Saving Seafood

MAINE: What to do about Maine’s green crab problem? Some see opportunity.

October 6, 2025 — In Milbridge, a former farmer is grinding invasive green crabs into fertilizer. In South Portland, a Cambodian food incubator is incorporating them into seafood dishes.

The first time Sam Cheeney saw a green crab was in the early 2000s, as part of an ecology class at the University of Maine at Machias.

He and his classmates ventured out across the mud flats and rocky shoreline in search of the invasive species, one that research suggests has been present on Maine’s coast since the mid-1800s, when it was carried to North America in the ballast waters of a European ship. Today, green crabs prey on soft-shell clams and mussels and have been found to harm salt marshes.

“We would find pockets of just hundreds of them,” Cheeney said. The experience made an impression. In 2023, after stints as a farmer and carpenter, and more than two decades after his first glimpse of the green crab, Cheeney founded Green Kraken, a small business based in Milbridge that makes fertilizer from crushed green crabs. The nutrients in the green crab act as a stimulant for vegetables and other crops.

Read the full article at The Maine Monitor

Sea Grant strengthens America’s working waterfronts

October 3, 2025 — The U.S. maritime economy is growing faster than the economy as a whole, supporting over 2.6 million jobs and contributing $511 billion to the nation’s GDP.

From lobster docks in Maine to oyster farms in Florida, kelp farms and commercial fisheries on the West Coast to maritime training in Alaska, charter fishing in the Gulf, and inland shipping in the Great Lakes, America’s coastal and freshwater industries are fueling economic growth, feeding families, and sustaining communities.

At the heart of that growth is Sea Grant, a trusted federal program linking science, communities, and industry across every coastal and Great Lakes state. According to the most recent federal data, the marine economy grew by 5.9 percent in GDP, outpacing national GDP growth, and Sea Grant plays a critical role in sustaining and accelerating that momentum.

Modeled after the Land Grant college system that helped transform American agriculture, the Sea Grant college program has spent more than 50 years doing the same for the nation’s marine and freshwater economies, combining applied research, hands-on education, and direct investments in communities and businesses to promote sustainable growth.

That model works. It works for the charter boat captain who needs up-to-date science on fish stocks, reef health, and ocean conditions. It works for the shellfish farmer navigating complex permitting processes, building a skilled workforce, and developing business plans to stay competitive. It works for the lobsterman who relies on data about juvenile lobsters entering the fishery to make informed decisions about their gear, boat, and future, because without that data, they’d be navigating blind. It works for the seafood processor hiring the next generation of workers, and for the harbor manager planning infrastructure upgrades to withstand future storms. It works for the grocery shopper a thousand miles from the coast looking for fresh, healthy seafood, and for the inland communities whose economies depend on waterborne trade and shipping. It works for families, for small businesses, for regional economies, and ultimately, for the nation.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

NEFMC tables ropeless gear proposal following pushback

October 2, 2025 — The New England Fishery Management Council has tabled an alternative gear marking proposal that could enable more Maine lobster fishers to use ropeless gear in closed areas following public opposition from commercial fishing groups and a Maine legislator.

“A packed house of fishermen – with NEFSA members making up the strong majority – made their concerns loud and clear both in person and through the flood of public comments leading up to the vote. This is another major win for American commercial fisheries,” New England Fishermen’s Stewardship Association (NEFSA) said in a social media post.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Management council votes to postpone rope-less lobster gear rule in Maine

October 2, 2025 — At its meeting on September 25 in Gloucester, Mass., the New England Fishery Management Council voted to postpone its decision allowing lobstermen fishing in federal waters to use alternative, rope-less gear.

The decision was welcome news to the lobster industry and to congressman Jared Golden, who urged NEFMC to abandon the proposal in a letter dated September 23.

“Maine’s lobstermen are facing tremendous uncertainty, with various agencies operating in parallel considering new regulations that would fundamentally alter what it looks like to haul traps off the coast of Maine,” Golden said. “Congress enacted a moratorium on requiring this kind of gear, and that moratorium is still in effect while more data is gathered and studied. This framework, if adopted, would muddy the waters about what is required of Maine’s harvesters, and there’s no need for it.”

The moratorium Golden referred to was adopted in the U.S. congressional budget for 2023 with the unanimous support of Maine’s senators and representatives. The moratorium at the federal level paused the development of new lobster gear requirements until 2028.

Read the full article at Penobscot Bay Press

Maine’s longer, hotter summers are reshaping our natural world

September 29, 2025 — When she looks at the Narraguagus River, Valerie Ouellet sees what others can’t: a thermal mosaic that explains why it’s one of the last places in America where wild Atlantic salmon come to spawn.

This 55-mile-long waterway in Downeast Maine is a hodgepodge of cold-water pockets hidden within the warmer river where adult salmon can find refuge from the state’s increasingly hot summers.

Atlantic salmon do their best growing and spawning in 68-degree water. Any higher and they stop eating; they lay fewer, smaller eggs. At 73 degrees, they swim erratically. If they don’t find cold water created by shade trees, spring-fed tributaries or groundwater seepage, some will die.

Ouellet is an ecologist with the Atlantic Salmon Federation and is part of a state and federal research team that has spent two years documenting the river’s temperature and flow to explore how close, how big and how cold these spots must be for salmon to survive.

Read the full article at Maine Public

US representative Jared Golden urges New England regulators to abandon proposal that could expand ropeless gear use

September 25, 2025 — U.S. Representative Jared Golden (D-Maine) is urging regulators not to take any action that would enable the use of more ropeless gear in the Maine lobster fishery, arguing that it would undermine other regulatory efforts.

In a letter to the New England Fisheries Management Council (NEFMC), Golden asked regulators to abandon the Joint Alternative Gear-Marking Framework, a proposal that could eventually allow fishers to use ropeless, or on-demand, gear within its jurisdiction.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

US lobster in the spotlight for National Lobster Day, Maine Lobster Week

September 24, 2025 —  The Maine lobster industry, along with e-commerce suppliers and restaurants, are promoting the crustacean during National Lobster Day on 25 September and Maine Lobster Week, which runs from 21-28 September.

National Lobster Day honors the hardworking individuals who sustain Maine’s iconic lobster fishery, the Maine Lobster Marketing Collaborative (MLMC) said in a press release.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Meet the Small Business Owners Electrifying Maine’s Rural Coast

September 10, 2025 — On a sunny, 85-degree day in August of 2025, some 9,300 oysters were loaded into ice-filled containers on southern Maine’s Casco Bay. The boat shuttling them from the warm, shallow waters of Recompense Cove to the marina two miles away hummed quietly. Notably missing: the roar of an engine and the smell of diesel.

Heron, the boat in question, is a 28-foot aluminum vessel that runs on two 100% electric outboards, the motors that hang off of small and medium-sized boats. It’s one of the first commercial workboats in the United States to use electric outboards. The vessel officially splashed into the waters of South Freeport, Maine on July 17, 2025. The moment, though, had been years in the making. It required a coalition of industry-wide partners, a $500,000 U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) grant, and at least that much in matching funds from the operating businesses’ cost share agreement and philanthropic investments through the Rockland, Maine-based Island Institute, the Maine Technology Institute, and others. Altogether, the $1 million private-public investment covers Heron’s $425,000 sticker price and the costs to install two high-capacity shoreside chargers. A portion of these funds also supports data collection and research to assess the viability of electric technology in the greater aquaculture industry.

Willy Leathers is the director of farm operations and owner of Maine Ocean Farms, the mid-size aquaculture business that operates this particular boat. The 10-acre plot he and farm co-founder Eric Oransky tend to on Recompense Cove holds about 3 million oysters. The two farmers are among a growing group of small business owners on the cutting edge of marine innovation along rural and remote parts of Maine’s coast. They’ve been in operation together just shy of a decade, and have seen the aquaculture industry spring up around them in the coves and small islands that make up Casco Bay. Beyond the bay is the wide-open Gulf of Maine, which has been documented as one of the world’s fastest-warming bodies of water. Between 2004-2016, it warmed more quickly than 99% of the global ocean, a trend scientists attribute to climate change caused by humans burning fossil fuels.

Read the full article at the Daily Yonder

Establishing Maine as a leader in environmental genetics

September 10, 2025 — Awarded in 2019, the NSF EPSCoR RII Track-1 Maine-eDNA project has reached the conclusion of its NSF funding. The program, which investigated Maine’s coast, inland lakes and the waterways in between, championed environmental DNA (eDNA) as a powerful and cost-effective approach to monitoring an environment as small as a stream to as large as Maine’s coastline. Maine-eDNA Co-PI Michael Kinnison, University of Maine professor of evolutionary applications remarked, “The real power that we were seeing for eDNA is being able to look at the biology of the Maine coast at not just local but by very large scales that span habitats. That sort of snapshot of the coastal system is broadly something that’s really hard to get a handle on with other approaches.”

Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences Senior Research Scientist and Geomicrobiologist David Emerson served as a Co-PI for Maine-eDNA and authored the white paper that developed into the project’s proposal. “There are three things that really excite me about eDNA. Scientifically, it is the opportunity to study all organisms, from microbes to whales, within an ecosystem to see how they interconnect; collaboratively, it is the opportunity to work together with researchers from many different disciplines using a common language, DNA, and practically, it is the opportunity to develop an important new tool for ecosystem management and sustainability,” explained Emerson.

This genetic tool leverages the DNA shed by organisms in their environment. Researchers take a sample from the environment, in the case of Maine-eDNA as little as a liter of water, and, depending on method, identify the likely presence of a specific species or range of species in the vicinity. While like any technology there are tradeoffs, this allows researchers to accurately detect species presence in a relatively unobtrusive manner that does not rely on visual identification.

Researchers across Maine saw potential in the technology. “We saw an opportunity to push an emerging technology forward, become a leader in the field and benefit the lives of Mainers,” explained Kody Varahramyan, Maine-eDNA PI and UMaine Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies. “Maine-eDNA’s achievements exemplify the power of partnership and collaboration.”

eDNA technology has developed quickly over the past decade. When the original proposal for Maine-eDNA was in its infancy, researchers were exploring the capabilities of eDNA and interested in finding more applications, but the depth of real-world applications was limited. Fast-forward to 2024 and the President’s Office of Science and Technology Policy released their National Aquatic Environmental DNA Strategy which directs government offices to invest resources in the technology. During the interim years it was projects like Maine-eDNA that pushed the technology forward by improving methodologies, standardizing approaches, making data accessible to others, and pushing the scope of application into new areas.

Maine in many ways was a perfect testing ground as the technology offered a way for researchers to survey the vast expanse of Maine’s waters over the course of several years at a fraction of the price presented by other approaches. A survey of this size also demands the standardization and ground truthing the technology needed. Maybe most importantly, the project put eDNA technology in the hands of students, researchers, resource managers, businesses and other stakeholders through outreach and collaboration.

Read the full article at University of Maine

Golden proposed extension for whale rule implementation, local stakeholders reflect

August 21, 2025 — The current federal moratorium on whale rule regulations could be extended from 2028 to 2035, and local stakeholders are sharing their thoughts with the Islander on what the proposed extension could mean for the lobster industry and the endangered North Atlantic right whale.

Last month, U.S. Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine) urged the House Natural Resources Committee to extend a moratorium on regulations aimed at the lobster industry and designed to help protect the North Atlantic right whale from gear entanglements.

Golden said that the initial moratorium listed in the Maine Mammal Protection Act, which lasts from 2023 to 2028, is not enough time for the Maine government to gather data that would inform new regulations.

Several conservationists and scientists, on the other hand, think that there is already enough data to support implementing the original regulations.

“The premise behind the original regulations has since been struck down by the courts. In 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that the National Marine Fisheries Service had distorted the science and relied on egregiously wrong interpretations of the Marine Mammal Protection Act in crafting its proposed rules,” Golden told the Committee on July 22. “The Court admonished the agency for basing its edicts on arbitrary, worst-case scenarios that were ‘very likely wrong.’”

He argued that an extended moratorium would provide adequate time for the state of Maine to collect data to inform new regulations.

Read the full article at Mount Dessert Islander