living creature that is not a fish is new ground for the council, which draws its regulatory authority from the Magnuson-Stevens Fisheries Conservation and Management Act. But revisions to the act in 2006 gave the council “discretionary authority” to protect deep-sea corals in New England. Thus, creation of the Omnibus Amendment, the provisions of which will be applied to all of the council’s 28 fisheries management plans.

The amendment identifies four coral areas in the Gulf of Maine as well as several canyons south of Georges Bank for protection. Two Gulf of Maine sites are places where Maine lobstermen set their traps — Outer Schoodic Ridge and Mt. Desert Rock.

You and I would look at the two locations and say, “Hmmmmm. Water.” Lobstermen, on the other hand, look at the water and envision what lies beneath it, the rocky seabed on which lots of lobsters live in their individual burrows.

So, when the council stated last year that it was considering closing those two areas to all bottom-tending gear, Down East lobstermen took notice. Such closures would mean no fishing for lobster or red crab, another commercially valuable species. In January, the Department of Marine Resources (DMR) asked the council to specifically exempt lobster fishing from possible closed-area restrictions. The council replied that it was too early in the amendment process to exempt any fishery. It asked, instead, for more information about the economic value of these two areas.

Read the full opinion piece at The Free Press

Maine fishermen could feel impact of proposed undersea cable

April 25, 2017 — A Canadian company is proposing a 350-mile, sub-sea power transmission cable that could interfere with commercial fishing along the coast of Maine.

If the project is approved, the Atlantic Link cable would be buried about 25 miles offshore of Harpswell, running between New Brunswick, Canada, and Plymouth, Massachusetts. It would affect about 400 lobstermen from Cape Elizabeth to Phippsburg, according to spokesman Gerald Weseen of the Nova Scotia-based energy services company Emera.

Weseen and other project representatives, and staff from the Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association, conducted a meeting about the project April 21 that drew only two area lobstermen.

“Most of the (interference) is pretty workable,” Glenn Rogers, a Mackerel Cove fisherman from Orr’s Island, said Friday.

Late last month, a collection of Massachusetts utility companies sent out a request for proposals targeting clean energy services in response to a clean energy procurement mandate from that state’s Legislature, Weseen explained.

He said Emera’s plan to channel 900 megawatts of hydro and wind power is the only sub-sea option competing against about a half dozen other proposals.

Read the full story at The Forecaster

Lobstermen tired of conflicts support bill to allow GPS tracking of boats

April 25, 2017 — Lobstermen fed up with cohorts who violate fishing regulations testified in favor of a bill to allow Marine Patrol officers to secretly install tracking devices on fishing vessels suspected of illegal activity without first obtaining a warrant.

While a smaller faction opposed the bill, both sides agreed that Maine faces a growing “epidemic” posed by a small number of law-breakers fueling dangerous conflict and threatening the stewardship ethos within the state’s most valuable fishery. They also agreed that the Maine Department of Marine Resources needed more enforcement tools, but lobstermen differed on whether DMR’s commissioner should be allowed to authorize the installation of GPS tracking devices without getting a judge’s approval.

“It is coming to a point where violence will happen and I don’t want to see it happen,” Jason Joyce, a Swans Island lobsterman. “I’ve fished my whole life … the department is full of people who (committed to) criminal justice and they are not trying to impose anything on us as an industry. They are trying to help us out and they need the tools to do it.”

Critics raised concerns about giving the DMR commissioner – a political appointee – too much power and criticized what they said was overly broad or sweeping language in the bill.

“We need to help our law enforcement, yes, but the way the bill is written presently is not the way to do it,” said Rock Alley, a Jonesport fishermen and president of the Maine Lobstermen’s Union.

Lobstering in Maine always has been a rough-and-tumble industry where territorial disputes, personal conflicts or perceptions of wrong-doing can lead to sabotaged traps, sunken boats and occasional violence. But those tensions have risen to new levels in recent years, including the loss of more than $350,000 in gear during an intense “trap war” in the Swans Island-Stonington area last year, and one lobsterman’s boat being sunk at its mooring three times.

Maine lobstermen hauled in 130 million pounds of the crustaceans last year worth an estimated $533 million.

State law already allows Marine Patrol officers to obtain a warrant from a court to covertly install surveillance devices such as GPS trackers on vessels when officers have probable cause to believe the operator is engaged in criminal violations. But many serious crimes in Maine’s lobster industry – such as fishing more than the maximum 800 traps or hauling another fisherman’s gear – are civil violations that therefore require officers to provide targeted fishermen with at least 24 hours’ notice before installing tracking devices.

The bill under consideration in the Legislature, L.D. 1379, would allow the DMR commissioner to authorize the covert installation of a GPS tracking device in cases where Marine Patrol officers show “probable cause” of a civil violation.

Commissioner Patrick Keliher said conflicts between lobstermen are “indisputably” increasing as some lobstermen fish too many traps, set gear outside of their designated zone or fish “sunken trawls” without buoys to evade detection. Keliher, who called the bill “the most important piece of legislation” of his tenure as DMR commissioner, said he feared the actions of a few bad apples threatened to erode the conservation ethic of the industry.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald