Saving Seafood

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

‘It’s All Going To Suck’ – Lobstermen Criticize Pending Federal Regulations At Maine Fishermen’s Forum

March 9, 2020 — The annual Maine Fishermen’s Forum is underway in Rockport, where the intertwined fates of lobstermen and endangered North Atlantic right whales are a hot topic.

The executive director of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association, Patrice McCarron, had a blunt message for members at its annual meeting, held during the forum Friday at the Samoset Inn: “It’s all going to suck.”

McCarron has spent more than a year trying to fend off threats of pending federal action to protect endangered North Atlantic right whales from entanglement with the lobster fleet’s trap and buoy ropes. She told hundreds of fishermen that the MLA continues to oppose the gear restrictions being floated by state and federal regulators. And she pushed back against calls by some to walk away from the process altogether.

Read the full story at Maine Public

Though Maine’s lobster harvest was smallest in 9 years, value remained steady

March 9, 2020 — Despite a cold, late spring that took a toll on the state lobster catch in 2019, driving landings down 17 percent, record-high prices kept the catch’s overall value steady from the previous year.

Maine fishermen hauled 100.7 million pounds of lobster in 2019, according to figures released Friday by the state Department of Marine Resources at the Maine Fishermen’s Forum. That was the smallest catch since 2010, but it was the ninth year in a row that Maine broke the 100-million-pound mark.

Despite the slow start, Maine fishermen eked out a good year. A 20 percent increase in the per-pound boat price of lobster meant the overall value of Maine’s haul remained pretty stable, coming in at $485.4 million, despite the double-digit decrease in 2019 total landings.

Kristan Porter’s end-of-the-year bottom line looked about the same as it did in 2018. The lobsterman from Cutler, who is president of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association, hauled less lobster, but he sold that smaller catch for a higher price, embodying the association’s motto, “Fish smarter, not harder.”

“We don’t fish for pounds, we fish for dollars,” Porter said. “Yeah, we got started late, and that was scary, but most guys finished strong. Overall, landings were down, but we’re still leaps and bounds ahead of our historical average. So I don’t think there is cause for alarm, at least not yet.”

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Winds of change: Maine Fishermen’s Forum highlights offshore wind power

March 6, 2020 — Today kicks off the 45th annual Maine Fishermen’s Forum at the Samoset Resort in Rockport, Maine. This year’s conference program includes all the usual updates on marketing Maine lobster, racing lobster boats, management of a range of New England fisheries — groundfish, herring, eels, scallops — data collection and safety.

New this year is a full day of seminars on offshore wind (taking place all day today, March 5) that will be packed with information fishermen and other working waterfront stakeholders can use: What projects are underway, how they are permitted and what NOAA’s role is and will be. Stay tuned for an update here.

The Responsible Offshore Development Alliance, led by Annie Hawkins, has a board of directors that represents fishing communities up and down the East Coast. The group also recently launched a West Coast coalition that will serve as advocates and watchdogs on the left coast.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

How eating sea bass and crab can help Maine lobstermen

April 8, 2019 — A group of Rhode Island fishermen who witnessed southern New England’s near-shore lobster fishery evaporate and its offshore fishery diminish dramatically in their time on the water came to last month’s Maine Fishermen’s Forum in Rockland to give lobstermen here a bit of seasoned advice: Embrace ecosystem change while you’re in a good position to do so.

These southerly neighbors acknowledge the Maine lobster fishery is currently rockin’. Preliminary numbers released by the Maine Department of Marine Resources set the value of last year’s 119 million-pound lobster haul at $484.5 million, up from $438 million generated by 112 million pounds of lobster harvested in 2017. Both years are down, though, from the all-time high lobster landings of 132 million pounds (worth $541 million) set in 2016.

The two-species Rhode Island fishermen told their Maine counterparts they should be targeting are Jonah crab and black sea bass. The former have long lived in offshore waters in the Gulf of Maine and the latter, a tasty fish historically found in the mid-Atlantic region, are showing up farther north because of warming waters.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Lobster landings post turnaround, Maine’s fisheries’ overall value second highest on record

March 5, 2019 — Maine’s lobster harvesters had a strong year in 2018, landing 119.64 million pounds.

That was an increase of nearly 8 million pounds over 2017’s figure of 111.9 million pounds, according to a Department of Marine Resources news release.

The landings peak was in 2016, when 132.6 million pounds were harvested, after four years in the range of 122 million to 127 million pounds, according to the agency’s data.

Last year was the seventh time in history that landings exceeding 110 million pounds.

At $484.544 million, the value of Maine’s lobster fishery climbed by more than $46 million over 2017 on the strength of a boat price that increased from $3.92 per-pound in 2017 to $4.05 in 2018.

U.S. Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, during a visit to Maine Fishermen’s Forum in Rockport over the weekend, took the occasion to commend the work of the men and women in Maine’s fishing industry, “whose hard work drives the economy and helps support families and communities up and down the coast.”

But he also highlighted in a news release the threat to Maine’s lobster fishery posed by climate change and the increasingly warmer temperatures in the Gulf of Maine that are causing lobsters to migrate northward to cooler waters.

Read the full story at MaineBiz

Maine Lobstermen Share Anxieties Over New Regulations In The Industry At Annual Forum

March 4, 2019 — At Maine’s annual Fishermen’s Forum in Rockport Friday, a historic $600 million harvest season coincided with a slight increase in lobster landings and lingering concerns over potential changes to gear rules around protecting endangered right whales. But looming over the forum are major cutbacks in the quota of crucial herring bait fish — which could ripple across the industry.

Patrice McCarron is executive director of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association (MLA). She is worried about the severity of herring restrictions imposed by the federal government after the species failed to reproduce in sustainable numbers last year.

“It’s about as bad as we can imagine, but we don’t yet know what it’s going to translate to for the fishermen,” McCaroon says.

McCarron says that Maine fishermen face a shortage of some 50-million pounds of bait in the coming season.

Fisherman are used to catching the traditional lobster baitfish in Maine’s coastal herring fishery all summer and into the fall, but McCarron says that will change under the new quotas.

Read the full story at Maine Public

Time tension line-cutter could offer lobstermen a whale entanglement solution

March 4, 2019 — A Maine lobsterman and machinist believes he could have the solution to North Atlantic right whale entanglement issues in the state’s lobster fishery.

Ben Brickett of Blue Water Concepts presented – or more accurately re-presented – his idea for a “Time Tension Line-Cutter” at the Maine Fishermen’s Forum on 1 March. The technology, which he invented over a decade ago, provides a solution for whale entanglements that doesn’t compromise rope strength or require any electronics.

“I got started in this in 2003. A good friend of mine who works on an offshore lobster boat came by and was very concerned with having to put weaker lines on his gear,” Brickett said. The friend in question was fishing in deep water, with hauling tensions that can approach 10,000 pounds on large lobster trawls. “They wanted to know if we could put in some kind of timed weak link.”

Currently, the lobster industry in the Northeast U.S. is facing pressure after a number of entanglement-related deaths of North Atlantic right whales – an endangered species with just over 400 individuals left – occurred in 2018. Both NOAA fisheries and the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Council have been investigating methods to prevent potential entanglements by the lobster industry.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Maine’s lobster catch, value grew last year, officials say

March 1, 2019 — Maine lobstermen brought more than 119 million pounds (54 million kilograms) of the state’s signature seafood ashore last year, an increase that helped to propel the total value of Maine’s seafood to the second-highest value on record, state officials said Friday.

The value of the 2018 lobster catch was more than $484.5 million, and the total value for all Maine seafood was more than $637.1 million, according to the Maine Department of Marine Resources.

The state is by far the biggest lobster producer in the United States, and the industry is in the midst of a multiyear boom. However, the catch and its value have fluctuated wildly in recent years.

According to updated department numbers, the 2017 lobster haul was a little less than 112 million pounds (51 million kilograms) and was valued at more than $438 million. That was a drop from the previous year.

Preliminary data from 2018 show that trend reversed, for the year at least. The productive year by lobstermen coincided with high demand from consumers and strong retail prices.

“The demand for lobsters will always stay strong,” Kristan Porter, president of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association, said Friday to a packed audience at the Maine Fishermen’s Forum, a trade show taking place in Rockport this week.

Read the full story at the Associated Press

2019 Maine Fishermen’s Forum: Together We Achieve More

February 28, 2019 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

The Maine Fishermen’s Forum is an annual gathering of commercial fishermen, gear suppliers, scientists, government representatives, and other stakeholders to talk about Maine’s commercial fishing industry, markets, technology, safety, and more. Scientists from our Science Center and staff from the Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office participate in the Forum to collaborate and share information about Maine’s marine resources and how things like fishing regulations, climate change, and other related factors might impact the day-to-day and long-term operations of the fishing industry. By attending the Forum and participating in its seminars and panel discussions, we continue to build and strengthen our relationships with Maine’s commercial fishing industry and its regional stakeholders.

Here’s where to find our staff in action during the Forum, which is held at the Samoset Resort in Rockport, Maine. We’re speaking at the events listed here. We’re also at the Trade Show, where both the Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office and the Center’s Northeast Fisheries Observer Program have booths and are ready to talk.

Read the full release here