Saving Seafood

Maine Department Of Marine Resources Implements Rules To Avert Gear and Territory Conflicts

August 3, 2018 –The Maine Department of Marine Resources (DMR) is imposing a new five-trap limit for lobster trawlers in a restricted area around Mt. Desert Rock — about 6 miles off Frenchboro. Gear conflicts are growing common in the area, as smaller and larger boats compete for access to fertile lobster habitat.

Lobstermen in management Zone B, which includes Mt. Desert Rock, voted for the limit earlier this year, a limit that they say is in keeping with their longtime fishing traditions. They were responding to increased conflicts with bigger boats, many from other zones, fishing 15 traps and more on a single line.

“It’s pitting one group of fishermen against another,” says Patrick Keliher, DMR’s Commissioner.

Keliher says large lobster trawlers based in neighboring management zones — particularly Zone C to the south and west — are venturing into far offshore waters, in Zone B.

Read the full story at Maine Public

Maine Lobster Industry Has Yet to Feel Full Impact of China Tariffs

July 27, 2018 — Bob Baines does not believe new foreign tariffs will have an immediate impact on the Maine lobster industry.

“The state is catching mostly new-shell lobsters that don’t ship well to China or the EU yet,” he said, plucking a few twisting lobsters from his haul to display the small number mature enough for an overseas voyage.

That won’t last, Baines said, and harder shells will come with more difficult trade barriers.

Moving quickly around the deck of his lobster boat Thrasher, Baines unloaded flat crates of live catch onto a dock adjacent to the Spruce Head Fisherman’s Co-Op, where he serves as president of the South Thomaston nonprofit that brokers sales for more than 40 dues-paying members.

Read the full story at The Free Press

MAINE: Those lobster license plates are supporting $340,000 in research on vital industry

July 18, 2018 — The Maine Department of Marine Resources is using $340,000 from the sale of specialty license plates to bankroll lobster research.

The state agency is using lobster license plate profits to fund six research projects, including five run by the University of Maine and one by the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, and give $5,000 mini-grants to four other researchers. Project data will be shared through a research collaborative created to address the impact of a changing ocean environment on Maine’s lobster industry.

“Maine’s lobster industry is our most valuable and is a critical piece of the economy of nearly every community along the coast,” Marine Resources Commissioner Patrick Keliher said in a prepared statement Tuesday. “We know that change is happening in the Gulf of Maine and we want to be positioned with improved science to adapt to those changes.”

The agency in charge of regulating the state’s $1.5 billion industry is trying to up its own scientific efforts with these grants, which will be shared and shaped by a research collaborative made up of state officials, scientists and industry leaders. At the centerpiece of the new emphasis is research to support Maine’s most valuable fishery. The plan was to fund $500,000 in lobster science projects.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Environmental group plans lawsuit calling for ban on lines used by lobstermen

June 27, 2018 — Another environmental group is threatening a lawsuit to stop Maine lobstermen from using vertical fishing lines that it says pose a danger to right whales.

Whale Safe USA has served the Maine Department of Marine Resources with a written notice of its intent to sue that agency, the Maine Lobstermen’s Association and individual Maine lobstermen for violating an Endangered Species Act prohibition on killing and injuring endangered species such as the right whale.

The paperwork serves as a 60-day notice of civil action.

Led by Massachusetts advocate Max Strahan, who has called himself the “Prince of Whales,” the group wants to stop Maine from issuing licenses to fishermen who use lobster pot gear that can entangle right whales, especially the ropes that connect lobster pots that sit on the ocean floor to the buoys that float on the surface.

“The MDMR in its current and past incarnations has been responsible for the killing and injuring of many endangered whales and sea turtles since before the passage of the Endangered Species Act in 1973,” Strahan said in a prepared statement. “It knows it (is) killing endangered whales and sea turtles but it simply will not stop.”

Some scientists who study right whales say the species, whose numbers have dropped to about 450 animals, could be doomed to extinction by 2040 if society doesn’t take significant steps to protect them.

Seventeen right whales were found dead in the summer and fall of 2017 in the waters of the Gulf of St. Lawrence and off Cape Cod, many because of ship strikes or entanglements.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

MAINE: DMR sets up lottery for new scallop licenses

June 27, 2018 — Like Maine scallops but don’t want to pay $19 a pound or more? Feeling lucky? Come winter, maybe you can go catch your own.

This week, the Department of Marine Resources announced the final terms for two newly established lotteries for scallop fishing licenses. One lottery is for dragger licenses, the other for diver licenses. The catch, though, is that nobody knows for sure how many licenses, if any, will be available each year.

DMR has been working on a plan to bring new entrants into the scallop fishery for more than a year. The lotteries announced this week are the culmination of extensive discussions last year among members of DMR’s Scallop Advisory Council with considerable input, often heated, from industry members. Those discussions were followed by public hearings in Augusta, Machias and Ellsworth on one lottery proposal then considerable tinkering by the Legislature after those hearings ended.

The end result is a pair of lotteries open to Maine residents at least 18 years old who:

  • Hold a Maine commercial fishing license or have crewed on “an active commercial scallop vessel.”
  • Haven’t had a Maine commercial fishing license suspended within the past seven years
  • Are not already licensed.

Just who would qualify for the lottery was fraught with controversy. Even more contentious was whether any lottery entrants would qualify for extra chances, or weighting factors, to increase their likelihood of success.

In DMR’s initial proposal, applicants would get extra chances in the lottery based on several factors related to time spent in the fishery as crew, or before the license moratorium imposed in 2009, participation in “collaborative research programs” or having a particular license to fish for scallops outside of the three-mile limit in federal waters.

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American

Halibut landings up, so Maine halibut landings to go down

June 15, 2018 — Just as in the physical world, it’s a quirk of the regulatory world of fisheries management that when something goes up, something must go down, and it isn’t always the same thing.

Last week, the Department of Marine Resources held a series of public hearings in Ellsworth, Machias and Augusta on a proposed regulation that would shorten the Maine halibut fishing season by 20 days, cut the number of allowable hooks for halibut fishing on each boat and ban possession of halibut by fishermen who have state-issued halibut tags who have been fishing outside the three-mile state waters limit.

DMR imposed those regulations on an emergency basis before the scheduled May 1 start of the 2018 season. Valid for 90 days, the emergency rule pushed the start of the season back 10 days, from May 1 to May 11, and ended the season on June 20 instead of June 30. The proposal under consideration last week would make those changes permanent.

Halibut are one of several groundfish species such as cod, haddock and yellowtail flounder that are subject to annual catch limitations established by the New England Fishery Management Council. For halibut, the council sets an overall landings quota and allocates a portion of that to fisheries in state waters — inside the three-mile limit.

The aggregate total annual allowable catch of halibut for state- and federally-permitted harvesters is currently 104 metric tons (229,281 pounds). Of that, the annual catch limit for harvesters fishing in state waters during the 2018 fishing season is 21.8 metric tons (just under 48,061 pounds).

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American

Despite ongoing poaching, Maine fishermen lobby for increase in baby eel quota

June 7, 2018 — More than 60 fishermen told an interstate marine fisheries official Wednesday that Maine’s annual baby eel catch limit should be raised because there are “plenty” of eels in Maine — even though Maine once again finds itself having to address the issue of ongoing poaching in the fishery.

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission is considering whether to raise the state’s baby eel quota, also known as elvers, from 9,688 pounds to 11,749 pounds. It held a hearing on the topic Wednesday in Brewer and plans to hold another in Augusta on Thursday, June 7.

With fishermen earning more than $2,300 per pound for their catch this spring, the 2,000-pound difference could mean as much as $4.8 million in additional revenue for the statewide fishery.

The value of the statewide catch this spring is estimated to be $21.7 million, which is the third-highest annual landings value ever for the fishery, and the highest since Maine adopted a statewide catch limit in 2014.

“We don’t believe at all the [American eel] population is depleted,” John Banks, director of natural resources for the Penobscot Indian Nation, told commission official Kirby Rootes-Murdy. “We’re hearing from [harvesters in] the field that this population is not in trouble at all.”

Patrick Keliher, commissioner of Maine Department of Marine Resources, said Wednesday that the way the 2018 elver fishing season ended last month “didn’t help” the argument in favor of increasing Maine’s quota.

The department abruptly ended the season on May 24, when the statewide catch was still 500 pounds below its 9,688-pound quota, after Marine Patrol discovered that some licensed dealers had been engaged in illegal, under-the-table cash transactions for the lucrative eels. State law prohibits cash transactions and requires all sales to be recorded with a electronic swipe-card system that charts each fisherman’s catch and each dealer’s purchases.

Read the full story at Bangor Daily News

Illegal eels: Maine’s elver fishery faces more poaching charges

May 25, 2018 — The Maine Department of Marine Resources decided to shut down the state’s lucrative elver fishery two weeks early, claiming that illegal sales are jeopardizing the agency’s ability to manage the fishery properly.

The DMR announced late Tuesday afternoon that all harvesting operations must halt by 6 a.m. on Thursday, May 24.

Elver dealers and fishermen are required to use an electronic swipe card system that allows regulators to track the fishery in real time. But a Maine Marine Patrol investigation concluded that some dealers are paying less than the going rate — $2,400 per pound, on average — in cash and keeping the transactions off state records.

“The future of this lucrative fishery is now in question,” DMR Commissioner Patrick Keliher said in a prepared statement. “We clearly have to consider additional measures to ensure that Maine can remain compliant with [catch limits], that we can continue to protect our state’s valuable marine resources, and that we can hold accountable anyone who chooses to squander the opportunity those resources represent.”

Read the full story at National Fisherman

 

Maine baby eel harvest on pace to hit record value under catch limits

April 30, 2018 — Halfway through the 2018 fishing season for baby eels, the value of landings in Maine is on track to reach its highest annual total since a statewide catch limit was imposed four years ago.

With the average price remaining above $2,300 per pound since opening day on March 22, the value of the statewide catch so far was nearly $12.5 million as of Friday evening, which is $337,000 more than the catch value for all of 2017. It represents 4,800 pounds caught statewide since the season started, meaning fishermen have caught only half of Maine’s overall annual catch limit of 9,688 pounds.

As of Friday evening, dealers were paying fishermen $2,600 per pound on average for baby eels, also known as elvers, the state Department of Marine Resources indicated in a news release. That average is twice as high as it was last year, when elver fishermen earned $1,300 per pound.

If the average price paid to fishermen stays above $2,500 through the remainder of the season, and if fishermen reach the statewide catch limit, the value of Maine’s 2018 elver landings would total at least $24 million.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

 

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