August 19, 2020 — Last year, Maine’s lobster fishery brought in almost $500 million to the state, and even more when you count the economic benefits to dealers, processors and restaurants. Now, with the pandemic hindering the market for lobsters locally and around the world, this signature industry has been impacted severely. We will talk about how the industry is facing challenges, and what efforts are underway to find new ways to market lobsters and connect with consumers.
For New England lobstermen, resilience in ‘a season of uncertainty’
August 13, 2020 — “Gimmie a Hulla” motors across the glassy harbor, backed by the silhouettes of trees and the rocky shoreline. Yvonne “Beba” Rosen is heading out to haul her lobster traps at 5:30 a.m., as she does five days a week, April through November.
This is a tough season so far for Ms. Rosen, but over her 15 years of lobstering off Vinalhaven, Maine, she’s always been a better fall fisherman, she says. This season is like no other – the lobsters are slow to appear, but more than that, the coronavirus has caused trade to plummet and tourists to stay home.
Ms. Rosen squints into the sun, now sitting just above the horizon, and half shouts over the guttural diesel engine. “Tourists come to Maine to eat lobster. That’s what they do,” she says grimly, hands on the wheel.
Without the regular influx of tourists, and with restaurants across the country closed entirely or open with limitations, lobstermen in Maine and Cape Cod have gotten creative to keep operating their boats, exercising the resilience for which the industry is known.
A slow spring is not unusual, although this one was difficult because “markets were really feeling the brunt of the supply chain,” says Patrice McCarron, executive director of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association.
Lobster prices falling in New England, and they might fall further
June 29, 2020 — Lobster prices are falling in New England as the industry deals with the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, and they could drop even more later this summer, industry officials said.
The American lobster fishing industry, based mostly in Maine, has had to cope with a supply chain that has been disrupted by the pandemic. Wholesale prices were lower than previous years this spring, and consumers started to see lower prices at markets earlier in June.
Members of the industry said prices could likely fall more in July. America’s lobster catch typically picks up in the summer, when lobsters shed their shells and reach legal trapping size. This year, fishers will likely bring lobsters to the docks in a time when restaurants are slowed or shuttered and seafood processors aren’t taking nearly as many of the crustaceans, industry members said.
That could translate to lower prices to consumers, who are already paying less than $6 per pound for lobsters in some Maine markets. Prices around $8 or $9 per pound are typical of this month in Maine.
“The state needs to do something to curb supply, because there is no demand,” said David Cousens, a lobster fisher and former president of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association. “Otherwise we’re going to have a disaster.”
Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Sun Journal
Maine’s governor objects to petition requesting vertical-line prohibition
June 26, 2020 — The U.S. state of Maine’s governor, Janet Mills, has written a letter to U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross objecting to a recent petition that aims to prohibit the use of vertical lines in the American lobster and Jonah crab fisheries in four areas off the New England coast.
The petition was submitted by The Pew Charitable Trusts earlier this month, with the intention of protecting the highly endangered North Atlantic right whale. Right whales are one of the most endangered mammal species in the world, and entanglement with vertical lines have led to new regulation that the Maine Lobstermen’s Association has objected to.
State of Maine: Presidential order lacks public process
June 15, 2020 — President Donald Trump came to Maine last Friday to visit Puritan Medical Products, the Guilford manufacturer producing swabs for COVID-19 tests. The century-old company has a right to be proud.
They took a traditional Maine resource—wood—and turned it into highly successful products that, like Maine itself, are more practical than glamorous. The humble toothpick, with a touch of mint flavoring added? Genius. And the tongue depressor, familiar to every child when it was time to say “aaah.”
Puritan added “tipped applicators” to their production line in 1978. They now make 65 different types of swabs, over 12 million per day. They are an accredited medical device manufacturer, perfectly positioned to respond to a critical need in a pandemic.
Presidential visits are planned in excruciating detail. This one was announced on the Monday prior and on Wednesday, just two days before it took place, the Guilford Town Manager said the town office had not been officially contacted about the visit. Nevertheless, it went off without a hitch.
If the visit to Puritan was a standard “grip and grin,” albeit without the gripping, the meeting preceding it was anything but. Air Force One landed at the Bangor airport where the president met with Maine fisheries representatives. Typically, the governor hosts a presidential entourage. This time it was the former governor, Paul LePage, who did the honors. Current Governor Janet Mills was not invited.
Lobstering group wants to raise $500,000 for legal defense fund
May 7, 2020 — The Maine Lobstermen’s Association has launched a campaign to raise $500,000 to fund its legal efforts to protect the state’s most valuable fishery from the consequences of a recent federal court ruling that calls for more government protections for the endangered right whale.
Last month, a federal judge found the National Marine Fisheries Service had violated the U.S. Endangered Species Act by its authorization of the U.S. lobster industry – including Maine’s $485 million-a-year fishery – because it failed to report the fishery’s harmful impacts on the endangered right whale.
“This case could lead to closure of the world’s most sustainable fishery,” said executive director Patrice McCarron, whose association is the oldest and biggest lobstering group in Maine. “We cannot let that happen. Right whales are not dying in Maine lobster gear.”
Maine Lobstermen’s Association Asks For Public Donations To Help ‘Save’ The Industry
May 7, 2020 — The Maine Lobstermen’s Association is calling for a half-million dollars in public donations to help it “save” the state’s lobster industry from potential extinction.
The MLA says the money would go to its legal defense of the fishery in a federal court case brought by conservationists who want better protections of the endangered North Atlantic right whale.
The whales can be injured or killed by entanglement with rope used to tend trap-pot gear, such as lobster traps. But the MLA’s Executive Director Patrice McCarron says there is no proof that the whales are actually interacting with traps set by the Maine fleet.
Lobstermen launch campaign to save Maine industry; new threats on the horizon
May 6, 2020 — The Maine Lobstermen’s Association is fighting a federal ruling that threatens the demise of the fleet, according to Patrice McCarron, executive director of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association.
In early April, Judge James Boasberg of the Federal District Court for Washington, D.C., ruled that NMFS violated the ESA in permitting the lobster fishery. The judge’s opinion states that “Congress enacted the ESA in 1973 to halt and reverse the trend toward species extinction, whatever the cost.”
“The MLA has launched a campaign to raise $500,000 to save Maine’s lobster industry,” McCarron said. The MLA is an intervenor in the court case and is the only organization in Maine that has been granted standing to participate in the case.
Whale entanglement data collected by NMFS show that no right whale deaths or serious injuries have ever been documented in Maine lobster gear. This is in stark contrast to the death of 10 right whales in Canada last year.
Right whales: Lawsuit on protections could last for months
April 27, 2020 — A judge’s ruling that the federal government didn’t take adequate steps to protect endangered whales will probably result in another monthslong court battle, parties to the lawsuit said.
Environmental groups sued the U.S. government with a claim that regulators’ failure to protect the North Atlantic right whale from harm was a violation of the Endangered Species Act, and U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ruled April 9 that they were right. The right whales number only about 400 and are in the midst of a worrisome decline in population.
The government, environmentalists and industry members who are involved in the lawsuit must still return to court to determine a remedy. Boasberg ruled that the risk posed to the whales by the lobster fishery was too great to be sustainable, and that a remedy could ultimately result in new restrictions on lobster fishing.
The whales are vulnerable to lethal entanglement in lobster fishing gear.
Maine fishermen seek relief, new markets to navigate ‘economic disaster’
April 24, 2020 — With many restaurants shuttered, and typical export pipelines closed, demand for lobster and other Maine seafood is way down, leaving Maine’s $674 million-a-year commercial fishing industry scrambling to find new markets and short-term economic relief to survive the pandemic.
“It appears that we have a long road ahead,” Patrice McCarron, the director of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association, said in the group’s latest newsletter. “While the timeline for the coronavirus and its corresponding economic disaster are unknown, we must prepare for long-term impacts.”
The pandemic has forced the closure of almost one out of three restaurants, according to the latest reports. The restaurant industry, along with food service, consumes about 80 percent of U.S. seafood. It’s worse for lobster, a luxury item, which counts casinos and cruise ships among its biggest customers.
This comes on the heels of the $485 million-a-year Maine lobster industry’s struggle to replace the market it lost in the trade war with China, which had accounted for 1 out of every 3 pounds of lobsters exported overseas, and Canada’s sweet trade deal with the European Union.
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