Saving Seafood

Maine fleet keeps an even keel despite lower lobster landings

March 7, 2018 — As expected, Maine lobster landings dropped in 2017. The fleet landed 110.8 million pounds, a 16 percent decline in volume from 2016’s 132.5 million pounds, according to preliminary data released my the Maine Department of Marine Resources.

Value was down as well, by $106 million from 2016’s all-time record value of $540.4 million to $433.8 million (the average price per pound dropped from $4.08 to $3.91).

Despite marking the largest single-year decline in the fishery’s history, the 2017 season still ranks as the sixth highest volume and fourth highest value in the state’s history.

The season also marks the seventh year in a row with landings over 100 million pounds, which had never happened prior to 2011.

“The past year has underscored what I’ve been saying for years now — that change is inevitable and we must be prepared,” DMR Commissioner Patrick Keliher said in a press release. “This year’s decline in lobster landings is by no means a signal that the sky is falling. But it does highlight the need to make sure our management measures adapt to change. This is true for all fisheries. It is the best way to ensure resilience of our marine resources and opportunity for future generations.”

Zooming in on Maine’s lobster zones, the most significant landings decline came in Zone F, where lobstermen caught 25 percent less than the previous year, catching 10.95 million pounds compared to 2016’s haul of 14.67 million pounds. Landings dropped about 17 percent in Zones C, D and G; 15 percent in Zone E; 13 percent in Zone A; and 12 percent in Zone B.

Read the full story at the National Fisherman

 

Maine closes more scallop areas to prevent overfishing

February 20, 2018 — ADDISON, Maine — Maine fishing regulators are shutting down more areas to scallop fishing for the season to protect the health of the shellfish.

The state shuts down scalloping areas to prevent the valuable resource from being overfished. The Maine Department of Marine Resources said it has shut down the Harrington and Pleasant rivers, including Pleasant Bay.

The state’s also shutting down the Skillings River and Taunton Bay in the Frenchman Bay area.

The scallop fishing season begins in December and can last until early April. Most Maine scallops are harvested with drag boats, but some are taken by hand by divers. The state’s scallop fishery has steadily rebuilt in recent years after suffering a collapse in the 2000s.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Bangor Daily News

 

Maine: Lobstermen must report total catch

February 22, 2018 — New regulations passed February 6 by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission requires 100 percent catch reporting by all Maine lobster and Jonah crab fishermen within five years. Developing an electronic reporting method for Maine fishermen is also under way.

“We argued against it heavily for quite a while,” Sen. Brian Langley (R-Ellsworth) said. “Stonington lands more than all of Southern New England.”

Langley, along with Maine Department of Marine Resources Commissioner Patrick Keliher and Stephen Train of Long Island, represent Maine on the commission.

“It’s like a game of Survivor down there,” Langley added. With the collapse of the lobster industry in Southern New England, “Maine sometimes is up against other states.”

Currently, only 10 percent of Maine lobstermen, selected randomly within specific categories, are required to file catch reports for each trip. Fishermen in the 14 other ASFMC member states report all their catch.

However, Maine has the largest lobster fishery of all member states, producing about four-fifths of the nation’s lobster harvest.

“It’s unfortunate states with a few hundred fishermen voted for Maine fishermen,” said Rep. Walter Kumiega (D-Deer Isle), House Chairman of the Joint Standing Committee on Marine Resources and 2018 candidate for state senator.

Keliher’s motion to maintain current harvester reporting efforts was amended to add that 100 percent harvester reporting be required within five years—better than the immediate adoption of the regulation that had been earlier presented. A further amendment, that if a commercial harvester landed less than 1,000 pounds of lobster or Jonah crab in the previous year a monthly summary could be submitted, was also successful. The amended motion unanimously passed, as did a provision to develop electronic reporting.

Read the full story at Island Ad-Vantages

 

Maine: Benchmark study of lobsters begins

February 13, 2018 — In 2015, data collected in a benchmark assessment of New England lobster stocks showed record-high abundance for the combined stocks of the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank and record lows for the lobster stock of southern New England.

Now, about three years later, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission is beginning preparations for the next American lobster benchmark assessment that is expected to be completed around March 2020.

“We’re in the very early stages right now,” said Jeff Kipp, senior stock assessment scientist at the Arlington, Virginia-based ASMFC that regulates the Northeast lobster fishery. “The process will be mostly data-driven.”

Nothing is certain in the periodic assessments of various seafood species. But if some recent projections hold, the 2020 assessment could sketch a different picture from the 2015 assessment, possibly reflecting the declining abundance predicted by a recent Gulf of Maine Research Institute study.

The study, compiled with the University of Maine and NOAA Fisheries, forecast a 30-year decline in the Gulf of Maine lobster boom that began around 2010. The culprit? Increasingly warmer temperatures in the Gulf of Maine, which scientists have said is warming faster than 99.9 percent of the rest of the world’s ocean waters.

“In the Gulf of Maine, the lobster fishery is vulnerable to future temperature increases,” the authors of the study wrote. “The researchers’ population projections suggest that lobster productivity will decrease as temperatures continue to warm, but continued conservation efforts can mitigate the impacts of future warming.”

The findings of the GMRI study were strongly disputed by some Maine lobster dealers and the state’s Department of Marine Resources. The Maine DMR criticized the GMRI computer model used to arrive at the study’s conclusions, calling it “an unreliable tool on which to base management decisions.”

The benchmark assessment of the region’s lobster populations — which will include data on lobster landings, lobster growth and prevalent diseases among the population — could go a long way toward determining exactly what is happening to the region’s American lobster stocks.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

 

All Maine lobstermen will have to report fishing details, including secrets of success

February 9, 2018 — All Maine lobstermen will have to start giving up their most treasured fishing secrets, including where they set their traps and how much they catch, in five years.

Starting in 2023, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission will require all lobster fishermen to submit detailed reports on their fishing activities, including those in Maine, the nation’s lobster capital, where current regulations only require 10 percent of licensed lobstermen to share their fishing data. In other states, lobster fishermen have been submitting reports on every trip for years.

The commission was considering a plan to require Maine lobstermen to begin filling out these reports immediately, but Maine Marine Resources Commissioner Patrick Keliher argued against it. He said it would require state government to hire five employees and raise industry fees by $500,000 to review that many paper records. Keliher said he would rather wait a couple of years for the development of a cheap and easy electronic monitoring system before requiring 100 percent reporting in Maine.

“I’d rather spend my money on things that are more important at this time while we focus on electronic reporting development,” Keliher told the commission.

Fisheries managers say the data is necessary to assess the health of the Gulf of Maine lobster stock and understand the economic impact of other ocean projects, such as deep-sea coral protections or wind farms, on the valuable lobster fishery. In Maine, which lands 83 percent of the nation’s lobsters, the industry caught more than 130 million pounds of lobster valued at $533.1 million in 2016.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

 

Maine shutting down more scallop areas to protect harvest

February 5, 2018 — WHITING, Maine — Maine officials say the state’s shutting down a few high traffic scallop fishing areas to prevent overfishing.

The Maine Department of Marine Resource is closing Sand and Machias bays and Lower Englishman Bay starting on Sunday. It’s also shutting down parts of Cobscook Bay, which is the most fertile scallop fishing ground in Maine.

The parts of Cobscook Bay that will no longer be accessible include Whiting and Dennys bays.

The marine department says scallop monitoring surveys and industry reports show catch rates have slowed and fishermen are near their catch targets. The state routinely uses closures to prevent scallops from being overharvested.

Read the full story at WMTW

 

Portland Press Herald: Time for Maine to look past lobster boom years

February 2, 2018 — There is an economic principle that’s usually attributed to Herbert Stein, who worked for the Nixon administration and The Wall Street Journal.

Stein’s law: If something can’t keep going forever, it won’t.

Maine’s lobster industry is near the peak of a historic boom, making it the state’s most lucrative fishery. In the last 30 years, lobster landings have increased from 20 million pounds a year to 130 million. No one expects the catch to keep growing forever. The question is not whether it will decline, but when.

Scientists from the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, the University of Maine and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have applied computer modeling to that question and have proposed an answer. In a report issued last month, they identified 2014 as the peak of the lobster population and predicted a long, slow decline of 40 to 62 percent by 2030, with the catch returning to levels in line with what was seen in the 1990s.

The Maine Department of Marine Resources has disputed the study and questioned the value of its computer models. Since no one was able to predict the historic rise in the lobster population, Commissioner Patrick Keliher said, he doubts the ability of scientists to accurately predict their decline.

He’s right, but there is plenty of reason to take this report seriously and use it as a planning tool. There’s a lot we can’t know about the future, but what we know about what’s happening in the present supports the report’s predictions.

Read the full editorial at the Portland Press Herald

 

Maine disputes study that predicts sharp decline in Gulf of Maine lobsters

The Department of Marine Resources won’t be using researchers’ model to make management decisions, saying that forecasting fishery populations 30 years out is extremely difficult.

January 29, 2018 — The state agency that oversees Maine’s marine fisheries is questioning the reliability of a new study that predicts a sharp decline in Gulf of Maine lobsters over the next 30 years.

The Gulf of Maine Research Institute, the University of Maine and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration built a computer model that predicts the population will fall 40 to 62 percent by 2030.

But Patrick Keliher, commissioner of the Department of Marine Resources, won’t be using the model to help him decide how to manage the state’s most valuable fishery, which pumped $533.1 million into the state economy in 2016.

“(He) does not have confidence in a model that simulates what might happen decades in the future,” spokesman Jeff Nichols said. “This is a wild resource, making predictions extremely challenging.”

Thirty years ago, when landings were less than 20 million pounds, no one could have predicted that the Maine lobster fleet would be landing more than 130 million pounds a year in 2016, Nichols said.

“The commissioner and his science staff don’t question the science, but rather see this as an unreliable tool on which to base management decisions,” he said.

The department isn’t alone in having doubts about the study. Maine lobster dealers voiced skepticism, too, recalling previous erroneous lobster forecasts by some of the same scientific organizations.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

 

Maine awards 11 new fishing licenses for valuable baby eels

January 25, 2018 — For the first time in five years, the state has issued new licenses for Maine’s lucrative baby eel fishery.

Eleven people were chosen through a lottery that more than 3,000 Mainers hoped to win, according to the Maine Department of Marine Resources. The deadline for submitting applications to participate was Jan. 15.

In 2013, the last time the state held the drawing, more than 5,000 people applied for the chance to win one of four new elver fishing licenses.

Each new licensee will be allowed to catch up to four pounds of baby eels, also known as elvers, which usually sell for more than $1,000 per pound. Since 2014, the average annual price paid to elver fishermen has varied from about $875 per pound to more than $2,100.

The licenses have become a hot commodity as the price for elvers has skyrocketed, driven by voracious demand in Asia for eels. In 2016, the most recent year for which statistics are available, approximately 1,000 licensed Maine fishermen netted nearly $13.5 million worth of elvers.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

 

NOAA sued to limit lobster fishery

January 18, 2018 — ELLSWORTH, Maine — Last year, at least 17 endangered North Atlantic right whales died in Canadian waters and off the coast of New England. Some of those deaths were attributed to the whales’ entanglement with lobster fishing gear.

On Thursday, three conservation organizations sued the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service in the federal district court in Washington, D.C. to force the agency to impose stricter regulations on lobstermen fishing in federal waters.

The suit, filed by the Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife and The Humane Society of the United States, asks the court to rule that the National Marine Fisheries Service is violating the federal Endangered Species Act and Marine Mammal Protection Act by allowing the lobster fishery to continue without adequate protection for right whales.

The complaint also asks the court to require that the agency “implement additional mitigation measures to reduce the risk of entanglement of North Atlantic right whales.”

Read the full story at the Mount Desert Islander