Saving Seafood

Hearings set for new electronic lobster boat tracking rules

December 20, 2021 — Interstate fishing managers are holding a series of public hearings next month about a plan to implement electronic tracking for lobster boats.

An arm of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission is considering implementing the tracking requirements for lobster and Jonah crab boats that have federal permits. Regulators have said the requirement could help protect rare North Atlantic right whales and give scientists more information about the lobster and crab population.

The lobster industry is facing a host of new rules to protect the right whales, which number less than 350 and are vulnerable to entanglement in fishing gear.

The virtual hearings will be for specific states or regional in nature.

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

Lobstering, climate change, and Maine. Read 7 takeaways from our ‘Lobster Trap’ series

December 17, 2021 — In “The lobster trap,” The Boston Globe and the Portland Press Herald zoomed in on a small island central to Maine’s signature industry, smack dab in the crosshairs of global climate change. Reporters immersed themselves in the lives of local lobstermen reckoning with change and struggling to plot a path into the future.

Below are seven key takeaways from the series:

1. The forces that sparked a lobster boom, and brought unprecedented prosperity to Maine lobstermen, can also take it all away.

The American lobster thrives in chilly waters between 54 and 64 degrees, but can stay healthy up to 68 degrees. Long-term exposure to anything hotter spells serious trouble, like respiratory and immune system failure.

As ocean temperatures rise, the epicenter of the lobster population is shifting north to cooler waters. Right now, the thermal sweet spot is off midcoast Maine, where Vinalhaven and Stonington lobstermen fish.

But scientists warn the good times won’t last: As warming continues, they predict the catch will decline by half within 30 years.

Read the full story at The Boston Globe

The Lobster Trap

December 14, 2021 — A hard rain falls all around Johnny McCarthy, beading across the sprawling deck of his brand-new lobster boat, as he steers around the hidden threat of Folly Ledge through an ink-black night and into his home port.

His journey this midsummer night is momentous: a maiden voyage on the boat he’s always dreamed of, from the boatyard where her hull took final shape to the harbor where their fates will be made together.

You’d never know it to meet McCarthy – an unassuming, soft-spoken man who goes to work in a T-shirt and waterproof oilskins – but he is, at 32, among the most successful lobstermen in a place where lobster is king. On this remote and rocky island, 15 miles offshore, virtually everyone from the grocery clerk to the family doctor traces their living back to the tanks full of lobster that these boats haul into port each day.

The Gulf of Maine has been kind to McCarthy and his neighbors. The vast expanse, which stretches from Cape Cod to Nova Scotia, is one of the fastest warming ocean territories on the planet – and, for 30 years, that trend worked in Vinalhaven’s favor, turning the waters that surround the island into a near-perfect nursery for lobster. It is now the state’s second-richest port, and hard-working men and women like McCarthy have joined Maine’s one-percenters, pulling in hundreds of thousands of dollars per year in a state where the average worker earns about $32,000.

McCarthy’s decision to invest in a new $650,000 boat – a gleaming, green-hulled fiberglass beast, 45 feet long and the envy of every captain in Vinalhaven’s 200-boat fleet – was a vote of confidence that the good times would continue. At least it was when he made the down payment three years ago.

That was before the coast of Maine became a front line in the battle over climate change.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Protests and Prayers

December 14, 2021 — When she heard the news, in the middle of her shift selling tickets at the ferry terminal, Cathy Watt broke down in tears.

The U.S. government had just ordered the unprecedented closure of a 1,000-square-mile swath of ocean off Maine’s coast to traditional lobster fishing for four months a year, starting in October. It was the latest in a chain of crushing repercussions linked back to climate change: Warming oceans have hastened an endangered whale’s journey to the brink of extinction, and now Maine fishermen would pay the price.

Watt worried about her lobsterman son, a 30-year-old father of three who had just bought a new house. She nervously twisted her wedding band on her finger as she thought of her husband, a 48-year-old lobsterman and church deacon who counseled other fishermen through tough times — more of which, she feared, lay just ahead.

“It’s not like we can just go down to the next office building and find some new career that will take care of our family,” Watt said as she gestured toward Main Street, home to two dozen island businesses, many of which shut down in winter.

Flustered by the depth of her emotion, she wiped tears away and struggled to compose herself: for her young granddaughter, there beside her in the tiny ticket office with its smell of must and brine, and for the next customer in line.

At stake she felt was the future of their island, and the whole Maine coast.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Supreme Court keeps limits on lobster fishing in Maine to protect rare right whales

December 6, 2021 — The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Friday against Maine lobster fishermen who sought to block new fishing restrictions that are designed to protect rare whales.

The new rules make an approximately 950-square-mile area of the Gulf of Maine essentially off limits to lobster fishing from October to January. That’s to protect North Atlantic right whales, which are one of the rarest whales and number less than 340.

Members of Maine’s lobster fishing industry asked the high court to block the new restrictions after an appeals court ruled that the closure was legal. Justice Stephen Breyer rejected the appeal on Friday without comment, a spokesperson for the Supreme Court said.

The Maine Lobstering Union and others have argued that the restrictions will hurt the fishing industry economically. The restrictions are intended to protect the whales from lethal entanglement in fishing gear. That’s one of the biggest threats to their existence.

Read the full story from the AP at the Boston Globe

Maine’s lobster industry is in a fight for its survival

December 6, 2021 — Friday’s ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold reinstatement of a 967-square-mile lobster fishing closure is another devastating blow to Maine lobstermen.

In October, a U.S. District Court judge in Bangor had ruled that there was reason to question the federal government’s decision to close this prime lobstering area for four months this winter. When an appeals court overturned this decision in November, lobstermen who had already set traps in this area were forced to dangerously hurry and take them up, creating economic hardship for those who invested in gear, rigged up and were already fishing in these productive waters.

For Maine’s lobster industry, this is another frustrating example of one step forward, two steps back. This latest court ruling, however, is just the tip of the iceberg that threatens to sink the fishery.

Earlier this year, the National Marine Fisheries Service released a 10-year plan intended to protect the endangered North Atlantic right whale. The problem is that the government’s plan won’t protect the right whale. And the Maine lobster fishery could be eliminated as collateral damage.

Under the fisheries service’s plan, Maine lobstermen are required to reduce risk to right whales by 98 percent by 2030. But, according to the fisheries service’s own data, the closure of nearly 1,000 miles of lobstering grounds in the Gulf of Maine for a third of the year is only responsible for about 6.5 percent of that. It’s unbelievable that even after implementing a closure of this size and scale, with all its devastating economic impacts, we will still somehow be required to reduce our risk by another 91.5 percent.

Read the full op-ed at the Bangor Daily News

Lobstering union petitions U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Gulf of Maine closure

December 3, 2021 — Lobster harvesters were forced to remove their gear from a large section of the Gulf of Maine this week. Though their traps may no longer be in the water, the industry is not giving up its fight.

The Maine Lobstering Union filed an emergency application last week asking the U.S. Supreme Court to vacate a lower court ruling and reopen the roughly 950-square-mile area, which is slated to be closed through January – and every subsequent October through January – in an effort to protect the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale.

It’s the most recent development in a monthslong legal battle between members of the lobster industry, who say their livelihoods are at risk, and conservationists, who say the whales are headed for extinction.

Virginia Olsen, a lobsterwoman and a member of the union, said the group looks forward to continuing what it considers a fight to save the industry, and the families and communities that depend on it.

Read the full story at The Portland Press Herald

Surge in baitfish catch is a boon to Maine’s lobstermen

November 26, 2021 — A surge in the catch of a small species of fish called menhaden off the Maine coast has helped stabilize a bait crunch that’s plagued the state’s lobster industry for several years.

Maine’s lobster fishermen typically bait their traps with dead herring, but a scientific assessment in 2020 found that herring are overfished, and quotas for the fish were reduced dramatically. The loss of herring has increased the price of bait and made it harder for many fishermen to trap lobsters.

However, losing herring has been offset somewhat by swelling catches of menhaden. Maine’s catch of menhaden — also called pogies or bunker — grew from about 6 million pounds in 2016 to more than 24 million pounds last year.

Read the full story at the AP

Industry, politicians deplore reinstatement of lobster fishing closure

November 19, 2021 — As lobster fishermen face an immediate requirement to remove their traps from a swath of offshore waters, the Maine Lobstermen’s Association on Wednesday said the seasonal closure will create economic hardship for many Mainers who have invested in gear, rigged up and are already fishing in the area.

Gov. Janet Mills also said the sudden closure will cause significant economic hardship for Maine’s lobster industry, “will cost hundreds of fishermen millions of dollars, and will have a profound impact on businesses that rely on landings during the lucrative late fall and winter months.”

The statements responded to the newly enacted seasonal closure on 967 square miles of lobstering territory in the Gulf of Maine. The closure was reinstated Tuesday when the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals stayed a preliminary injunction by a lower court preventing the shutdown from going into effect.

The closure is part of a plan, issued by the National Marine Fisheries Service on Aug. 31, that aims to protect the endangered North Atlantic right whale by creating new requirements affecting Maine lobstermen. In addition to the October-through-January closure, the plan includes mandates for additional gear marking and gear modifications.

Read the full story at Mainebiz

Court OKs limits on Maine lobster fishing amid challenge

November 18, 2021 — The United States can impose seasonal limits on lobster fishing methods in part of the Gulf of Maine while the fate of the restriction is being challenged, the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled.

The Tuesday ruling reverses a lower court decision that paused the new rule, which restricts the use of lobster fishing lines in an effort to protect North Atlantic right whales from deadly entanglement in the gear.

Alfred Frawley, a lawyer for a lobstering union and lobster harvesters who sued the National Marine Fisheries Service over its regulation, said the plaintiffs are analyzing the ruling.

Maine’s lobster industry is the biggest in the country. Its lobster fishery caught about $400 million worth of the sought-after crustacean last year, state data shows.

Read the full story at Reuters