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Regulators say new whale-protection rules for Maine’s lobster fleet are on the horizon

March 24, 2022 — Federal regulators said they will soon start a process to create new whale-protection rules for Maine’s lobster fleet that will go beyond the controversial regulations going into effect on May 1. The rules are being imposed to reduce the risk that endangered North Atlantic right whales will be killed by entanglements with fishing gear or ship strikes.

Michael Pentony, the regional administrator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, spoke to an online meeting of the Maine Fishermen’s Forum today.

He said that the initial rules were designed to reduce the risk to whales by 60%, but recent evidence shows that the agency must act more quickly than planned to reduce that risk even more.

Read the full story at Maine Public

Webinar to outline changes to the Northern Gulf of Maine scallop fishery

February 16, 2022 — The Maine Fishermen’s Forum is hosting a webinar on Thursday, Feb. 17, which will outline changes to the scallop fishery of the Northern Gulf of Maine in which many Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts fisherman participate.

Many scallopers work out of Gloucester to be closer to the fishing grounds. The new measures start April 1, and the webinar will be an educational session to make scallopers aware of the changes.

The webinar, organized by the New England Fishery Management Council, is scheduled to run from 3 to 4:30 p.m.

Panelists scheduled are Jonathan Peros, scallop lead for NEFMC; Travis Ford, scallop lead for the Greater Atlantic Fisheries Office of the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS/NOAA Fisheries); and Jessica Blaylock, industry-funded scallop observer program lead at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center of NOAA Fisheries.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

Maine Forum to Host Northern Gulf of Maine Scallop Webinar on February 17; Fisheries Leadership Session on March 23

February 10, 2022 — The following was released by the New England Fishery Management Council:

The Maine Fishermen’s Forum will be hosting two webinars of direct interest to the New England Fishery Management Council’s stakeholders. One will focus on the Northern Gulf of Maine (NGOM) scallop fishery and the other will provide an opportunity for fishermen and other webinar participants to have an open dialogue with NOAA Fisheries leadership.

Due to COVID-19 concerns, the forum’s board of directors canceled the March 2022 in-person event but made way for educational virtual seminars with remote participation by those who tune in via Zoom. Here are the details for the webinar lineup.

NORTHERN GULF OF MAINE SCALLOP FISHERY: This webinar, which is titled “Upcoming Changes to the Management of the Federal Scallop Fishery in the Northern Gulf of Maine,” will take place on Wednesday, February 17, 2022 from 3:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.

WHO ARE THE PANELISTS?

• Jonathon Peros, scallop lead for the New England Fishery Management Council and organizer of this webinar session;

• Travis Ford, scallop lead for the Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office (GARFO) of the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS/NOAA Fisheries); and

• Jessica Blaylock, industry-funded scallop observer program lead at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center of NOAA Fisheries.

Read the full release from the NEFMC

Fishermen’s Forum cancels in-person events for second year

December 3, 2021 — The annual Fishermen’s Forum, a three-day event held in Rockport in early March, has been canceled for a second year due to coronavirus concerns.

The forum brings together scientists, seafood marketers, fisheries management specialists and more from across the commercial fishing industry. The guest list includes marketers, processors, representatives from the Department of Marine Resources, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and other government agencies. And fishermen, of course, who gather to talk shop, share information, hear new and upcoming legislation affecting their industry, and to swap stories.

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American

MAINE: Maritime Shorts

May 3, 2021 — The Maine Fishermen’s Forum is hosting a safety seminar on May 4. The seminar will be 90 minutes long and include several guest speakers.  

“In the last fifteen months, Maine’s fishing community lost eight men to several fishing related tragedies. Commercial fishing is one of the most dangerous occupations in America,” the forum wrote on the event posting. “There are several simple precautions which dramatically improve your chances of surviving an accident at sea and coming home safely to your family.”  

This roundtable discussion will be hosted by Maggie Raymond of Associated Fisheries of Maine and panelists include U.S. Coast Guard Commander Jason Boyer, Brian Smith, a commercial fishing vessel examiner and Mike Russo, a fishing accident survivor.   

Read the full story at the Mount Desert Islander

Floating wind farms a hot topic at forum

March 20, 2020 — If a changing climate, whale protection regulations and, now, the as yet immeasurable threat arising from the emergence of the coronavirus aren’t enough to keep fishermen awake at night, the potential development of offshore power generation facilities in the Gulf of Maine should do the trick.

Earlier this month, the Maine Fishermen’s Forum opened with a day-long seminar on the state of wind energy development in the Northeast in general and the Gulf of Maine in particular. So far, there are no wind generators in the Gulf of Maine or pretty much anywhere else in New England. The exception is off Block Island, in Rhode Island, where five, 600-foot-tall wind turbines anchored by piles driven into the seabed about 4 miles offshore are anticipated to generate 125,000 megawatt hours of electricity annually.

Plans for a giant windfarm sited in the waters of Nantucket Sound south of Cape Cod were abandoned in 2017. The proposed project known as Cape Wind was to cover some 24 square miles and was expected to generate 454 megawatts of electricity when complete. Plans for the wind farm called for 130 wind turbines with hubs 285 feet above the water and a total height of 440 feet. After years of controversy and litigation, the developer received all the permits needed to build the windfarm, but ultimately lost its contracts for the sale of the electricity and gave up on the project.

Currently, the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) is responsible for oversight of proposed offshore wind power projects. Fishermen at the forum heard from representatives of the New England Fishery Management Council that there is increasing interest in the possibility of developing floating windfarms in the Gulf of Maine. That, according to Michelle Bachman of the NEFMC, could make fishing “much stickier” than in fixed windfarms such as the roughly 60 large farms already in operation in off the coasts of Holland, Germany, Belgium and the United Kingdom.

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American

Top 10 Takes from the 2020 Maine Fishermen’s Forum

March 11, 2020 — Industry innovations abound, from the Deckhand, a new product that makes it easier to log vessel trip data to Rugged Seas, a new bib-recycling venture that incorporates discarded bib scraps into a variety of rugged and well designed bags that work just as well on the trail as they do in your bunk belowdecks.

Simon Dick of Deckhand gets the farthest-traveled award for coming to Rockport from Australia, no doubt washing his hands all the way.

Fight the power: Fishing and offshore wind

Representatives from across the industry attended and hosted a full-day session on proposed offshore wind-power projects that are creeping both north and south from Southern New England.

Annie Hawkins, executive director of the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance, and her board of directors advocate for the fishing industry on East Coast developments. They hope to offer their expertise in negotiating new federal permits that preserve access to fishing grounds.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Right Whales Rules a Hot Topic at Maine Fishermen’s Forum

March 10, 2020 — The Maine Fishermen’s Forum took place in Rockport, Maine, last week. The hot topic of the event? The National Marine Fisheries Service’s pending North Atlantic right whale policy.

State and federal regulators are calling for the Maine lobster industry to change up their gear in order to protect the endangered right whale. These measures include reducing the number of vertical ropes in offshore waters and using weak or breakaway ropes. But lobstermen disagree with the actions, arguing that Canadian fishermen and ships are the ones killing the whales —not them.

Read the full story at Seafood News

Fleet monitoring: New England groundfish fleet cooperates with little return

March 10, 2020 — Despite years of ever-increasing monitoring, cooperation from the fleet, and catch-shares-induced consolidation, the New England groundfish industry is still on shaky ground.

A Maine Fishermen’s Forum presentation by Melissa Errand of the New England Fishery Management Council illustrated the council-considered options for monitoring the groundfish fleet (Amendment 23). This presentation focused on the effects on the Maine-based fleet, which is Portland-based.

With projected costs of each alternative ranging from about $1 million to more than $5 million across the fleet, the council expects the changes to force groundfish boats with the fewest at-sea days to lease out their quota rather than go fishing.

The council’s preferred alternative is a blended model that allows boat owners to choose between traditional at-sea monitoring and electronic monitoring.

One Portland-based boat is using the experimental full-retention model that incorporates a combination of full-time cameras on the boat, landing all fish that would qualify as discards, and dockside monitoring and sampling of those retained discards.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Maine caught fewer lobsters in ’19, but haul still strong

March 9, 2020 — Maine’s lobster catch dipped in volume in 2019, but remained above historic levels as the industry dealt with numerous challenges and a slow start to the season.

Fishermen from the state caught 100.7 million pounds of lobster last year, the Maine Department of Marine Resources announced Friday at the annual Maine Fishermen’s Forum in Rockport. The catch was worth more than $485 million, the fourth highest in history.

The previous year’s catch was slightly more than 121 million pounds. The catch has been more than 100 million pounds every year since 2011 after having never topped that number previously, though the 2019 total was the lowest since 2010. The fishery is still soaring above where it was in the 2000s, when it typically trapped 50 to 80 million pounds of lobsters, said Kristan Porter, a lobsterman and president of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association.

“When we were getting to 90 to 100 million pounds, we were celebrating. Now if we’re in that range, people are going to think it’s bad,” Porter said. “But it’s still really high for the average of the fishery.”

Read the full story at the Associated Press

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