Saving Seafood

MAINE: Discovery Wharf opens doors after year-long hiatus

June 21, 2021 — The Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries on Atlantic Avenue in Stonington has announced the reopening of its marine education center, Discovery Wharf. The interpretive center will open its doors beginning Tuesday, June 22, with a limited schedule and new reservation system.

Discovery Wharf has welcomed thousands of visitors from across the country and world, but it was closed to the public last summer due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, a news release reports. The use of a booking system this season will allow staff to follow CDC, state, and local guidelines as well as proper cleaning procedures in between visitors to ensure a safe experience for everyone.

Visitors can enjoy the marine touch tank, interactive display wall, and virtual reality exhibit. This year’s VR exhibit will feature new experiences, including scallop and offshore lobster fishing, a tour of an oyster farm, and ice fishing. Visitors can also expect to see a familiar face when being welcomed by Captain Leroy Weed, the star of MCCF’s online video series, “Ask Leroy!”

Read the full story at the Penobscot Bay Press

MCCF hosts online Lunch & Learn ‘Inheriting Change: A Panel Discussion Featuring Youth Perspectives on Climate Change and Maine Fisheries’

June 15, 2021 — Please join Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries on Friday, June 25 at 12:30 p.m. for, “Inheriting Change: A Panel Discussion Featuring Youth Perspectives on Climate Change and Maine Fisheries.” This month’s webinar will feature perspectives from four members of a generation that will inherit the consequences of climate change on our local fishing communities. Hallie is a COA student and member of “Maine Youth for Climate Justice,” who thinks “we need to have a just transition to a livable future for everyone, including fishermen.” Elijah is a 19-year old fisherman from Eastport who is already diversifying his work to integrate kelp and mussel aquaculture with his lobster fishing and boat building. Rylee, who just graduated from Deer Isle Stonington High School as Salutatorian, and Sophie, from George Stevens Academy, have seen the stresses of the reaction to climate change on fishermen and their families. This one-hour discussion will be moderated by Parker Gassett, Marine Extension associate with Maine Sea Grant. Participants will be invited to join the discussion during.

To register, please visit https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_MDwLe4L6Rse2p3CniY8Ntg.

Learn more about MCCF at http://www.coastalfisheries.org.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

UMaine’s ‘hot water’ study will examine lobster industry’s vulnerable areas

September 9, 2020 — Maine’s lobster fishery faces serious challenges related to climate change.

But a new research project at the University of Maine will develop indicators of resilience for the lobster industry that can be used to detect where the industry is most vulnerable to climate change.

The research will be led by UMaine in collaboration with the lobster industry, the Maine Department of Marine Resources, Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries and Maine Lobstermen’s Association.

UMaine was awarded $125,808 for the project, called “Fishing in hot water: Defining sentinel indicators of resilience in the American lobster fishery,” by the Sea Grant American Lobster Initiative.

The initiative is funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Sea Grant College Program.

Read the full story at MaineBiz

Judge refuses to shut down lobster industry

August 28, 2020 — Maine’s lobster industry last week got a bit of a break—two breaks, actually—with developments from Washington.

First, on August 19, Federal District Judge James Boasberg refused to shut down the lobster fishery as many feared he would. Environmentalists had asked him to do so while the National Marine Fisheries Service comes up with new rules to protect the endangered North Atlantic right whale.

Two days after the judge’s ruling, the Trump administration announced it had made a mini-trade deal with the European Union to remove tariffs on lobsters for the next five years.

“We’re on a roll,” said David Sullivan, representative for the Maine Lobstering Union, in a phone interview.

Paul Anderson, executive director of the Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries, said in an email those two developments were good news for lobstermen. They haven’t had much lately. The COVID-19 pandemic depressed lobster prices by shutting down restaurants, casinos and cruise ships.

“The overall market conditions for lobster are still in flux,” Anderson said. “But we’re still fishing, the shedders are now in the condition that they can be shipped, and domestic consumption and local processing are happening. The price is still low, but it ticked up a bit in Stonington this week.”

Read the full story at the Penobscot Bay Press

MAINE: Fish For Everyone to celebrate local seafood

July 17, 2020 — The Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries is sponsoring a week-long seafood celebration on the Blue Hill peninsula and the island from August 1-7, Paul Anderson, executive director, has announced.

The festival, dubbed the Fish for Everyone: A Seafood Celebration, has two tracks, according to Bobbi Billings, MCCF’s administrative director.

On one track, the MCCF will donate money to local nonprofits such as the Healthy Island Project, the Island Nursing Home, the Tree of Life and Island Food pantries. They can then buy local seafood with it, Billings said. On August 6, the nursing home will serve lobster and crab rolls and HIP will hold a seafood picnic for Salt Air Seniors.

On the second track, MCCF is encouraging local seafood dealers and restaurants to serve locally sourced seafood, and it will help promote those activities through social media and print, Billings said. A brochure will list where people can buy locally sourced seafood.

Read the full story at the Penobscot Bay Press

MAINE: Center for Coastal Fisheries takes talk series online

May 28, 2020 — The Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries will not be able to operate its annual “lunch and learn” series at its facility in Stonington this summer as normal. With a move to virtual meetings, the center has the ability to reach more people.

It is a series folks came to look forward to in the summer. The Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries has been inviting around 40 people to its facility on the last Friday of the month in the summer, bag lunch in hand, to learn about different types of fisherman. This year it cannot happen in person, at least in the early summer, due to COVID-19 safety measures.

“Everything’s changed and we’re unable to open up quite yet to have in person experience, so everyone’s getting used to webinars,” said MCFC president Paul Anderson.

The Center’s summer talk series will go virtual in 2020, starting this Friday, May 29.

As “lunch and learn” starts on Zoom, it is a chance for more people to learn about the coastal fishing industry.

Read the full story at WFVX

MAINE: Lobstermen help schools amidst pandemic crisis

May 5, 2020 — When the coronavirus closed Maine schools, thousands of students who already qualified for free and reduced cost in-school meals faced the risk of hunger. With many parents suddenly out of work, many more students faced serious food insecurity.

At the same time, most Maine lobstermen found that there was no market for their catch. At one point, late in March and early in April, dealers were telling the lobstermen not to fish. In some places, the boat price for lobsters dropped as low as $1 per pound and many lobstermen began peddling their landings from the back of pickup trucks parked along the side of the road or in empty parking lots.

On Deer Isle, those unhappy circumstances sparked a move to turn lemons into lemonade or, more exactly, to turn unsaleable lobsters into lobster rolls for distribution to students from School Union 76, which includes Deer Isle/Stonington, Brooklin and Sedgwick.

According to Carla Guenther, senior scientist at the Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries, the idea originated with Deer Isle lobsterman Brent Oliver and his wife, Sue, while they, Guenther and her husband, lobsterman Dominic Zanke, were off island for a vacation at the beginning of March.

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American

State of the Science Conference set for UMaine-Machias

June 17, 2019 — Big science is coming to Downeast Maine next week.

On Monday and Tuesday, June 17 and 18, the Eastern Maine Coastal Current Collaborative (EM3C) will host a State of the Science Conference at the University of Maine at Machias.

The conference will discuss ecosystem-based fisheries management in eastern Maine and will bring together experts from local governments, fishing, science and academic communities. It is the first step toward producing a comprehensive understanding of the region’s watersheds, intertidal, nearshore and offshore ecosystems, including their governance and socioeconomic factors.

EM3C is a partnership among three fisheries organizations: the Stonington-based, nonprofit Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries; the Maine Department of Marine Resources; and NOAA Fisheries, the federal agency that manages fisheries at the state and federal level.

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American

Eastern Maine Skippers event focuses on rapid changes in fishing industry

October 4, 2018 — Commercial fishing is one of Maine’s oldest industries. It is also facing rapid adjustments based on environmental changes and emerging technologies.

More than 100 Downeast area high school students gathered at the Schoodic Institute last week as part of the Eastern Maine Skippers Program to learn about these changes.

The event was the first of four “cohort” days for the program, in which students from the participating high schools meet one another, hear from industry leaders and begin shaping projects they will work on during the coming school year.

“This brings in kids from all these different communities and they get to know each other work together,” said Mike Thalhauser, a fisheries science and leadership advisor with the Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries.

The Eastern Maine Skippers Program started in 2012. Since then it has expanded to over 120 students and nine schools. New this year is Sumner Memorial High School in Sullivan, which has eight students participating.

“The students will spend the next couple of months figuring out what they want to work on for the year,” said Sumner science teacher Morgan Forni, who is supervising the program at the school. “There’s a really broad range of interests for the students.

The theme for this year is technology. Over the course of the year students will look at how technology contributes to a safe and healthy fishing industry, to sustainable fishing practices, to a better future understanding of fisheries and to a thriving local fisheries economy.

In addition to the cohort meetings, participating students work on individual or group projects based on applying technology to a safe and sustainable fishing industry.

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American

With fewer types of fish to catch, Maine fishermen may be losing their knowledge of the sea

August 3, 2018 –Maine fishermen have a long history of being involved in fisheries management. Communication between harvesters and policymakers has been instrumental in the development of rules and regulations that have helped to sustain the region’s coastal fisheries—from clams to alewives to lobsters.

In part, this success results from the deep understanding of the natural environment held by . “Local ecological ” is a term used to describe the collective perceptions held by a particular group about their environment, resulting from the transmission of cultural knowledge from one generation to the next, combined with regular and persistent interactions between people and the environment.

Fishermen’s experience-derived “local ecological knowledge” can be equally valuable as data gained through modern scientific methods for informing resource management and building community resilience. Yet the very experience that forms the basis for fishermen’s knowledge is being eroded by increasing specialization in Maine’s fisheries, with more harvesters focusing on one or two target species. As fishermen focus on fewer types of fish, they have less access to the environment. Does this mean they are losing environmental knowledge, too?

Joshua Stoll, University of Maine assistant research professor of marine policy and cooperating scientist at the Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries, worked with Emily Farr, a recent graduate of Yale University, and assistant professor Christine Beitl of the Department of Anthropology to study how fishermen’s changing access to fish species over time (which Stoll documented in earlier research) has affected their knowledge of the . Marina Cucuzza, a student in the UMaine marine science and marine policy dual degree graduate program, assisted with some of the interviews.

Read the full story at PHYS.org