Saving Seafood

Scientists Have Not Detected A Single Right Whale In The Bay Of Fundy This Year

October 15, 2020 — For the first time in four decades, marine scientists were unable to find any North Atlantic right whales in the Bay of Fundy this year.

“Always we would have a handful, even in recent years. So to have zero is certainly disturbing or frustrating,” says Amy Knowlton, a New England Aquarium whale researcher who has been tracking the endangered species from a base in Lubec every year since the early 1980s.

She says that for decades, anywhere from a 50-150 right whales showed up in the summer and fall to forage. The numbers started to drop off around 2010, as water temperatures in the Bay and Gulf of Maine began to rise at a rapid clip.

“It’s just a reflection of how the ocean is changing with climate change, and their food resource, plankton, they’re not blooming at the same time and in the same areas that they used to, so it’s a reflection that for them and for our oceans things are changing pretty dramatically,” Knowlton says.

Read the full story at Maine Public

Collins calls on NOAA Fisheries to resume ‘usual operational tempo’

October 14, 2020 — The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) should get back to its regular schedule of conducting fisheries research surveys, which have been cancelled since May due to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to U.S. Sen. Susan Collins and several colleagues.

Additionally, NOAA should identify and resolve any challenges created by the pandemic that prevented this year’s surveys to ensure surveys are safely conducted in 2021, the lawmakers wrote in a Sept. 30 letter sent to Dr. Neil Jacobs, acting administrator at NOAA. Among the members who joined Sen. Collins in signing the letter were U.S. Sens. Richard Burr (R-NC), Roger Wicker (R-MS), and Doug Jones (D-AL).

“In May 2020, NOAA Fisheries started canceling research surveys to protect the health of its crews and personnel at sea on account of the COVID-19 pandemic, and we understand that the agency has yet to resume its usual operational tempo,” Sen. Collins and her colleagues wrote. “Fishermen and communities across the country rely on these surveys as a basis for their livelihoods.”

Read the full story at The Ripon Advance

Northeast shrimp: Surveys canceled over covid,
with no sign yet of recovery

October 13, 2020 — In Maine and New England, northern shrimp (Pandalus borealis) used to be a regional and seasonal staple. But, for seven consecutive years, the fishery has been shuttered. The last year there was a commercial season was in 2013, and at that time, dealers paid fishermen an average of $1.81 a pound.

Dustin Leaning, a fishery management plan coordinator for the Atlantic States, says “the Gulf of Maine stock remains depleted, and as of yet, has not shown a positive response to the commercial fishing moratorium. Reducing fishing mortality has historically been fishery managers’ most effective tool in rebuilding a stock that has reached low levels of biomass.”

The moratorium on fishing in Maine is in place until 2021.

“They’re resilient,” says Maggie Hunter, Maine’s head shrimp biologist. “They’ve recovered from collapses before (early 1950s, late 1970s), but we’ve never documented one in the Gulf of Maine lasting this long before.”

A 2019 Gulf of Maine survey by the Northern Shrimp Technical Committee revealed indices of abundance, biomass and spawning stock biomass at new time-series lows, and recruitment the third-lowest in the time series (1984-2019). Warming waters, like those in the Gulf of Maine, are also detrimental to shrimp populations. 

A Maine-New Hampshire inshore survey, along with spring and summer shrimp surveys, were all canceled this year because of covid-19 concerns.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

GMRI awarded $1.27M to help Maine fisheries overcome climate challenges

October 9, 2020 — The Gulf of Maine Research Institute has been awarded $1.27 million in federal funding to help Maine fisheries and coastal communities in the fight against climate change.

Funding for the Portland-based nonprofit comes from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Program Office. The new project is one of 79 to receive a total of $48.7 million in competitive awards, announced on Oct. 6.

“Every day, communities and businesses grapple with challenges due to climate variability and change,” said Wayne Higgins, director of the Climate Program Office, in a news release.

“From using machine learning to develop critical atmospheric datasets to creating an experimental system for rapidly assessing causes of extreme events, these new awards will expedite climate science discoveries and build the library of resilience solutions needed to protect all sectors of our economy and environment.”

Read the full story at MaineBiz

Senators Collins, King Join Bipartisan Call to Ensure NOAA Fisheries Surveys Proceed in 2021

October 9, 2020 — The following was released by the The Office of Senator Angus King (I-ME):

In May 2020, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries started canceling research surveys to protect the health of its crews and personnel at sea on account of the COVID-19 pandemic.  In support of coastal communities across the country who rely on these surveys as a basis for their livelihoods, U.S. Senators Susan Collins (R-ME) and Angus King (I-ME) joined their colleagues in calling on NOAA to identify and resolve any challenges created by COVID-19 that prevented surveys from occurring in 2020 in order to ensure surveys can be safely conducted in 2021.

“Fishery and ecosystem research surveys are essential to support the U.S. blue economy and provide valuable fishery-independent data needed to carry out provisions of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (MSA).  Data collected from NOAA’s research surveys are used to manage commercial and recreational fisheries that contributed 1.74 million jobs, over $240 billion in sales, and $111 billion in gross domestic product to the U.S. economy in 2017,” the Senators wrote.  “The economic output of U.S. fisheries is maximized by setting accurate quotas and catch limits, which depend on the long-term, fishery-independent datasets collected by NOAA’s research surveys.”

The Senators acknowledged NOAA’s initial response and actions to compensate for lost survey data; however, they reiterated that the methods used are not sufficient replacements for the typical large-scale, long-term research surveys required to sustainably manage fisheries under the MSA.  In closing, the Senators requested a clear, written plan for FY2021 surveys before December 15, 2020.

Read the full release here

Maine company recycles fishermen’s bibs into bags, clothing, other products

October 8, 2020 — From bibs into bags, a Maine company is recycling the heavy-duty rubber bibs worn by fishermen into a line of products.

“I want to find a way, and these bibs might be the way to connect people to this industry,” Rugged Seas co-owner Taylor Strout said.

Strout and his wife Nikki Strout have known the fishing industry their entire lives.

“I wanted to create a product that when people came, and they visited the coast of Maine, that they could not only take something home with them, but leave something for the fishermen too,” Taylor Strout said.

Through their company, Rugged Seas, the Strouts make a line of merchandise that includes tote bags, backpacks, wallets and clothing.

Nearly all of them are made from discarded rubber bibs donated by fishermen.

Read the full story at WMTW

MAINE: Seafood industry ponders viability of Portland Fish Exchange

October 7, 2020 — The Portland Fish Pier Authority is embarking on a strategic planning process that could determine the future of its underused waterfront space.

Built to accommodate large trawling vessels and massive landings, the Portland Fish Exchange faces challenges from the decline of landings, fewer boats in the state’s groundfishing fleet, the coming retirement of its longtime manager, and the sudden impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

Business at the exchange peaked in the early 1980s when more than 300 vessels landed nearly 80 million pounds of groundfish. By 1999 only 15 million pounds were landed by 160 boats. The manager, Bert Jongerden, said as of 2019 only about 40 vessels were selling their catches at the exchange.

Read the full story at the Portland Phoenix

MAINE: In a Boothbay Harbor, scientists are tying lobstermen’s ropes in knots to protect whales

October 7, 2020 — A group of state researchers in Boothbay Harbor are testing how much force it takes to snap hundreds of pieces of rope apart as they try to identify knot combinations and configurations of fishing line that will help protect whales from life-threatening entanglements.

Since early 2019, the small group of scientists at the Maine Department of Marine Resources have been testing a variety of different types of rope knotted together by putting them under strain with an old hydraulic tensile testing machine. They do their work in a garage bay on the department’s property on McKown Point Road. They have gone through a couple hundred different combinations of used and new rope tied together in various knots, testing each combination 10 times to determine their breaking points. They expect to try more than 900 different configurations in all.

The idea is to come up with a way Maine lobstermen can affordably satisfy federal laws that prohibit fishing activity from harming protected marine species such as North Atlantic right whales, of which only 400 or so remain. Maine lobstermen have been awaiting a new set of federal rules aimed at preventing whale entanglements that would force them to change the gear they use for the third time in slightly more than a decade.

The Department of Marine Resources researchers are hoping to find rope configurations that fishermen can put together from their existing gear, saving them the expense and trouble of replacing all their gear in order to continue harvesting lobster from the Gulf of Maine, which last year generated $485 million in statewide fishing revenue.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

Federal grant for Maine offshore wind

October 6, 2020 — Maine is getting a $2.16 million grant from the U.S. Economic Development Administration to map out plans for an offshore wind energy industry, and join other Northeast states already promoting their own vast hopes for turbine arrays.

“Unleashing American innovation is critical to our global competitiveness,” U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross said in announcing the grant Oct. 1. “This project will allow Maine to capitalize on its technical leadership in the wind power sector to diversify and grow the state’s economy and make it more resilient.”

The EDA grant to the Maine Governor’s Energy Office will be matched with $267,624 in state funds and $112,457 in local funds, according to federal officials.

The money will be used to “create a roadmap for establishing a floating offshore wind power industry by examining manufacturing processes, supply chains, port facilities, transportation systems, shipbuilding opportunities, ecosystem relationships, workforce development plans, power interconnections, exports, and economic impacts,” according to Commerce Department official Dana Gartzke.

Maine has followed twists and turns in developing offshore wind. Deeper waters of the Gulf of Maine would require the use of floating turbines, unlike the fixed foundations planned for big projects on the outer continental shelf off southern New England.

Read the full story at WorkBoat

MAINE: Conservation success or pests? Seals spark passionate debate

October 5, 2020 — Nick Muto has fished up and down the New England coast and there is nothing that gets his blood boiling more than the sight of a seal.

Muto, whose two boats fish for groundfish such as skate and monkfish as well as lobster, is among a growing group of anglers, beach goers and local officials who are quick to blame everything from disease to depleted fisheries to increased shark sightings on the exploding seal population.

“Areas that we used to traditionally fish that were as close to guarantees as you could get have been strip mined of fish, and the fish have been driven out of there by seals,” Muto said. “They have eaten fish out of our nets. They have been caught in our nets. They are everywhere.”

The debate over seals was reignited after the death in July of a swimmer killed by a great white off Harpswell, Maine. Seals are often shark prey, and experts believe Julie Dimperio Holowach may have been mistaken for a seal.

Read the full story at The Washington Post