Saving Seafood

MAINE: New England fish forum kicks off with shellfish day

February 28, 2019 — New England’s largest fishing industry trade show is getting started with a focus on the region’s shellfish business.

Thursday is the first day of the 2019 Maine Fishermen’s Forum. The event runs through Saturday. Organizers say Thursday is the event’s “Shellfish Focus Day.”

The day will include seminars about outreach and education in the shellfish industry, as well as about shellfish science and management of shellfish species. The shellfish business is a major piece of the fishing industry in New England, where fishermen harvest scallops, softshell clams, quahogs are other valuable species from the Atlantic Ocean and coastal areas.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The Washington Times

MAINE: Fishermen’s Forum opens Feb. 28

February 22, 2019 — No matter what the weather may be doing, the evidence that spring is just around the corner is incontrovertible.

Last week, pitchers and catchers reported to Major League Baseball training camps throughout Florida and Arizona. Next week, hundreds of fishermen, fisheries regulators, scientists and merchants selling everything marine from massive lobster boats and the gear needed to build and equip them to buoy sticks and health insurance will gather at the Samoset Resort for the 44th edition of the annual Maine Fishermen’s Forum.

The Forum opens on Thursday, Feb. 28, and runs through Sunday, with most of the activities crammed into the intervening Friday and Saturday. In addition to a huge maritime trade show and dozens of serious seminars, the Forum includes a variety of social activities and a silent auction and dinner that funds a significant scholarship program for children of fishing families pursuing postsecondary education.

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American

Low Numbers of Endangered Whales Sparks Debate About Whether Lobster Industry Threatens Species

March 9, 2018 — The population of the endangered North Atlantic right whale took a big hit last year with a record number found dead in Canadian waters from ship strikes and entanglements. With this year’s calving season ending and no new births observed, an ongoing debate over whether Maine’s lobster industry poses a mortal threat to the species is gaining new urgency.

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution scientist Mark Baumgartner says that to help the whales survive much longer, the ropes Maine lobstermen use to tend their traps have to be modified or even eliminated. And it’s not just for the whales’ sake.

“I feel the industry is in jeopardy,” Baumgartner says.

Baumgartner was at the Fishermen’s Forum in Rockland late last week to detail the whale’s plight. If the lobster industry doesn’t respond effectively, he says, the federal government will step in.

“As the population continues to decline and pressure is put on the government to do something about it, then they’re going to turn to closures, because that’s all they’ll have,” he says.

There were about 450 North Atlantic right whales estimated to be alive in 2016. There were only five calves born last year, and a record 17 deaths caused by entanglement or ship strikes.

Read the full story at Maine Public

 

Maine: Lobstermen pack meeting concerning right whales, possible gear changes

March 5, 2018 — Lobstermen from all over the state packed the Rockport Room at the Samoset Resort to overflowing Friday to hear about the potential for ropeless fishing and use of break-away lines to help save the endangered right whale.

The panel discussion March 2 at the annual Maine Fishermen’s Forum brought fishermen together with several experts including scientist Mark Baumgartner of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, Amy Knowlton of the New England Aquarium and Mike Asaro of NOAA Fisheries.

Right whales are endangered and on the brink of extinction. They are down to about 450 animals worldwide. In 2017 only five new whales were born to the species and 17 died. Scientists say the cause of their deaths is almost always human in origin, either ship strikes or entanglement in fishing gear.

“We have years, not decades to solve this problem,” Baumgartner said.

Knowlton said the increase in deaths of right whales is due in part to the fact that rope has become so much stronger over the years through technological improvements. She advocated using ropes with strength of no more than 1,700 pounds. One way to achieve this is to braid short lengths of weaker line, which she called “sleeves” because they are hollow, into the ropes, used at intervals of every 40 feet. A whale entangled in this gear could break out of it.

Read the full story at VillageSoup

 

Maine: Marketing lobsters, harvesting crabs on agenda at fish forum

March 5, 2018 — ROCKPORT, Maine — The social event of the year in the world of Maine fishing is coming to a close in Rockport.

Saturday is the final day of the Maine Fishermen’s Forum for 2018. The event began on Thursday at the Samoset Resort. It takes place every year and is a trade show for the commercial fishing industry that also includes numerous seminars, a banquet and other events.

Saturday’s events will touch on everything from how to effectively market Maine lobster to how to prioritize the goals of the New England herring fishery.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Seattle Times

 

Maine: Harvesters ready to talk lobsters at Fishermen’s Forum

February 26, 2018 — ROCKPORT, Maine — The largest fishermen’s convention in New England is scheduled to take place this week in Rockport, Maine.

The Maine Fishermen’s Forum is scheduled for March 1 to 3 at the Samoset Resort in Rockport. The event brings fishermen, lobstermen and clammers together with other members of the industry to discuss the biggest issues in commercial fishing.

The forum is also typically when Maine fishing regulators announce the state’s total lobster catch for the previous year. Lobstermen have set records in terms of volume of catch for several years in a row and are anticipating this year’s announcement.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the New Haven Register

 

Trapped by heroin: Lobster industry struggles with its deadly secret

April 3, 2017 — Maine lobstermen are plagued by opioid addiction, leading to deaths, ruined lives and even fishing violations to pay for the habit. Some in recovery also recognize the challenge: Getting help to an intensely independent breed that rarely asks for it.

Until last year, when he finally kicked a 20-year heroin habit, Tristen Nelson had always been too high to even notice the best things about being a lobsterman in Down East Maine, like the beauty of a Bucks Harbor sunrise or the freedom of fishing two dozen miles offshore.

He loves those things about his job now, but for two decades the 35-year-old Machias man only lobstered to make the quick cash he needed to buy heroin. He would spend all his money, up to $60,000 for six months of work, on drugs. And he would end every fishing season broke.

His captains didn’t care if he showed up high, as long as he came ready to work. He hauled traps like a madman at dawn, fueled by his morning fix. By noon, however, the drug would start to wear off. He would slow down and hope each trap hauled was the last.

“I was just one more junkie on a lobster boat, counting down the hours until I could get my cash, until I could score,” Nelson said. “All those years I didn’t even realize that I had the best job in the world. … What a waste.”

The Gulf of Maine is full of people battling addictions. Nelson has hauled traps beside them, shot up with them and attended their funerals. And now, as somebody who has kicked the habit, he is trying to help other fishermen find their way into recovery.

“There are guys like me in every port,” Nelson said. “Anyone says different, they’re blind.”

For years, industry leaders and regulators ignored the drug use. They didn’t want to risk tainting the iconic image of the Maine lobsterman, that rough-and-tumble ocean cowboy who braves the elements to hunt lobster, the backbone of the state’s $1.6 billion-a-year industry. And the lobstermen were intensely private, preferring to battle their demons on their own and rarely asking for help.

That is starting to change. As addiction surfaces in newspaper obituaries, public memorial services and fishermen’s forums, and is blamed as a motive for an increasing number of the state’s fishing crimes, industry leaders now admit that America’s deepening opioid epidemic is feeding on the labor force of the state’s most valuable fishery.

“Addiction is a disease and it is a problem within this industry,” Commissioner Pat Keliher of the Department of Marine Resources told the Maine Fishermen’s Forum last month. “I am certainly not making the statement that it is everybody in this industry, but it is a problem.”

There is no way to compare heroin use among Maine lobstermen with any other profession. The state doesn’t keep its drug use statistics that way, and it will not identify the 378 drug overdose victims in 2016, including 313 who died of heroin or other opioids. While some coastal towns, such as Machias, openly acknowledge drug use in the fleet and talk about what can be done, others, like Stonington, the state’s lobster capital, remain reluctant to do so.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

These are the 4 most pressing marine management issues in the Gulf of Maine

March 3, 2017 — For people prone to the lure of the ocean and who enjoy communing with other marine-minded people, there aren’t many gatherings anywhere as engaging as the annual Maine Fishermen’s Forum in Rockport.

The forum, held each year at the Samoset Resort, offers a wide variety of topical sessions for the hundreds of people who attend — fishermen and their families, mostly, but also state and federal regulators, politicians, advocates, industry representatives and a few journalists. The 3-day event officially got underway yesterday but, as is the case every year, the meatier sessions and events are scheduled to take place on Friday (today) and Saturday (tomorrow).

This year, there are four topics that stand out in terms of the impact they are having (or soon could have) on Mainers who make their living from the sea, or in what they reveal about the health and vitality of the Gulf of Maine. They are:

1) The state’s efforts to enforce lobster fishing laws. Maine’s $495 million lobster fishery has long had an undercurrent of territorial disputes, the intensity of which ebbs and flows over the span of years. This past year has seen a particularly steep escalation of a ‘trap war’ in the waters between the Blue Hill peninsula and Mount Desert Island, prompting Operation Game Thief to offer $15,000 to anyone who offers Marine Patrol information that helps with the investigation. Patrick Keliher, commissioner of Department of Marine Resources, will address the state’s efforts to step up enforcement when he speaks at 9 a.m. Friday at the Maine Lobstermen’s Association annual meeting.

2) The rebounding scallop fishery in the Gulf of Maine. The recovery over the past decade of the scallop fishery in the gulf’s state and federal waters runs counter to well-known stories about fisheries surging and then slowing to a trickle. Annual catches in state waters have roughly tripled since the mid-2000s, while in the past five years prices offered to fishermen have risen above $10 per pound and continue to climb. Increased competition that has sprung up in the federal Northern Gulf of Maine scallop management area, however, has prompted many Maine fishermen to raise concerns about ensuring the resource is fished sustainably, and to lobby for tighter catch restrictions on larger boats from out of state. Regulators and fishermen will hold a session on the topic at 1 p.m. Friday.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

MAINE: Fishermen’s Forum kicks off next week

February 24, 2017 — ROCKPORT, Maine — The 42nd annual Maine Fishermen’s Forum kicks off on Thursday, March 2, at the Samoset Resort in Rockport.

More than 30 free seminars over three days will touch on topics affecting the state’s fisheries.

Shellfish Focus Day takes place on day one, with seminars ranging in subject from biology, to policy and legislation, shellfish management and biotoxins.

Panelists include researchers and scientists such as Brian Beal of the Downeast Institute, representatives from the Maine Department of Marine Resources, state legislators and municipal Shellfish Advisory Council members including Mike Pinkham, shellfish warden of Gouldsboro.

Chad Coffin of the Maine Clammers Association will be on hand to discuss the state’s bivalve industry along with Gulf of Maine Inc.’s Tim Sheehan, who will present on business strategies for the shellfish industry.

Also on Thursday is the Northeast Coastal Communities Sector annual meeting following an hour-long open session for the public. The Maine Coast Community Sector also will hold its annual meeting on Thursday.

Read the full story at the Ellsworth American

Changing Ocean Topic Draws Record Crowd

March 30, 2016 — ROCKPORT, Maine — More than 350 fishermen and others attended a Maine Fishermen’s Forum session, March 3, that focused on the changes fishermen are seeing in the water.

The three-hour event featured a panel of nine speakers and a standing-room-only audience, one of the largest in the 41-year history of the forum. Topics ranged from water temperatures to migrating species. Participants ranged from fishermen with 50 years on the water to marine scientists with the latest data on a changed ocean in the Gulf of Maine. Organizers titled the event “Changing Oceans” and encouraged discussion to revolve around how fishermen might deal with a changing reality.

Cutler lobsterman, and one of the organizers of the program, Kristen Porter said, “We wanted to focus attention on what we can do about working in a changed ocean, rather than debate the causes and who is at fault.” Scientists presented data to verify what fishermen have reported seeing.

Gulf of Maine Research Institute (GMRI) scientist Andy Pershing said, “Climate is what you expect. Weather is what you get.”

Pershing said there has been a lot of variability in the weather since 1980 and the Gulf of Maine has been the most variable water body on the planet. Water temperatures warmed in 2012 and took off. And the Gulf of Maine is experiencing changes in air, salinity, and Gulf Stream currents as well, according to NOAA ecosystem data.

Read the full story at Fishermen’s Voice