Saving Seafood

Maine: In new cautionary approach, Maine shellfish areas will be closed at first sign of toxins

April 17, 2018 — BOOTHBAY, Maine — Public health officials say they will use extreme caution to manage toxic algae blooms this year to prevent another expensive and potentially dangerous shellfish recall.

In the last two years, sudden toxic algae blooms of a previously unrecorded type of phytoplankton forced the Maine Department of Marine Resources to close huge sections of the Down East coast to shellfish harvesting and to issue rare recalls of tons of clams and mussels from as far away as Utah.

Recalls are bad for public health, business and Maine’s seafood brand, said Kohl Kanwit, head of the department’s public health division, during a workshop Tuesday for harvesters, seafood dealers, regulators and researchers at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in Boothbay.

“The risk is high; you never get 100 percent back” from a recall, Kanwit said. “It is really costly for the industry and bad all around.”

This year, the department isn’t taking any chances as it monitors for pseudo-nitzschia, a single-cell organism that can bloom unexpectedly and make domoic acid, a dangerous biotoxin that may cause amnesic shellfish poisoning, or ASP, in humans and animals. In serious cases, ASP can lead to memory loss, brain damage or even death. The first recorded ASP event, on Prince Edward Island in 1987, killed three people and made at least 100 sick.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

 

Lobster shell disease nudges up slightly off of Maine

April 13, 2018 — PORTLAND, Maine — A disease that disfigures lobsters has ticked up slightly in Maine in the last couple of years, but authorities and scientists say it’s not time to sound the alarm.

The disease, often called epizootic shell disease, is a bacterial infection that makes lobsters impossible to sell as food, eating away at their shells and sometimes killing them. The Maine Department of Marine Resources said researchers found the disease in about 1 percent of lobsters last year.

Circa the early- and mid-2000s, they almost never found it in Maine. But overall prevalence of the disease remains low, especially compared to southern New England waters, where it’s in the 20 percent to 30 percent range, the department said.

Scientists who study the fishery, such as microbiologist Deborah Bouchard of the University of Maine, said it remains important to monitor for the disease, which appears to correlate with warming temperatures.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Boston Globe

 

Maine: In new cautionary approach, Maine shellfish areas will be closed at first sign of toxins

April 11, 2018 — BOOTHBAY, Maine — Public health officials say they will use extreme caution to manage toxic algae blooms this year to prevent another expensive and potentially dangerous shellfish recall.

In the last two years, sudden toxic algae blooms of a previously unrecorded type of phytoplankton forced the Maine Department of Marine Resources to close huge sections of the Down East coast to shellfish harvesting and to issue rare recalls of tons of clams and mussels from as far away as Utah.

Recalls are bad for public health, business and Maine’s seafood brand, said Kohl Kanwit, head of the department’s public health division, during a workshop Tuesday for harvesters, seafood dealers, regulators and researchers at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in Boothbay.

“The risk is high; you never get 100 percent back” from a recall, Kanwit said. “It is really costly for the industry and bad all around.”

This year, the department isn’t taking any chances as it monitors for pseudo-nitzschia, a single-cell organism that can bloom unexpectedly and make domoic acid, a dangerous biotoxin that may cause amnesic shellfish poisoning, or ASP, in humans and animals. In serious cases, ASP can lead to memory loss, brain damage or even death. The first recorded ASP event, on Prince Edward Island in 1987, killed three people and made at least 100 sick.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

 

Lobstermen will get extension on medical waivers

April 11, 2018 — AUGUSTA, Maine — A Maine law is now on the books to extend the amount of time some commercial fishing license holders can receive a medical waiver.

Harpswell Democratic Rep. Jay McCreight’s measure allows the Maine Department of Marine Resources commissioner to renew a temporary medical waiver for lobster and crab fishing licenses up to one year.

McCreight says she was motivated to make the proposal at the request of a Harpswell lobsterman who needed help because he’s struggling with a terminal illness, but still needs to work.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Portland Press Herald

 

Right whale extinction threat is being overstated, lobstermen fear

April 9, 2018 — The math of protecting right whales from extinction is scary stuff: The stakes are high, scientific opinion varies and some rescue plans could make it impossible for lobstermen to earn a living.

Getting that math right matters when the futures of right whales and Maine’s lobster industry are so closely intertwined. Right whale numbers have dwindled to about 450 because of deadly ship strikes, fishing gear entanglements and low birth rates, while Maine’s lobster industry is the backbone of the state’s coastal economy, raking in about $434 million from landings in 2017 and generating another $1 billion for Maine in post-dock revenues.

“This will be the largest challenge for this industry,” said Commissioner Pat Keliher of the Maine Department of Marine Resources.

Those who fish for lobster in Maine and manage the fishery claim that their side of the whale story, and peer-reviewed species projections, are being lost in the extinction din.

Regulators claim they already have a right whale management plan in place and that it’s working. Despite the industry’s size, and the up to 3 million lobster traps in the water, no scientist or whale advocate has ever linked a whale death back to Maine’s lobster fishery, Keliher said. Dead whales have washed ashore in Maine, but they can swim for miles before they die, and carcasses can drift, too. No dead whale has ever been found in marked Maine ropes, officials say.

“None of the mortalities have any relationship back to the Maine fishery,” Keliher said Thursday at a Lobster Advisory Council session on right whale strategy.

Read the full story at the Sun Journal

 

In wake of menhaden quota increase, some states rejoice as others push back

April 9, 2018 — Changes to the menhaden quota allocation on the East Coast of the U.S.A. have been met by support from some states, while others are pushing back.

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) decided in November 2017 to increase the menhaden catch limit from 200,000 metric tons to 216,000 metric tons for the 2018 and 2019 seasons. Menhaden typically are utilized for the high amount of omega-3 fats they contain, and their oils are used dietary supplements, animal feed, lipstick, and many other products. The fish also serves as bait for a number of commercial fisheries along the coast, particularly in the crab and lobster industries.

While the overall quota was increased, it was also redistributed. Some states, like Maine, saw their quotas jump enormously.

“Maine’s quota jumped to 2.4 million pounds (1 million kilograms) – 13 times the quota available in 2016 and 2017,” said Jeff Nichols, director of communications for the Maine Department of Marine Resources. “The number of harvesters that reported landings associated with Maine’s total allowable catch (TAC) in 2017 is too few to report because of confidentiality provisions in law. However, 17 vessels participated in the episodic event fishery and 13 in the incidental catch fishery, both of which are triggered once the TAC is met.”

An episodic event was triggered last year in Maine, allowing fishermen to catch far more than the typical quota. The Interstate Fishery Management Plan for menhaden allows the Atlantic Menhaden Management board to set aside one percent of the total allowable catch for “episodic events.”

“Episodic events are defined as any instance when a qualified state has reached its individual state quota, prior to 1 September, and has information indicating the presence of unusually large amounts of menhaden in its state waters,” said Max Appelman, fishery management plan coordinator for the ASMFC.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

 

Elver prices soar to new heights amid shortage, Asian demand

March 30, 2018 — PORTLAND, Maine — The price of baby eels in Maine is soaring to record highs at the start of a season in which buyers expect to pay more for the valuable fish.

Baby eels, called elvers, are an important part of the worldwide Japanese food trade. Maine fishermen harvest them from rivers and streams so they can be sold as seed stock to Asian aquaculture companies.

The average price per pound to fishermen through the first week of the 2018 season was $2,608, the Maine Department of Marine Resources said Friday. The most elvers have ever sold for in a full season was $2,172 per pound, in 2015, and they sold for a little more than $1,300 per pound last year.

Fishermen in Maine, which has the only significant elver fishery in the U.S., are poised for high prices this year because of a poor harvest in Asia. The early part of Maine’s season has been held back somewhat by bad weather, but harvesters are looking forward to a good year, said Darrell Young, co-director of the Maine Elver Fishermen Association.

“Hoping that when there’s eels around, they fight over them,” Young said. “When mother nature decides she wants to turn around.”

The season opened March 22, and fishermen had about 95 percent of their 9,688 pound quota remaining through Thursday evening, the state marine agency reported on its website. The season runs until June 7, and the first week was somewhat slow, which fishermen expected at the end of a cold winter.

Read the full story at the Associated Press

 

Maine: Early elver landings slow

March 28, 2018 — ELLSWORTH, Maine — Forecasters predicting a slow but lucrative start to the elver fishing season were right on both counts.

The season got under way last Thursday and, by the close of business on Tuesday, the Department of Marine Resources said dealers reported buying 114.95 pounds of elvers and paying harvesters $315,789 for their landings — an average price of $2,747 per pound.

Darrell Young, a longtime elver harvester who established a buying station in Ellsworth this year, said the price opened high last week and has fluctuated between $2,600 and $2,900 per pound.

“I think the price will stay high,” Young said Tuesday.

The season, and the market, still has a long way to go.

Maine elver harvesters fish under a fixed landings quota of 9,688 pounds during a season that ends this year on June 7. Based on the DMR reports, with slightly more than nine weeks left in the 10-week season, about 1.2 percent of the quota has been taken out of Maine’s rivers.

Of the early landings, 51.84 pounds, about 45 percent of the total, were landed by holders of licenses issued by the Passamaquoddy Tribe. Under an agreement negotiated among Maine and the state’s four federally recognized Indian tribes in 2013, the Passamaquoddy have been allotted 14 percent (1,356 pounds) of the total elver quota allowed the state by the interstate Atlantic States Fisheries Management Commission. Another 7.9 percent is allocated among the Penobscot Nation, the Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians and the Aroostook Band of Micmacs.

Earlier this week, the ASMFC’s American Eel Board announced that it would defer until August a decision, currently being considered, on whether to restore Maine’s elver quota for the 2019 fishing season to its 2014 level of 11,749 pounds.

It isn’t hard to understand why the season is off to a slow start.

Elvers are juvenile eels that migrate from the Atlantic Ocean, where they are born, up Maine’s streams and rivers to fresh water, where they may live as long as 20 years before returning to the sea to spawn. Right now, the water in those rivers is cold, with the temperature kept down by recent snow melt.

On Tuesday, Young said fishing was slow around eastern Maine and in the Ellsworth area.

“There were just a couple of fishermen fishing last night and they got nothing,” Young said.

“We need warmer water, get rid of the snow and get the ice out of the ponds,” he said. “There are no eels running now. They’re laying out in the ocean.”

The data confirms what is obvious to the eye, and the elver fisherman.

Read the full story at the Ellsworth American

 

Elvers Price Highest Ever For Fishery

March 27, 2018 — The price of elvers in the first few days of the season, is being reported as the highest ever for the fishery.

Maine has the only significant fishery for the young eels, also called elvers, in the country. The Elver season started Thursday March 22, and the Maine Department of Marine Resources is reporting they’re currently selling for just over $2,800 a pound.

The previous height was reported in 2015, at just under $2,200 a pound. Elvers are by far Maine’s most valuable fishery by pound, but the elver catch is limited by a quota, so in absolute terms it’s one of the least valuable in the state.

Read the full story at Maine Public

 

Scallop fishermen near end of season

March 21, 2018 — PEMBROKE, Maine — The Maine scallop fishing season opened during the first week of December and now, with two weeks or less remaining, reports on how good a season it has been are decidedly mixed.

On the good side of the ledger, there seemed to be plenty of scallops, often in places where none have been seen for years, Melissa Smith, who coordinates scallop management for the Department of Marine Resources, said last week.

With the season ending for draggers on March 29 along the Downeast coast (divers get six more days between March 30 and April 14), Smith said, only one of the seven rotational management zones that were open to fishing at the start of the season has been fully closed to fishing. Last year as the season ran down, only two of the seven rotational areas open at the season’s start remained fully open at its end.

“While emergency closures are still occurring each season,” Smith said in an email, “we’re observing that more harvestable area is remaining open during the season.”

The extended openings and “the expansion of harvestable scallops back to traditional beds,” she said, are indicators of the growth of the growth of the scallop resource in inshore waters.

According to Portland scallop dealer and former resource manager at DMR Togue Brawn, “they’re finding some nice pockets of big stuff still, which is a good indicator that the measures we put in place years ago are working.”

Without the closures and limits, the little “bump” in scallop population that occurred naturally “would have been just that. Guys would have found some nice patches and wiped them out. Now we’ve got something that could last.”

If there are more harvestable scallops around, their abundance may not be benefiting the pocketbooks of Maine’s fishermen.

Read the full story at the Ellsworth American