Maine Sea Grant Archives - Saving Seafood

MAINE: Groups seek out gaps in seafood harvesting training programs

October 25, 2021 — Seafood harvesters face a sea of challenges ahead. Three organizations are working to figure out how training programs can help the next generation weather the storm.

Maine Sea Grant, the Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries and the Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association have all teamed up through a federal program to help prepare up-and-coming fishermen and aquaculturists.

In December, Congress passed the Young Fishermen’s Development Act to preserve the country’s fishing heritage through training and assistance for commercial fishermen. Funding has yet to be allocated for any work, but these groups are working to figure out opportunities and challenges ahead, so that when money is made available, they can hit the ground running.

“We’re going to be reaching out to tons of fishermen, people involved in the aquaculture industry and a lot of young folks,” said Natalie Springuel, a Bar Harbor-based marine extension associate with Maine Sea Grant.

Read the full story at the Ellsworth American

MCCF hosts online Lunch & Learn ‘Inheriting Change: A Panel Discussion Featuring Youth Perspectives on Climate Change and Maine Fisheries’

June 15, 2021 — Please join Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries on Friday, June 25 at 12:30 p.m. for, “Inheriting Change: A Panel Discussion Featuring Youth Perspectives on Climate Change and Maine Fisheries.” This month’s webinar will feature perspectives from four members of a generation that will inherit the consequences of climate change on our local fishing communities. Hallie is a COA student and member of “Maine Youth for Climate Justice,” who thinks “we need to have a just transition to a livable future for everyone, including fishermen.” Elijah is a 19-year old fisherman from Eastport who is already diversifying his work to integrate kelp and mussel aquaculture with his lobster fishing and boat building. Rylee, who just graduated from Deer Isle Stonington High School as Salutatorian, and Sophie, from George Stevens Academy, have seen the stresses of the reaction to climate change on fishermen and their families. This one-hour discussion will be moderated by Parker Gassett, Marine Extension associate with Maine Sea Grant. Participants will be invited to join the discussion during.

To register, please visit https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_MDwLe4L6Rse2p3CniY8Ntg.

Learn more about MCCF at http://www.coastalfisheries.org.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

$400K in federal funds may help open new markets for Maine aquaculture

February 9, 2021 — A research project looking at new and underserved markets for Maine’s aquaculture industry has been awarded $400,499 in federal funding from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Sea Grant program.

The award, announced Friday, will go to the Maine Sea Grant, according to a news release.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has had a tremendous negative impact on all seafood producers,” said Sebastian Belle, the association’s executive director. “The work that will be done in this project will be critical in helping our members adapt to and recover from the challenges they are facing.”

The award will support the research of potential new and underserved markets for Maine-grown aquaculture products, and will fund efforts to seek partnerships between aquaculture and wild capture supply chains.

“Maine’s aquaculture industry has undergone significant growth and diversification in recent years, creating new jobs and economic opportunities in our state,” U.S. Sens. Angus King, I-Maine, and Susan Collins, R-Maine, said in a joint statement.

Read the full story at MaineBiz

University of Maine Lobster Institute Hosting Series of Webinars

October 15, 2020 — Those looking to learn more about what’s going on in the lobster industry will want to check out a series of webinars being hosted by the University of Maine Lobster Institute.

Last week the Lobster Institute hosted their first online event, titled “Collaborative Chats: Successful Research Partnerships in the Lobster Industry.” The webinar, which was co-hosted by Amalia Harrington from Maine Sea Grant and Jessica Waller from the Maine Department of Marine Resources over Zoom, included an hour-long slideshow presentation followed by a Q&A.

Read the full story at Seafood News

UMaine Orono receives $1.6M grant for sustainable aquaculture

September 20, 2019 — The University of Maine at Orono received a $1.6 million grant to advance sustainable aquaculture in Maine.

According to a release from the university, Maine Sea Grant researchers at the University of Maine were granted the money from the NOAA National Sea Grant to lead four projects in collaboration with the aquaculture industry, management, and community partners.

“Thousands of Mainers rely on marine industries for their livelihoods, and aquaculture is a promising area for growth,” said U.S. Sens. Susan Collins and Angus King.

According to NOAA fisheries, the United States imports 85% of its seafood, which has resulted in a $14 billion trade deficit- leading to new opportunities in aquaculture to meet demands of seafood consumption.

Read the full story at News Center Maine

Maine to get nearly $600,000 under ocean research program that escaped Trump budget cuts

June 25, 2018 — Dana Morse, an aquaculture researcher at Maine Sea Grant, checks on ear-hung scallops tied to an anchor chain on a mussel raft on the Damariscotta River in September. The Maine Sea Grant College Program has received a grant of nearly $600,000.

The Maine Sea Grant College Program will receive $574,691 from the federal government under a funding stream that President Trump proposed eliminating this year.

U.S. Sens. Susan Collins and Angus King of Maine made the announcement Friday about the award from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that “will be used to advance sustainable use and environmental conservation efforts along Maine’s coast led by the University of Maine.”

“Thousands of Mainers in our state’s coastal communities rely on fishing, lobstering, and other ocean-related industries for their livelihoods,” the senators said in a statement. “The National Sea Grant program has helped these businesses thrive by funding critical research that helps us better understand, utilize, and protect one of our state’s natural resources, and we are heartened by its continued partnership with the University of Maine.”

In February, NOAA’s Sea Grant Program was among several federal programs targeted by Trump for cuts in his proposed budget. Broad bipartisan support saved the program, which received $65 million in this year’s final federal budget – $2 million more than its previous appropriation.

Read the full story from the Portland Press Herald at CentralMaine.com

Maine’s climate already changing, with more to come

June 2, 2017 — Though people tend to talk most about climate change during a heat wave or in the wake of a terrible storm, the reality is that it’s a slow, subtle shift that’s scarcely noticeable except over the long haul.

But scientists say that Maine is very much feeling its impact.

From a rise in the number of ticks to the decline in the number of northern shrimp offshore, the state is seeing the consequences of an increase in the average annual temperature by 3 degrees since 1895.

The frequency of extreme weather events, from ice storms to torrential rains, has been increasing and will likely to become even more common as the world heats up further, scientists warn.

The accompanying rise in ocean levels, caused by melting glaciers, means that salt marshes are in trouble, flood zones are growing and agricultural zones shifting.

And some say it will get worse if the country fails to take action on climate change.

“Maine is especially vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, where our environment and economy are so closely linked,” said Lisa Pohlmann, the Natural Resources Council of Maine’s executive director.

“Rising sea levels will flood our coastal towns, smog from upwind states will harm the lives of those with asthma, fast-warming waters in the Gulf of Maine will put commercial fisheries at risk, and warming weather threatens vital elements of our economy, like skiing, maple syrup production and ocean fisheries,” she said in a written statement.

A 2015 study by the Climate Change Institute and Maine Sea Grant at the University of Maine that updated an earlier state report on the issue lays out a troubling scenario for a state that depends heavily on tourism, recreation, logging, farming and fishing — all of which are likely to feel the pinch if scientific projections of what’s to come prove prescient.

Already, though, historical data shows warming trends.

For instance, information from the U.S. Climate Divisional Dataset cited by the University of Maine study shows the state’s warm weather season is two weeks longer now than it was a century ago. It’s 34 weeks now, records indicate, compared to 32 in the two decades leading up to World War I.

Read the full story at the Maine Sun Journal

Proposed Federal Budget Would Eliminate Sea Grant Program

May 12, 2017 — In late March, President Trump proposed a budget that would slash the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s funding by 17 percent and eliminate several educational and research programs, if Congress approves. One of the proposed cuts would eliminate NOAA’s $73 million National Sea Grant College Program, which supports coastal research conducted through 33 university programs across the country, including every coastal and Great Lakes state, Puerto Rico, Lake Champlain and Guam.

The Sea Grant program, according to Trump’s budget plan, is a low priority that primarily has a state and local impact. “Mr. Trump is trying to eliminate us, but we are one of the solutions,” says Paul Anderson, director of Maine Sea Grant. “It’s pretty evident the process the administration has gone through to identify these cuts was not articulate. It was just line-item mathematics.”

Anderson says he is “mystified” by the Trump administration and feels its decision to cut the program puts the nation’s health and safety at risk. “The things we have created in this nation are through lessons learned — from creativity and mistakes,” he says. “You create electrical safety standards because someone was electrocuted. There’s a role government has. Trump’s approach is so naive to any of those structures that it puts our nation at risk for all kinds of things. Health, well-being and good, safe, clean domestic food and water are important.”

Read the full story at Soundings

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

New England seaweed the next big thing in local food?

October 5, 2015 — Sarah Redmond has known she wanted to be a seaweed farmer since she was 15 years old, when she would explore the coastal shores of Maine, learning to identify species and cook with them at home.

“It combined my two favorite things, which were gardening and the ocean,” she said. “I thought it would be pretty cool to have a garden in the sea.”

Now, as a marine extension agent for the Maine Sea Grant, a federal-state partnership to promote marine science funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the State of Maine, Redmond has seen her longtime dream come true. Her time is split between helping would-be seaweed farmers learn to tend and harvest their crops, conducting original research on how to grow species that have never before been cultivated in North America, and championing native, domestically grown seaweeds.

Wild seaweeds have long been eaten as food in the Northeast, but deliberately farming them by seeding spores into the open ocean, which is how seaweed is generally produced for Asian markets, is still exceedingly rare in North America. According to Redmond, though, who holds a master’s degree in ecology, the rich nutritional content and low environmental footprint of native seaweeds like kelp, nori, and dulse makes their cultivation a promising venture for a new wave of growers who are just now starting to experiment with aquaculture.

Read the full story at the Boston Globe