Saving Seafood

Maine: Big changes in store for herring fishery

December 20, 2017 — ELLSWORTH, Maine — For such a small fish, herring play a critical role in the ecosystem of the Gulf of Maine. Only a few inches long, the plankton-eating fish are an important prey species, providing food for top marine predators, and are an important source of bait for Maine’s $547 million lobster industry.

In the Gulf of Maine, besides feeding whales, seals, harbor porpoises and dolphins, herring, particularly juvenile herring, provide a principal source of food for sea birds such as Atlantic puffins, razorbills, common terns and Arctic terns. Much of their catch is fed to young birds still in the nest.

In the water itself, top predators such as bluefin tuna, bluefish and striped bass, as well as cod, hake, pollock, dogfish and many species of shark, feed on herring.

Man is another top predator that relies on herring. In 2016, fishermen landed more than 77 million pounds of herring in Maine, most of it to be used as lobster bait, and most of it caught by trawlers fishing far offshore. That number is down from 103.5 million pounds just three years ago.

Not surprisingly, the price of lobster bait has climbed significantly. According to the Department of Marine Resources, the price of herring increased 57 percent between 2014 and 2016, and lobstermen saw the price of herring increase by a third or more, according to Maine Lobstermen’s Association President David Cousens.

Read the full story at the Mount Desert Islander

 

First half of Maine’s lobstering season ‘painfully slow’ for fishermen

Dock prices are also down amid reports of light catches, leaving the industry worried but hoping for a rebound in the next few months.

October 4, 2017 — A cold spring, high bait prices and a stormy summer are adding up to a slow lobstering season in Maine.

Every fisherman and every lobstering port along Maine’s 3,500-mile coastline is different. But as of Oct. 1, the midpoint in the industry’s peak season, most Maine lobstermen and the dealers who buy from them agree the catch is down. They disagree on whether the industry will be able to land enough lobster to recover and keep up with the last few years of record harvests.

Brooklin lobsterman David Tarr, who serves on the state Lobster Advisory Council, predicts his catch will be down about 20 percent this season unless he can pull off a “great finish.” The light catch, coupled with a boat price that was 10 percent off for most of the summer, adds up to a substantial loss, he said. But the 48-year-old fisherman isn’t exactly surprised.

“We have been over the average for many years, so I’m not really shocked by it,” Tarr said. “It makes it harder, for sure.”

SLOWDOWN AFTER SERIES OF RECORD YEARS

Maine has enjoyed a run of record-setting lobster harvests over the past few years. According to data from 2016, the most recent figures available, Maine fishermen landed more than 130 million pounds of lobster valued at $533.1 million, breaking records for annual catch and industry value. Lobster is the most valuable, and through last year at least, the fastest-growing of all the state’s commercial fisheries.

Lobstermen will remain busy through November, depending on which region they fish, so it’s too early to tell whether the perceived decline will be reflected in the official 2017 harvest numbers that the state releases in February.

Even so, the Maine Lobstermen’s Association called it a “painfully slow start” and said the slow pace of landings and the prices that were well below last year’s had left lobstermen feeling angry, disappointed and worried.

“Fortunately, we still have a lot of good fishing months left this year,” association director Patrice McCarron wrote in her September report.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Lobstering ban near coral gardens could cost industry almost $9 million a year, fishermen say

May 26, 2017 — The financial toll of a lobster fishing ban near deep-sea coral gardens in the Gulf of Maine could top $8 million a year, almost double what was originally projected by the regional regulatory group that is considering the ban, a Maine fishing representative said Thursday.

The 50 Maine lobster boats that fish Outer Schoodic Ridge and Mount Desert Rock – the areas where fragile coral colonies have been found – drop more traps there for more months of the year than originally estimated, said Pat Keliher, Maine’s top fisheries official.

The New England Fisheries Management Council originally had estimated that Maine fishermen likely landed about $4.2 million worth of lobster from the 49 square miles under consideration for coral protection. Dave Cousens, head of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association, estimates the total is closer to $9 million.

“Lobster fishing is the economic backbone of Down East coastal Maine,” Keliher said. “Each of these proposed coral protection areas represents an important fishing ground for over 50 vessels from approximately 15 communities.”

About 75 lobstermen attended a meeting in Ellsworth on Thursday, the only Maine public hearing on the council’s proposed coral protections. Only a handful spoke out, but all raised their hands when a council member asked how many supported lobster fishing in the areas.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

MAINE: Fishing surveillance bill amended

May 10, 2017 — A bill that would authorize the Department of Marine Resources to conduct surreptitious electronic surveillance of lobster boats drew mixed reviews at a hearing by the Legislature’s Marine Resources Committee in April.

But at a work session last Wednesday, the committee voted to recommend passage of an amended version of the bill.

Introduced by Rep. Walter Kumiega (D-Deer Isle) at the request of the Department of Marine Resources, LD 1379 — as initially formulated — would have given the DMR commissioner authority to approve installation of electronic tracking devices on lobster boats without first getting a warrant from a judge. The approval would have been based on an affidavit from the chief of the Marine Patrol that he had “probable cause” to believe that a civil violation of the laws regulating the placement or hauling of lobster gear had occurred.

At its work session last week, the committee scrapped the idea of authorizing the commissioner to approve installation of tracking devices and took a new approach.

According to committee Co-chairman Kumiega, the committee opted to make four kinds of conduct “associated with fishing over the limit” of traps allowed Class D misdemeanors.

As of now, these violations are civil offenses.

The reason for the change, Kumiega said, is that Marine Patrol officers could not obtain sealed warrants from a judge when the offenses were handled as civil violations.

As criminal offenses, that all would change. Marine Patrol officers would be able to obtain warrants without giving notice to the subject of an investigation.

Read the full story at the Ellsworth American

Harsher penalties for lobstermen who cheat get legislative support

May 4, 2017 — A legislative committee voted unanimously Wednesday to toughen penalties on lobstermen who fish too many traps or use “sunken trawls,” as part of an industry-supported effort to crack down on lawbreakers.

“I do think this is going to get people’s attention and will hopefully make people realize that it doesn’t pay to cheat,” said Patrice McCarron, executive director of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association.

Lawmakers are considering a suite of requests from the Maine Department of Marine Resources for more enforcement tools and tougher sanctions against violators in an industry worth more than $500 million last year.

A bill unanimously endorsed by the Marine Resources Committee, L.D. 575, would allow DMR’s commissioner to order longer license suspensions for lobstermen who violate the laws on the first offense and, in several cases, permanently revoke the licenses of repeat offenders.

For instance, violators caught fishing more than the legal limit of 800 traps or fishing “sunken trawls” without marker buoys would face a minimum three-year suspension – up from the current one year – and could lose their licenses for up to 10 years. Removing or “scrubbing” the eggs from female lobsters would result in a minimum four-year license suspension, and “molesting” other fishermen’s traps could result in a suspension from two to six years. The current maximum for molesting gear is three years.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

JERRY FRASER: Big lobster is watching

April 28, 2017 — It’s been a while since Red Bridges paid me $1 a day to bait lobster traps. Nine years old and not especially tall, I couldn’t reach deep in the bait barrel, so Red would pitchfork the redfish into a bushel basket for me. Between his having to do that and my eating half his lunch — unless he brought cold bean sandwiches — I was probably getting 99 cents more than I was worth.

Another benefit was cussing. Red was by no means vile in his use of language but he could cuss with the best of them and if, for example, our gear wound up with another fisherman’s, he would let loose with a stream I would later reprise for my friends. Of course, on the rare occasions his wife came along for the day, sitting in her lawn chair on the back deck, you’d have thought we were a couple of altar boys.

This was the 1960s. Lobstermen at Perkins Cove in Ogunquit, Maine, fished a couple hundred wooden traps, if that, from wooden boats. They built their own traps and knitted their own heads. Bait was $5 a barrel and the bait man delivered twice a week. Electronics typically consisted of a flasher, and not everyone had a radio.

Some things haven’t changed. Lobstering has always had pirates who harvest shorts and v-tails or regard buoy color as a notion whose significance varies with the visibility. In years past the state of Maine was seldom called in to adjudicate disputes. Fishermen sorted things out on their own in accordance with local tradition. In some cases, a word to the wise was enough, particularly if delivered by someone who might have been described as an “elder statesman.” Sometimes more assertive remedies were necessary. Occasionally, a dispute could result in an all-out trap war.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Proposed closure of coral grounds in Gulf of Maine has lobster industry on edge

April 10, 2017 — Over the past 10 years, the issue of how to protect endangered whales from getting tangled in fishing gear has been a driving factor in how lobstermen configure their gear and how much money they have to spend to comply with regulations.

Now federal officials have cited the need to protect deep-sea corals in a proposal to close some areas to fishing — a proposal that, according to lobstermen, could pose a serious threat to how they ply their trade.

“The [potential] financial impact is huge,” Jim Dow, a Bass Harbor lobsterman and board member with Maine Lobstermen’s Association, said Wednesday. “You’re talking a lot of the coast that is going to be affected by it.”

The discovery in 2014 of deep-sea corals in the gulf, near Mount Desert Rock and along the Outer Schoodic Ridges, has prompted the New England Fisheries Management Council to consider making those area off-limits to fishing vessels in order to protect the coral from damage. According to Maine Department of Marine Resources, fishermen from at least 15 harbors in Hancock and Washington counties could be affected by the proposed closure.

 But what has fishermen on edge the most about the concept is that regulators don’t know how much more coral has yet to be discovered in the gulf. They fear the proposed closure could set a precedent that would result in even more areas becoming off-limits to Maine’s $500 million lobster fishery, which is the biggest fishery in Maine and one of the most lucrative in the country.

“They could probably find coral along the entire coast of Maine, outside of 3 miles [in federal waters], if they start hunting for it,” David Cousens, a South Thomaston fishermen and president of Maine Lobstermen’s Association, told more than 100 fishermen last month at a meeting on the topic at the annual Maine Fishermen’s Forum in Rockport.

Terry Stockwell, a senior DMR official who represents Maine on the council and other fishing regulatory entities, said the state has been lobbying the council to consider making an exception for the lobster trap fishery at the proposed closure sites in the gulf but so far without success. Traps are lowered and then raised from the bottom and so should cause less damage to coral than other types of gear such as scallop dredges, which are dragged along the bottom, according to Stockwell and others who support making lobster traps exempt.

“Twice I’ve gone down in flames,” Stockwell said of his efforts to date to get the council to agree to an exemption for lobster trap gear.

Further offshore in the Gulf of Maine, beyond the reach of the small boats that make up Maine’s lobster fishing fleet, the council also is proposing coral-related fishing closures in parts of the Jordan and Georges basins.

Outside the Gulf of Maine, roughly 100 to 200 nautical miles southeast of Cape Cod, are 20 underwater canyons at the edge of the continental shelf, where coral closures also could be enacted. Five of those canyons, along with four seamounts off the continental shelf, are part of the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, which former President Obama created last September and which is being challenged in federal court by the Pacific Legal Foundation.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

Maine fishermen see warning signs in lobster surge

March 23, 2017 — After Maine’s lobster industry set sales records for a second straight year, area fishermen are enjoying the boom while the water is warm.

Literally.

Rising sea temperatures are benefiting Maine’s iconic crustacean, leading to an increase in population while other marine species, such as soft-shell crabs, have suffered a decline, according to fishermen who spoke at a March 16 Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association panel.

But the factors for today’s success may portend tomorrow’s economic and cultural disaster, according to some area fishermen.

“We’re going to start going down when it gets warmer,” Maine Lobstermen’s Association President Dave Cousens told the audience at the Frontier Cafe.

Cousens was joined by MCFA President Gerry Cushing, of Port Clyde; Chebeague Island fisherman Alex Todd, and lobsterman Steve Train of Long Island.

Between July and October 2016, Cousens said, the ocean temperature was 60 degrees where he fishes in South Thomaston – a rise of three degrees since he began hauling traps three decades ago.

If temperatures rise three more degrees, he said, “lobster larvae will not survive. That’s what we’re facing.”

Last year, Maine fishermen hauled a record $130 million pounds of lobster, and the industry saw its value rocket $30 million, according to the Department of Marine Resources.

But the panelists warned the boom will be temporary.

“You don’t have to look too far south to see what’s coming,” Cousens said, noting the sharp demise of lobster populations off Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and Long Island, New York.

“That line’s just moving north,” Scott Moody, owner of Moody’s Seafood in Cundy’s Harbor, agreed the next day over the phone.

Moody, a fourth-generation lobsterman, fished in Harpswell for 30 years before starting his wholesale business, which includes five retail locations along Maine’s coast.

He buys directly from lobstermen and shellfish harvesters, and sells their product mostly to a distributor in Boston.

“In shellfish, we’ve seen a big turn,” Moody said last week. “I used to buy about $1 million in soft-shell (clams) in the Harpswell location,” at 337 Cundy’s Harbor Road.

“Since the climate change, I’m doing ($750,000) in hard-shell and only $250,000 in soft-shell,” he said.

Years ago, waiting to unload at his Boston distributor, “I’d be sitting behind five or six trucks of soft-shell clams,” he recalled. “They started to disappear. Then I’ve see guys bringing in hard-shell.”

He explained how warming waters increased the number of predators, such as Japanese green crabs, that can smash a clam’s soft shell.

Read the full story at The Forecaster

Trump’s proposed cuts to NOAA alarm Maine’s marine community

March 7, 2017 — A Trump administration proposal to slash funding for the federal government’s principal marine agency and eliminate the national Sea Grant program is prompting alarm in Maine’s marine sector because it depends on services provided by both.

President Trump wants to slash the budget of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – the agency responsible for fisheries management, weather forecasting, nautical surveys and assisting marine industries – by 17 percent, The Washington Post reported Friday. And he wants to eliminate NOAA’s Sea Grant program, the marine equivalent of the federal agricultural extension and research service, in the fiscal 2018 budget, which begins Oct. 1.

“There was a lot of concern when the news broke, and a flurry of messages went out to our congressional delegation from fishermen and aquaculturists who understand how they benefit from Sea Grant,” said Paul Anderson, director of Maine Sea Grant at the University of Maine in Orono, one of 33 Sea Grant universities in the country. “I don’t now if on October 1st we will all of a sudden not exist.”

The news has sent reverberations across Maine’s marine community, which has long benefited from the partnership between UMaine and the federal government. Sea Grant researchers created the Fishermen’s Forum – the industry’s premier event – in 1976, and also helped found the Portland Fish Exchange and the university’s Lobster Institute, which researches issues of concern to the industry.

Patrice McCarron, executive director of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association, said the cuts to NOAA would be terrible for fishermen. “The industry relies pretty heavily on their forecast reports on the wind and the wave heights and make decisions day to day if they are going to go out, so those satellites are really important,” she said. “And nobody loves (the National Marine Fisheries Service), but keeping them fully funded and their research going is essential to manage our fisheries.”

She noted that recent cuts to the agency’s right-whale monitoring program had hurt fishermen because if scientists didn’t have time to find the whales, they had to assume they weren’t there, increasing the regulatory burden on lobstermen, whose gear the whales sometimes get entangled in.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Marine Patrol Officer Brandon Bezio Receives 2017 MLA Officer of the Year Award

March 6, 2017 — The following has been released by the Maine Department of Marine Resources: 

Marine Patrol Officer Brandon Bezio, who serves in the St. George-Warren Patrol, receives the 2017 Maine Lobstermen’s Association Maine Patrol Officer of the Year Award. The award, presented Saturday, March 4, 2017, at the Fishermen’s Forum in Rockport, is an annual recognition of Marine Patrol Officers who provide outstanding service in support of the Maine lobster industry. Pictured with MPO Bezio is Marine Patrol Colonel Jon Cornish (left), MLA Board President David Cousens (2nd from right), and MLA Executive Director Patrice McCarron (right). (Photo courtesy of Mark Haskell Photography)