Saving Seafood

Study: Maine’s lobster population will drop but fishery ‘not doomed’

January 26, 2018 — The lobster population in the Gulf of Maine could decline by nearly two-thirds by 2050, according to a scientific study released this week.

As bad as that sounds, scientists and industry representatives say the demise of the most valuable single-species fishery in the country is unlikely.

“It doesn’t mean Maine’s lobster fishery is doomed,” said Andrew Pershing, chief scientific officer at Gulf of Maine Research Institute and a co-author of the study.

The predicted decline was included in the results of a study conducted by GMRI and other research groups about the effect of conservation measures on lobster fisheries in the Gulf of Maine and off the southern New England coast.

The lobster population could decline between 40 percent and 62 percent over the next 32 years, depending on how much waters continue to warm in the Gulf of Maine, researchers found. The total stock of lobster for the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank is in the neighborhood of 300 million lobsters, according to the most recent stock assessment by Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission.

The study found that lobster conservation measures in Maine aimed at protecting reproductive females and oversize adult lobsters in general, which date back to the early 20th century, have helped amplify the temporary benefit of warming seas to the lobster population in the gulf, which is warming more quickly than 99.9 percent of the world’s oceans.

In comparison, the lack of similar measures in southern New England hurt the lobster population south of Cape Cod now that waters there have become too warm to help support the growth of juvenile lobsters.

“Maintaining measures to preserve large reproductive females can mitigate negative impacts of warming on the Gulf of Maine lobster fishery in future decades,” researchers wrote in the study, which was published Jan. 22 in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

If the gulf’s lobster population does drop by 40 or even 60 percent over the next 32 years, the decline will be more gradual than the boom that preceded it. At that decrease, the gulf’s average lobster populations would be “similar to those in the early 2000s,” GMRI officials said.

From 1997 through 2008, Maine’s annual harvests fluctuated between 47 million and 75 million pounds. It is only within the past 10 years, since Maine lobstermen harvested 64 million pounds in 2007, that statewide landings have doubled.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

 

Maine: Bills to address commercial license glitches

January 3, 2018 — ELLSWORTH, Maine — The Legislature’s Joint Committee on Marine Resources will meet next Wednesday for hearings on three bills aimed at fine-tuning the state’s commercial fishing license system.

One bill, LD1652, would allow the Department of Marine Resources to set up a limited entry system for shrimp fishermen in any year when the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission sets the state’s northern shrimp landings allocation at less than 2,000 metric tons. Currently there is a moratorium on shrimp fishing in the Gulf of Maine.

The ASMFC allowed Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts to establish limited entry programs in their individual shrimp fisheries in 2011 but, so far, that hasn’t happened anywhere.

LD1652 “was a department (DMR) bill,” committee Co-chairman Rep. Walter Kumiega (D-Deer Isle) said last week, adding that Commissioner Patrick Keliher was “reluctant” to establish a limited entry program for the fishery because “once you close it, it’s hard to reopen.”

Despite that difficulty, Kumiega said, given the poor status of the shrimp stock, “we may not have a choice. We don’t know when the next season will be, but it doesn’t hurt to have one in place”

The two other bills are more technical.

LD 1720 would extend the maximum duration of a temporary medical allowance for lobster and crab fishing license holders from one year to two. The bill also establishes a temporary terminal illness medical allowance that would allow the spouse or child of the terminally ill holder of a lobster and crab fishing license to fish on behalf of their family member in limited circumstances.

According to Kumiega, use of the medical allowance provisions is required “more often than you’d think,” and he recounted a personal exposure to a situation in which one spouse was able to haul gear for her husband while he was injured.

Read the full story at the Ellsworth American

 

MAINE: Lobster marketing campaign draws criticism, converts

July 1, 2017 — San Francisco chefs Stuart Brioza and Nicole Krasinski were among the attendees at an after-hours Maine lobster tasting party in Portland, where new-shell lobster was the only item on the menu. They and other far-flung chefs spent a day on a lobster boat, mingled with lobstermen, talked to local chefs experienced with different ways to prepare it and ate buckets of it, be it on toast, in a chowder or on a bun.

“I’ve always liked lobster, but I fell in love with the story” of how it’s caught and by whom, Krasinski said. “We’ve had it before as a special, but it’s definitely going on our menu.”

That’s exactly the response the Maine Lobster Marketing Collaborative, a group organized four years ago to promote Maine lobster, wanted to hear. It validates the collaborative’s two-year campaign to familiarize chefs with new-shell lobsters – also called soft-shells or shedders because they have just molted – through a series of tasting parties and marketing events in foodie cities across the nation.

Building that kind of demand is good for Maine’s $533 million lobster fishery, said collaborative director Matt Jacobson, especially in the summer, when almost all of the 6,500 licensed lobstermen are fishing, and much of the coastline is rolling in product. The new-shell campaign focuses on building demand in nontraditional lobster markets when supply is at its highest.

But some Maine lobstermen, especially those who fish Down East, say the collaborative’s focus on selling new-shell lobster in the summer is not helping them. They don’t start catching a lot of new shells until fall, when restaurants that focus on seasonal fare trade in lobster for mussels or duck and the biggest buyers left are Canadian processors eager to finally have the new-shell lobster market to themselves.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

What’s on a real roll? Demand for the Maine lobster

November 25, 2016 — ELLSWORTH, Maine — The demand for lobster is on a roll — often literally. And that is helping to keep the price that Maine lobstermen are getting for their catch near historic highs.

The annual per-pound price first rose above $4 in 2004 and stayed there through 2007, then fell sharply during the recession. In 2015, annual price paid to Maine lobstermen reached $4.09 a pound, the first time it had topped the $4 mark since 2007.

This year, dockside prices for lobster have been close to or above the $4 level throughout the summer and fall, when most lobster is caught and prices usually dip to reflect the ample supply.

The demand for lobster has been buoyed, in part, by the number of casual restaurants that now include it on their menus and by the growing popularity of lobster rolls sold from roadside food trucks, according lobster industry officials.

“No question, more people are offering lobster up and down the [restaurant] hierarchy,” Matt Jacobson, head of the Maine Lobster Marketing Collaborative, said. “More awareness and more vendors is great, and drives demand.”

Among the eateries boosting demand for lobster rolls are the Luke’s Lobster chain of restaurants, franchised food trucks, such as Cousins Maine Lobster, and even McDonald’s, which has served lobster rolls at its New England locations the past two summers.

Jim Dow of Bar Harbor, vice president of Maine Lobstermen’s Association, said that, despite the mild weather last winter and warmer-than-usual water in the Gulf of Maine this past spring, there was not a repeat of the glut of new-shell lobster that in 2012 sent prices plummeting to their lowest point in decades.

“We did not get a big burst when the shedders first started” in early summer, Dow said. “They came in, but it was short-lived.”

Dow, who fishes out of Bass Harbor on Mount Desert Island, said that while fisherman in that area have been getting around $4 to $4.50 per pound this fall, the price of bait has been much higher than last year. This year he is paying $45 to $50 per bushel of herring, compared with $25 a year ago.

“Our bait price doubled,” Dow said, adding that fuel prices have stayed relatively low.

Patrice McCarron, executive director of Maine Lobstermen’s Association, said recently that the increase in bait costs could mean that many lobsterman earn less money this year even if their gross revenues rise.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

MICHAEL CONATHAN: Maine lobsters deserve their premium price

May 23, 2016 — The Maine Lobster Marketing Collaborative’s study that found restaurants charge over $6 more per plate for lobster from Maine (“Report: Diners shell out more when menu says the lobster’s from Maine,” May 4) is a ringing endorsement of the theory that diners value the sustainability and purity of our state’s signature product and the ethic of the men and women who provide it.

Yet in order for the industry to capitalize on its well-deserved premium price, it must ensure that imposter lobsters are not masquerading as Mainers.

Read the full opinion piece at the Portland Press Herald

Report: Diners shell out more when menu says the lobster’s from Maine

May 4, 2016 — Serving up Maine lobster is paying off big for restaurants that tout the state’s iconic offering on their menus.

Restaurants selling lobster are charging $6.22 more, on average, when it comes from Maine and its provenance is identified by name on the menu, according to a new report issued Tuesday by the Maine Lobster Marketing Collaborative. The Portland-based nonprofit, which was founded in 2013 and is funded by industry license surcharges, based its finding on a 2015 menu survey of about 7,000 American restaurants conducted by Technomic Inc., a food consulting and research firm based in Chicago, said Executive Director Matt Jacobson.

“There’s lobster, and then there’s Maine lobster,” Jacobson said. “People are willing to pay for that difference. Not just pennies more, but $6 more a plate, plus. Chefs are drawn to the taste, the story and sustainability of Maine lobster. When chefs like to cook it, customers are willing to pay for it. That’s good for everybody, including the lobstermen.”

The Technomic data contained in the collaborative’s first quarterly report proves what many in the industry have long suspected, but couldn’t prove because of a lack of consumer research, especially in the domestic market, Jacobson said. It will serve as another tool in the collaborative’s arsenal when it begins its summer-long campaign to convince chefs to add Maine lobster to their menus. Only a quarter of all restaurants identify the origin of their lobster dishes, he said, but most of those who do are selling Maine lobster.

Last summer, when the cooperative began its Maine lobster education campaign, the organization arranged a series of “collisions” between what Jacobson calls rock-star chefs, who tend to set the culinary tone in local foodie markets, and Maine lobstermen. Sometimes the collaborative brought chefs out on a Maine lobster boat, but usually, the collaborative brought one of Maine’s lobster harvesters into the kitchens of some of the best restaurants in the country for cooking demonstrations, recipe sharing and story telling.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald