Saving Seafood

Maine Marine Patrol to Focus on Boating Under the Influence

June 29, 2017 — The following was released by the Maine Department of Marine Resources:

The Maine Marine Patrol will be on heightened alert for those violating Maine’s boating under the influence laws during the national Operation Drywater weekend, June 30-July 2.

Operation Dry Water is a national awareness and enforcement campaign coordinated by the National Association of State Boating Law Administrators (NASBLA) that focuses on deterring boaters from boating under the influence (BUI) of drugs or alcohol.

“Marine Patrol Officers will be conducting patrols on Maine’s coastal waters from Kittery to the Canadian border focused on boaters who may be under the influence of alcohol or drugs,” said Maine Marine Patrol Major Rene Cloutier.

“They will also be taking every opportunity possible to provide information on safe boating practices and the importance of wearing life jackets.” According to US Coast Guard statistics, 83 percent of drowning victims in 2016 were not wearing a life jacket.

Nationally, alcohol use is the leading contributing factor in fatal boating accidents. According to the US Coast Guard, in 2016, where the primary cause was known, alcohol use was the leading factor in 15 percent of boater deaths.

“Boating under the influence is a 100 percent preventable crime,” said Major Cloutier. “The Maine Marine Patrol strongly encourages boaters to stay safe by staying sober while boating.”

“Environmental stressors such as wind, noise, and the movement of the boat while on the water intensify the effects of alcohol or drug use on an individual while boating. Boaters can become impaired more quickly on the water than on land.”

Operating a boat with a blood alcohol content (BAC) of .08 or higher is against the law in Maine. BUI laws pertain to all vessels, from canoes and rowboats to the largest ships.

In 2016, 538 local, state, and federal agencies participated in Operation Drywater. Over the three days law enforcement officers contacted 131,054 boaters, made 367 BUI arrests, and issued 18,659 citations and warnings for safety violations.

In 2016 the Maine Marine Patrol participated in Operation Drywater details in the Saco River, Portland Harbor, the Sheepscot, Kennebec, St. George, and Penobscot Rivers, Southwest Harbor, Northeast Harbor, Swan’s Island, Frenchboro, and Bass Harbor.  A total of 115 boats were checked with 305 people on board.

“Fortunately we didn’t have to remove anyone from the water for BUI,” said Major Cloutier. “But it provided us with an opportunity to communicate with a lot of people about the importance of boating sober and safely.”

For more information on Operation Dry Water, please visit operationdrywater.org.

This year, a welcome switch on bait supply for Maine lobstermen

June 29, 2017 — Maine lobstermen are hitting the water late this year because of cold weather, but without the cloud of a looming bait crisis hanging over them.

Bait freezers along the coast are full of herring and pogies, and even alewives, which means that bait is not only available, it is also much less expensive than last year when herring cost as much as 60 cents a pound, said Pat Keliher, commissioner of the state Department of Marine Resources. This year the lobstermen’s go-to bait costs about half as much.

That’s still not a great price, Keliher said. Herring fetched about 18 cents a pound at the start of the 2015 lobstering season.

“I won’t say we’re in great shape, but we are in a heck of a lot better shape than we were last year,” Keliher said.

He attributed the strong start to basic supply-and-demand economics. When the supply of bait fish is high and demand is low, lobstermen do well.

Fishermen caught herring in the deep waters off Georges Bank earlier this year than they did in 2016, Keliher said. Although they’ve landed a little more than last year – about 19.9 percent of their quota, compared with 19.1 percent at the same time last year, according to this week’s federal landing reports – this year’s catch came early enough in the season to keep prices low.

The inshore herring fishery in the Gulf of Maine opened this month. The state is applying the same restrictions it implemented last year to stretch out this local supply of fresh herring deep into the summer, when the lobster season starts to peak. These measures include weekly landing limits, a limit on how many days a week herring can be landed, and a prohibition on the use of carrier-only fishing vessels.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

MAINE: Fishermen, regulators disagree over cause of Brunswick fish kill

June 26, 2017 — As a massive vacuum truck from Clean Harbors traveled along the shoreline near Simpsons Point midweek to clean up rotting pogies, local fishermen were battling what they say was a raft of misinformation put forth by the state about how and why those pogies were dumped from a local fishing vessel on June 6.

On Tuesday, a day after residents of the Simpsons Point area asked town councilors to help pay for a professional cleanup of the fish, local lobsterman Steve Anderson posted a 10-minute video on YouTube, taking local media to task for only reporting part of the story and excoriating the Maine Department of Marine Resources for a quota system Anderson said simply doesn’t work.

Anderson declined requests to speak to the Bangor Daily News this week.

But Jeff Nichols, spokesman for the DMR, said Friday that Anderson “got a lot of things wrong,” including that DMR imposes the quota system. According to Nichols, while fishermen are still held to a quota,they can transfer their catch to another vessel, to act as a carrier vessel.

Quotas for Atlantic Menhaden, or pogies, are imposed by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission and implemented by state marine resources regulators. This year’s quota allowed Maine fishermen to catch 161,000 pounds per year, then to reapply to catch more if there is still stock, as there is this year but not every year.

“We hit that [quota] at the end of May, and then we could apply for an ‘episodic event fishery’ quota triggered when there are still fish in the water,” Nichols said.

This year, fishermen were granted additional quotas of 120,000 pounds per day per boat, Nichols said.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

Maine Marine Patrol Searching Penobscot River after Report of Abandoned Vehicle on Bridge

June 22, 2017 — The following was released by the Maine Department of Marine Resources:

The Maine Marine Patrol this morning is searching the waters beneath the Penobscot Narrows Bridge after a report of an abandoned vehicle on the bridge.

The Marine Patrol received the report at approximately 6:00 am this morning and began searching shortly after 7:00 am. The report indicated that the vehicle was discovered at approximately 3:30 am.

The State Police is investigating this incident.

Hundreds of dead fish prompt call for changes at Ellsworth dam

June 16, 2017 — River herring are dying in droves this month in Ellsworth after passing through Leonard Lake Dam, according to a Maine conservation group calling for safer passage for the fish.

“Community members have reported seeing hundreds of dead fish floating down stream below the dam and the Route 1 bridge on multiple occasions over the past 12 days,” said Brett Ciccotelli of the Downeast Salmon Federation. “Dead fish have been seen as far downstream as the city’s Harbor Park.”

Some of those fish appeared to have parts chopped off, while others suffered slashes across their sides or were missing eyes, indicating they struck turbines in the dam, according to the group.

The federation says “thousands” of adult river herring have been killed since early this month while returning from their spawning grounds farther upriver. The group made similar claims following another large-scale fish kill back in October.

“Their life history — needing fresh water to lay their eggs and returning to the same rivers year after year — makes dams without safe downstream passage particularly dangerous to river herring,” Ciccotelli said.

Brookfield Renewables, the parent company that owns the Ellsworth dam, is in the midst of a five-year process for renewing its federal license for the dam for another 30 years.

Ciccotelli argued that one requirement of that renewal should be an upgrade to the fish passage through the dam to reduce the number of fish kills.

Brookfield did not immediately return messages Friday requesting comment.

In October, Brookfield said in a news release that it was “constantly working to minimize the potential environmental impacts associated with our operations and activities.”

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

Hearing on new shrimp rules draws tiny crowd

June 15, 2017 — Fishermen barely outnumbered representatives of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission last Thursday at a public hearing in City Hall on proposed rule changes that would reshape shrimp fishing in the Gulf of Maine.

Three fishermen — John Williams and Ricky Trundy, both of Stonington, and James West of Sorrento — offered comments on a proposed amendment to the ASMFC fisheries management plan for northern shrimp. Department of Marine Resources External Affairs Director Terry Stockwell and Resource Management Coordinator Trisha Cheney dutifully recorded those comments on behalf of the ASMFC.

Stockwell serves as DMR Commissioner Patrick Keliher’s representative on the multi-state fisheries management group. He plans to retire at the end of the month after 21 years at DMR and Cheney will assume his role.

Although a somewhat larger crowd was on hand for a hearing the previous evening in Augusta, the sparse audience reflected the state of the fishery from Downeast waters. It also is a reflection of the fact that there has been no commercial shrimp fishery in the Gulf of Maine since ASMFC shortened the season in 2013 and imposed a complete fishing moratorium before the 2014 season.

For more than a decade, ASMFC managed the fishery by establishing a total allowable catch (TAC) for the entire fishery based on assessments of the size and reproductive success of the shrimp resource that was adjusted annually. As the shrimp resource declined, so did the TAC — and the fishery.

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American

Maine elver fishermen caught $12 million worth of eels this season

June 12, 2017 — Maine elver fishermen netted more than $12 million in baby eels in the season that ended last week — the fourth-highest grossing year since 1994, officials said.

The season came to a close last week with 9,282 pounds of elvers caught in Maine, which is 334 pounds shy of the statewide catch limit, according to Maine Department of Marine Resources.

Maine, where more eels are caught than any other state, has a yearly statewide limit of 9,616 pounds on elver harvests, and by law the season ends either when that quota is reached or on June 7.

Maine’s 1,000 or so licensed elver fishermen on average earned just above $1,300 per pound this year, keeping the average price above $1,000 per pound for the fifth time in the past six years. The highest average price was in 2015, when fishermen earned more than $2,100 per pound but a cold spring resulted in fishermen catching only 5,200 pounds of elvers statewide.

The $12 million annual harvest value is the fourth-highest total for the fishery since 1994, according to DMR statistics. The highest-ever statewide harvest value was $40.3 million in 2012.

Maine’s elver fishery has been one of the state’s most valuable fisheries since 2011, when changes in global supply and demand made prices in Maine nearly quintuple, from $185 per pound to nearly $900 per pound. The baby eels, about 2,000 of which comprise a pound, are shipped live to East Asia, where they are raised in aquaculture ponds and later harvested for the region’s seafood market.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

Elver season ends

June 8, 2017 — Maine’s elver season ended Wednesday. By most accounts it was successful.

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission limited Maine harvesters to a landings quota of 9,616 pounds for this year. According to the Department of Marine Resources, as of 6 p.m. Monday, Maine dealers reported buying 9,281.269 pounds of elvers and paying harvesters a total of $12,088,884 — an average price of $1,303 per pound.

The total quota is allocated among harvesters licensed by the state and the four federally recognized Indian tribes.

As of Monday evening, DMR-licensed harvesters had landed just over 7,315 pounds out of a total quota of 7,566.3 pounds.

Harvesters of the Houlton Band of Maliseet had landed about 87 pounds from their approximately 107-pound quota.

Micmac Nation harvesters landed their entire 38.8-pound quota and Penobscot Nation harvesters had landed all but one pound of their 620-pound quota.

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American

Sen. King tells researchers that data is the key to protecting lobster industry

June 6, 2017 — Calling proposed cuts in federal science funding “unacceptable,” U.S. Sen. Angus King told lobster researchers Monday that data is the key to protecting Maine’s most valuable fishery.

Maine’s independent senator asked the 250 biologists, oceanographers and fishery managers at a global conference on lobster biology in Portland this week to give him data on the impact of the changing sea environment on lobster, including temperature, salinity and acidification, and whether that is prompting a migration of Maine’s $533.1 million a year fishery to Canada.

“If lobsters are moving toward Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, that’s a serious practical issue that will get the attention of politicians,” he said. “It’s when you start seeing jobs go away that politicians start saying ‘Gee, we’d better do something about this.’ Are they moving, if they are why, and if they are, what’s the timing? Is it five years? Twenty years? A hundred years?”

But federal funding for scientific research is under fire. President Trump’s budget calls for a 17 percent cut to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversees the national fisheries programs and funded almost a fifth of Maine Department of Marine Resources’ annual budget. It would eliminate the Sea Grant program, which funds research by the University of Maine’s Rick Wahle, conference co-chairman, among others.

“The lobster industry in New England is valued at close to $500 million and yet we know very little about how ocean acidification may affect this species,” Libby Jewett, NOAA’s ocean acidification director, said last fall when awarding Wahle’s team a $200,000 grant for lobster research. “These projects should help move the needle forward in our understanding and, as a result, enable broader resilience in the region.”

King said it is unlikely that Trump’s budget, containing what he considers drastic cuts in scientific funding, will pass Congress.

“The last thing we should be doing on a federal level is cutting research funding,” King said. “That is one of the most important functions of the federal government, whether it is climate change or cancer. It’s how we solve problems. To cut research, and particularly to cut research when you get the feeling that the motivation is that we don’t want to know, is unacceptable. … Congress understands this.”

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Northern Gulf of Maine Scallop Management Area to be Surveyed this Summer through Scallop RSA Program

June 2, 2017 — The following was released by the New England Fishery Management Council:

At the request of the New England Fishery Management Council, NOAA Fisheries intends to take action to facilitate survey work this summer in the southern portion of the Northern Gulf of Maine (NGOM) Scallop Management Area. The additional coverage will occur through the Scallop Research Set-Aside (RSA) Program. The agency is working to amend two previously approved RSA awards for 2017 scallop surveys on Georges Bank so that both surveys can be expanded to include coverage in the Gulf of Maine as follows.

  • Coonamessett Farm Foundation will receive an additional 12,000 pounds of scallop RSA allocation to: (1) survey portions of Stellwagen Bank and Jeffreys Ledge with HabCam, a habitat mapping camera system; and (2) conduct complimentary scallop dredge surveys to collect biological samples. And,
  • The School for Marine Science and Technology (SMAST) at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth will receive an additional 1,734

During its mid-April meeting, the Council voted to send a letter to the Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC) asking the center to explore options for including the southern portion of the NGOM area in upcoming 2017 scallop surveys. A 2016 survey conducted by the Maine Department of Marine Resources and the University of Maine indicated that biomass in the NGOM had increased substantially since the last time the area was surveyed in 2012, but no additional survey work was scheduled for 2017.

Fishing effort increased significantly in 2016 and 2017 in the area, especially off Cape Ann and the northeastern portion of Stellwagen Bank. Consequently, the Council determined it needed the most updated biomass estimates possible to help inform the management of the NGOM going forward.

Read the full release here