Saving Seafood

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

Center for Coastal Fisheries to lead groundbreaking research effort

July 5, 2018 — A new collaborative research effort involving the Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries, NOAA Fisheries and the Department of Marine Resources could lead to significant changes in the way fisheries are managed in the Gulf of Maine.

In the works for more than two years, the research consortium will be known as the Eastern Maine Coastal Current Collaborative, or EM3C, Paul Anderson, new executive director of the Stonington-based Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries said last week.

The collaborative is the product of a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement among the three parties signed last November, Anderson said.

Known in the bureaucratic world as a “CRADA,” the agreement is “a federal tool for engaging non-governmental entities” in joint scientific projects and it took a long time to come into being.

“Robin worked a couple of years to get it,” Anderson said, referring to center co-founder and retired executive director Robin Alden.

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American

MASSACHUSETTS: CLF teleconference on Rafael agrees on one thing: More monitoring

September 14, 2017 — NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — Less than two weeks remain until the Carlos Rafael trial is scheduled to wrap up with sentencing set for Sept. 25 and 26.

The Conservation Law Foundation held a teleconference Wednesday to discuss the evolution of Rafael’s actions to his guilty plea and potential fallout from sentencing.

CLF attorney Peter Shelley discussed the topic with Togue Brawn of Downeast Dayboat, a commercial scallop company, and Patrick Shepard of the Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries.

“I think it’s fair to say all eyes on are NOAA fisheries and what’s it going to do,” Shelley said.

The answer at this point is no one really knows — at least until sentencing. NOAA has consistently told The Standard-Times it doesn’t comment on ongoing litigation.

However, the CLF teleconference provided recommendations on what can be done in the aftermath of Rafael’s sentencing.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

Demand for groundfish data continues to increase

September 6, 2017 — The Sentinel Survey, now in its eighth year of research, collects data on the status of groundfish populations in Eastern Maine. The survey is conducted by Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries, in collaboration with the University of Maine. Fishermen visit a total of 84 survey stations from June to October, along with researchers who study the population, distribution, and most important, the genetic makeup of groundfish in each location, according to a news release from MCCF.

The Sentinel Survey has become the leading source of information on groundfish in Eastern Maine, the release states. The unique summer sampling season and localized-scale produces heavily sought after data. The survey design also uses a combination of gear types, longline and jig hooks, to sample areas where larger, more traditional trawling methods struggle—areas with rocky bottoms and an abundance of lobster traps. Since 2010, Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries has collected data on more than 20 groundfish species, most notably cod, halibut, mackerel, cusk, haddock, pollock and hake.

Increasingly, scientists are requesting access to survey samples of stomach content, heart, otolith (or ear bone), fin clip, gonad, and muscle tissue, as they seek to understand the status of depleted groundfish populations. According to lead researcher on the Sentinel Survey, Mattie Rodrigue, “data from even a single fish is crucial. Biological analysis can unlock a picture of where that species has been, the distinct sub-populations it’s related to, what it’s been eating, its reproductive patterns, and more.”

Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries has led a collaborative effort to distribute Sentinel Survey data to organizations up and down the coast, from Massachusetts to Canada. Scientists want access to specific data, and the survey can provide that information. Institutions, including the University of Maine, the University of New Hampshire, Gulf of Maine Research Institute, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, and Fisheries and Oceans Canada, rely on the survey.

Read the full story at Island Ad-Vantages

MAINE: Lobstermen plagued by low catch, low prices

September 1, 2017 — As the shedder, or soft shell, season winds down with higher value hard shell lobsters on the horizon, local lobstermen are hoping to turn what has so far been a dismal season around.

Lobsters are in hiding, or so it seems to lobstermen.

“I’d say we’ve caught about half the lobsters [than in recent years],” Stonington lobsterman Tony Bray said of the 2017 season.

The Stonington Lobster Co-op, which buys a large proportion of the local catch, reported a 25 to 30 percent drop in volume over last year.

“The lobsters are out there, so this is not likely reflective of a resource decline,” said Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries scientist Carla Guenther, who follows Department of Marine Resources data monitoring. “It may be reflective of a habitat shift as to where the lobsters are, and a behavior shift as a reaction to the colder water.”

For lobstermen, low volume doesn’t equal higher prices. At the dock, price per pound has dropped about 20 percent, with the Co-op paying $2.65 per pound, compared to $3.25 this time last year.

Read the full story at the Castine Patriot

MAINE: Scallop fishery to open through lottery, new legislation

September 1, 2017 — New legislation intended to open up scallop fishing, called An Act to Implement an Owner-Operator Requirement in the Scallop and Sea Urchin Fisheries, passed House and Senate votes in the 128th Legislature and was signed into law in July.

“That was a huge win for the scallop industry,” Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries Communications Director Caroline Goddard said.

New scallop dragging licenses could be issued, at the earliest, for the 2018-19 season. How they will be issued is currently under discussion by the Department of Marine Resources.

“It’s not a foregone conclusion that there will be new licenses,” said DMR Scallop Advisory Council member Carla Guenther, who is a scientist with Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries.

Read the full story at Penobscot Bay Press