January 20, 2021 — Maine fishery regulators have begun implementing scallop fishing closures to try to protect the population of the valuable shellfish.
Maine’s winter scallop fishery is one of the most lucrative in the state. The state uses localized fishing closures to allow young scallops to grow to maturity.
The closures that went into effect this week apply to the Englishman Bay, Addison, Isle au Haut and Swans Island areas.
January 19, 2021 — A Gulf of Maine offshore wind power initiative Maine Governor Janet Mills rolled out late last year has raised concern in the lobster fishing community, with Maine Lobstermen’s Association Executive Director Patrice McCarron telling The American that “the area identified by the state of Maine for a potential offshore wind farm is prime fishing bottom for Maine fishermen.”
Mills first announced plans to explore offshore wind development last June, when she signed a bill requiring the Public Utilities Commission to approve a floating offshore wind demonstration project, the first of its kind in the United States. The program, Aqua Ventus, is run through the University of Maine and is funded through $39.9 million in federal grants from the U.S. Department of Energy.
At the same time, Mills formed the Maine Offshore Wind Initiative, a state-based initiative “to identify opportunities for offshore wind development in the Gulf of Maine and to determine how Maine can best position itself to benefit from future offshore wind projects,” according to a press release.
More information was released in November. The offshore wind research array would be sited 20 to 40 miles offshore into the Gulf of Maine at a yet-to-be-determined site, where the dozen or fewer floating wind turbines would cover about 16 square miles of ocean. Maine is filing an application with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, as the array will be farther than 3 miles off the coast in federal waters. According to a Nov. 20 press release, the technology for floating arrays is still being developed, and their effect on marine life and fisheries requires further study.
January 19, 2021 — The newest version of Maine’s fishing laws includes a searchable database designed to make it easier for anglers to comply with the rules.
The website allows fishermen to search by water body, town, county or fishing code. That allows anglers to search terms such as “fly fishing only” and “open to open water fishing” to get a better idea of where they can fish.
The state website also includes a map-based online tool called FLOAT, which stands for Fishing Laws Online Angling Tool. It allows fishermen to easily find out which of the thousands of inland waterways in Maine have special fishing rules.
January 13, 2021 — Some Maine fishermen are asking themselves whether it is still worth it to endure bitter-cold winds and heavy seas to harvest sea urchins for their prized roe at this point in the 2020-21 season that began Sept. 1.
At the Atlantic Coast Inn, where some out-of-town sea urchin harvesters stay several nights a week while working out of various Hancock County harbors, multiple harvesters reported that the Maine fishery’s further restricted daily catch, fewer allotted fishing days, declining dealer prices, warmer ocean temps and the coronavirus-driven drop in demand for the sea urchins’ gonads — called uni in Japanese — are taking a toll on their livelihood. Working in high winds and frigid temps, incurring fuel costs driving to ports and back home, the experienced divers said it was becoming increasingly less profitable.
At the High Street hotel last week, after workdays beginning before dawn, pickup trucks swung into the parking lot to unload totes packed with green urchins. Hailing from Woolwich to Harrington, the crews trickled in and backed up to East Atlantic Seafood Trading’s truck to sell their day’s catch to Sinuon Chau. Chau is the second generation in his family to run the Scarborough-based company founded by his father, John Chau, in the early 1990s.
Standing in the truck bed, Sinuon Chau surveyed diver Fred Gray’s catch. He cracked open some urchins to eyeball the uni — the reproductive glands — which produce eggs or sperm depending on the gender. Inside the shells, urchins contain two to five gonads. The lobes, ranging in color from pale yellow to dark orange, resemble small tongues in shape and texture. Top-grade uni is plump, firm and a bright golden or yellow-orange hue. That is the quality sought by chefs in the United States and the world’s top consumer, Japan. The delicacy is served raw atop sushi, sashimi or, say, a quail’s egg yolk.
January 13, 2021 — Portland, Maine-based company Bristol Seafood has established a new supply partnership with Blue North, a division of Bristol Bay Alaska Seafoods, according to a 10 January announcement.
Bristol is already the largest importer and producer of Norwegian, line-caught haddock in the U.S., and also provides Alaska cod, among other offerings. The company provides an array of products featuring Alaska cod, including refreshed and frozen fillets, loins, and portions, as well as retail-ready bagged frozen portions. Its value-added My Fish Dish product line also spotlights the popular species.
January 13, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:
We are working with the dam owners to improve fish passage for river herring and American eels on a tributary of the Kennebec River in Gardiner, Maine.
From 2014 through 2019, NOAA Fisheries staff from the Greater Atlantic Region consulted on the relicensing of the American Tissue Dam. As part of the Federal Power Act, NOAA Fisheries may require fish passage at federally licensed dams, which was the case for this dam.
In order to comply with this requirement, Kruger Energy Inc. was busy this summer and fall constructing a new and improved downstream fishway. When migrating fish pass over a notch in the dam, they will now enter a well-designed plunge pool. The pool does a better job reducing fish mortality than the old plunge pool, particularly for the small juvenile river herring.
Additional passage improvements to this project will include an eel ramp to help juvenile eels migrate upstream. A submerged pipe will help adult eels headed downstream to get up and over the dam and back down to the river channel safely. With these fish passage improvements, we are optimistic that restoration of fisheries resources in Cobboseecontee Stream can succeed.
January 11, 2021 — Lobsters are big business in Maine. In 2019 alone, the state netted almost US $500-million from this popular crustacean. Profits would likely be even higher, though, if the seafood industry could reduce “shrink”—the number of lobsters that die on their way through the supply chain. Every one percent in shrink means almost $5-million in unrealized income, says Eric Thunberg, an economist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. “Those aren’t small losses.”
“There’s a lot of interest in reducing shrink,” says Rick Wahle, a zoologist at the University of Maine. “Unfortunately,” he says, “there’s very little hard data to work with.”
“In most cases, it’s not going to be rocket science to mitigate these problems,” says Wahle. “It may just be shorter handling times, reducing time between the dock and the holding tank, dropping more aerators in the water, or lowering storage density.” The question is where along the supply chain those changes should be applied.
A new project, led by Wahle and supported by NOAA, is now tackling that question with two purpose-designed technologies to record the health and environment conditions of lobsters as they move from trap to distributor. One sensor package, called MockLobster, measures temperature and acceleration of a crate of lobsters as it’s moved around. The team wants to add other sensors for dissolved oxygen and acidity, but these features are still being prototyped.
January 11, 2021 — Authorities in Maine are collecting public comments about the potential impact to the fishing industry of a proposed federal dredging project in the Blue Hill area.
The Army Corp of Engineers and town of Blue Hill want to create a federal navigation channel in Blue Hill Harbor. It would be an 80-foot wide channel from deep water to the town landing, documents state.
The Maine Department of Marine Resources is collecting comments about the potential impacts of the dredging until Jan. 25. The marine resources department will provide an assessment of the fishing industry impacts to the Maine Department of Environmental Protection.
January 7, 2021 — The Maine Department of Marine Resources has reduced its estimate of Atlantic salmon returns to the Penobscot River by nearly 200 fish, but the final estimate for 2020 — 1,440 salmon — is still the highest annual return since 2011. In November, state fisheries scientists announced an estimated 1,603 Atlantic salmon had returned to the Penobscot River.
Jason Valliere, a marine resource scientist for the DMR, said each of his regular reports filed since July have included a disclaimer explaining that the official year-end estimate of returning fish was subject to change. Those counts are adjusted after data becomes available, taking into account individual fish that are captured, returned to the river to free-swim to spawning grounds, then re-captured by fisheries staffers at the Milford Dam.
The 2020 total was up from 1,152 in 2019, and is the largest run of salmon since 3,125 salmon returned to the river in 2011. The average run for the eight years from 2012 to 2019 was just 708 salmon per year.
January 7, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:
A trait fishermen and scientists share is adaptability: the trait required to think on your feet, be comfortable with uncertainty, and repurpose resources when necessary.
“Adaptable” is a word that perfectly describes Marsden Brewer, a third-generation commercial fisherman, who is also a scallop farmer and owner of PenBay Farmed Scallops. Brewer’s business is the result of his 20-year effort, as well as techniques learned through Maine’s enduring friendship with its sister state, Aomori Prefecture, Japan. His three-and-a-quarter acre Stonington, Maine, farm is the first of its kind in Penobscot Bay.
“Princess” Scallops: A New England Locavore’s Delight
The Atlantic sea scallop fishery is one of the most valuable in the United States. While wild caught scallops have shells four inches across or larger and you only eat the adductor muscle, Brewer sells a smaller, whole-animal product. He offers three sizes:
Whole scallops are a delicacy prepared by chefs at restaurants in Maine and as far away as Colorado and Arizona. Brewer is not competing with the wild scallop fishery, but bringing a new local seafood to market. He has led other fishermen to farm scallops as a way to diversify their income in a changing environment.