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.
January 6, 2020 — Maine is making its voice heard as a federal effort to stop right whales from dying takes shape.
On Friday, the state’s Department of Marine Resources released a plan it says protects the endangered whales and lobstermen, whom the feds say need to do more to prevent traps and lines from killing the whale.
Maine’s suggestions include having lobstermen use ropes with weak points the whales could easily break and calls for a 25% reduction in the amount of vertical trap lines.
“It’s been a really difficult process, no question about it,” said Patrick Keliher, commissioner of Maine’s DMR. “We spent a lot of time with the industry, we made some people happy and some people mad.”
January 3, 2020 — Maine‘s proposal for protecting endangered right whales from entanglements in lobster gear would maintain the status quo for inshore waters where most traps are located while reducing the number of trap lines farther offshore, officials said Friday.
The Maine Department of Marine Resources submitted the proposal to the federal government, which plans to issue new rules in the spring or summer for protecting North Atlantic right whales. The whales number only about 400 and are vulnerable to entanglement in fishing gear.
The proposal would make no change to an inshore area that comprises more than two-thirds of state waters, while total trap lines would be reduced farther offshore.
The proposal would also set requirements for “weak” points in trap lines that would allow an entangled whale to break free and require unique color markings to differentiate Maine lobster lines from trap lines used by fishermen from other states.
The rules come at a time when lobstermen are concerned about a drop in the catch of the state’s signature seafood.
January 3, 2020 — Maine has finalized a proposal to protect endangered right whales from entanglement in lobster fishing gear, but it also gives state regulators the freedom to adopt alternative protections to keep lobstermen and their regional fishing practices alive.
The heart of the state plan is similar to one panned by the lobster industry last fall – cutting the number of buoy lines that could entangle a whale by setting a minimum number of traps fished on each line and requiring the use of lines with weak points to help entangled whales break free.
New to the plan is Maine’s bid to get federal approval for flexibility to allow alternative forms of fishing restrictions in cases where the statewide application of federal whale protections would put lobstermen in physical danger or run needlessly afoul of regional fishing practices.
That flexibility is the cornerstone of Maine Department of Marine Resources’ plan, said Commissioner Pat Keliher. Careful use of alternative protections that achieve the same conservation benefit could help protect whales, fishermen and the state’s $485 million a year industry, Keliher said.
“We want to develop a process that would allow us to mix and match regulatory changes to achieve the same risk reduction for whales while taking into account fishermen safety, traditional fishing practices, and fleet diversity,” Keliher said. “It would be a blend of giving and taking that achieves the same goal.”