January 22, 2020 — The Inland Fisheries and Wildlife Committee heard more Tuesday about the recent expansion of the land based aquaculture industry in Maine.
Officials with the Maine Department of Marine Resources and The Department of Environmental Protection briefed the committee members on permitting policies for land-based aquaculture.
Three of the newest aquaculture locations include Bucksport, Jonesport, and Belfast.
January 17, 2020 — Seaweed, or sea vegetables, have been on a growth trajectory for the past 10 years. What started as a small industry has blossomed into a sustainable economic engine for coastal communities from New York to Maine, who have faced slowdowns in other once-dominant fisheries.
“Five percent of Maine’s aquaculture lease and limited-purpose aquaculture LPA holders (47 individuals) also hold a commercial lobster fishing license. Out of those 47, 12 of them farm kelp. Out of 60 total kelp farmers in Maine, that’s 20 percent,” says Afton Hupper of the Maine Aquaculture Association. “Lobstermen are already equipped with much of the gear required to start a kelp farm,” adds Hupper. “It is a good way to diversify and supplement their income.”
In Maine, harvest of all seaweed species peaked in 2018, with 22 million pounds, according to Maine Department of Marine Resources data. But a recent Maine Supreme Judicial Court ruling has meant changes to the rockweed industry. Until this year, wild rockweed (Ascophyllum nodosum) — with landings consistently making up more than 95 percent of all landings statewide — was harvested along coastlines. Last year, it was valued under $1 million at the docks.
But now, permission from landowners is required to harvest, since the court determined rockweed in the intertidal zone to be the landowner’s private property. Maine landowners now have a say in how rockweed is harvested, as well as the opportunity to benefit from the industry.
January 16, 2020 — The cost for Rockland to protect its waterfront properties near Harbor and Buoy Parks from rising seas will cost more than $4.8 million, a study says.
These estimates do not include the cost to prepare other municipal shorefront properties or private property in Rockland.
These are the findings of a report commissioned last year by the Maine Department of Marine Resources. The city received the report this month.
The study looked at single sites in 10 communities along Penobscot Bay.
The Maine Coastal Program, part of the Maine Department of Marine Resources, received a grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to conduct the study in Rockland, Camden, South Thomaston, Lincolnville, Belfast, Searsport, Vinalhaven, North Haven, Castine and Stonington.
For Rockland, the report – developed by Wood Environment & Infrastructure Solutions, Inc. of Portland – focused on the middle pier next to Buoy Park, the harbor master’s building at Harbor Park, the sewage treatment pump station at Buoy Park, and the Maine Lobster Festival’s lobster cooker.
Read the full story from The Courier-Gazette at The Portland Press Herald
January 13, 2020 — The Maine lobster industry is expected to have another year with more than 100 million pounds landed, a significant number during a year fraught with bait shortages and other challenges.
Maine Department of Marine Resources Commissioner Patrick Keliher gave the estimate to Maine Public’s “Maine Calling” radio show. More precise numbers are typically made available in March, during the state’s annual Fishermen’s Forum.
January 13, 2020 — Maine’s 2019 lobster catch was down from recent years, but after worries of a big drop-off, fishermen say most of them still made money. That’s important to the fishing industry and to coastal businesses, many of which depend on income from Lobstermen to make their own profits.
For much of last year, the lobsters just weren’t showing up, and that had a lot of fishermen worried. After several record and near-record years, there was concern that predictions of a big drop in the catch had come true.
By late September, many parts of the coast were reporting the catch down 40 percent, and even the Commissioner of Marine Resources shared that number at a meeting of New England fisheries leaders. But then came November and December, and fishermen say the lobsters finally showed up.
January 10, 2020 — Maine’s top fisheries official says lobstermen likely landed about 100 million pounds of the state’s signature crustacean in 2019, which is about 16 percent less than the year before but not as bad as had been predicted.
“Earlier in the season it looked like it could be bad,” said Marine Resources Commissioner Patrick Keliher on Maine Public’s “Maine Calling” radio show. “They caught a lot of lobsters in the last few months of the year and made up a lot of ground.”
Keliher told the show’s hosts that initial landing reports suggest the lobster industry would finish 2019 with a 100 million-pound harvest. If that number holds, it would be 16 percent lower than 2018’s 119.6 million pounds landed, and nearly 15 percent less than the five-year average.
That year-end lobster harvest would be the lowest Maine has recorded since 2010, when fishermen landed 96.2 million pounds of lobster. The catch every other year of the decade has surpassed 100 million pounds, with a peak harvest of 132.6 million pounds in 2016.
January 10, 2020 — Fishermen in the heart of Maine’s $485 million lobster industry don’t like a state proposal to protect endangered right whales from buoy lines, arguing that it forces them to give up too much to fix a problem they aren’t causing.
About 75 people packed a local lobster board meeting in Deer Isle on Thursday night to vent about the plan, which they argue is overly complicated, puts them in danger and is unlikely to help the species it is trying to save.
“I wonder why the state made it so confusing and so difficult,” said Richard “Dick” Larrabee Jr. of Stonington. “This is stupid. I don’t want you to pass this because this does not work. It makes us look like a bunch of monkeys.”
The Deer Isle meeting was the first stop in the state Department of Marine Resources’ monthlong presentation of its right whale plan to the local lobster zone councils in each of Maine’s seven lobster fishing zones, from Whiting to Kennebunk.
January 10, 2020 — The state with the largest fishing industry for lobster likely experienced a drop in catch last year, but the dip in harvest was probably not as dramatic as initially feared.
Patrick Keliher, commissioner of the Maine Department of Marine Resources, told Maine Public that initial reports show a harvest of about 100 million pounds of lobster. That would be a drop of nearly 20 million pounds from last year, but still a much higher number than the industry was used to in the 1990s and 2000.
The season initially looked like it could produce a substantial drop in catch, but Maine’s lobstermen finished strong, Keliher said. The price for Maine lobster was also strong, he said.
January 8, 2020 — Nearly 10 months ago, Department of Marine Resources Commissioner Patrick Keliher shocked Maine lobstermen with an announcement that the National Marine Fisheries Service had determined that right whale mortalities resulting from interactions with fishing gear would have to be reduced by 60 to 80 percent.
In late spring, the fisheries service proposed rules recommended by its Large Whale Take Reduction Team that would force lobstermen to reduce the number of vertical buoy lines in the water by as much as 50 percent and use weaker rope.
Those rules raised safety and practicality concerns within the fishing community and many lobstermen said they would have little or no impact on whale mortalities in the Gulf of Maine.
Last week, DMR submitted a detailed counterproposal to the federal fisheries agency that, according to Keliher, addressed those issues.
“This proposal is the result of a rigorous analysis of data combined with critically important input from industry,” Keliher said Friday. “The outcome is a plan that will not only protect right whales, but will also safeguard the lives and livelihoods of Maine fishermen.”
January 7, 2020 — The US state of Maine’s Department of Marine Resources (DMR) on Friday moved forward with its earlier-proposed recommendations for helping to preserve endangered North Atlantic right whales by putting all of the emphasis on federal waters.
Maine, which is responsible for the largest share by far of the United State’s North America lobster production, submitted to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA’s) National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) a lengthy set of online documents.
The plan is similar to one put forth in October by the state.
Ultimately, it’ll be up to NMFS to publish a proposed rule, also taking into consideration a tougher set of recommendations shared by the US’ Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Team, a NOAA advisory panel made up of fishermen, scientists, conservationists, and state and federal officials from Maine to Florida, in April 2019.