Saving Seafood

MAINE: Maine’s commercial fishery grows in value, thanks largely to lobster prices

March 3, 2025 — Last year was a good year for commercial fishermen in Maine.

According to preliminary data released Friday by the Maine Department of Marine Resources, Maine’s commercial fisheries harvest was valued at $709,509,984 in 2024, up $74 million from 2023.

A large part of the jump in value was thanks to a $46 million jump in the value of the lobster catch.

Maine lobstermen took home $528,421,645 in 2024, thanks to a $6.14 per pound price, despite a catch that declined by more than 10 million pounds. The boat price paid to lobstermen in 2024 was the second-highest on record.

Read the full article at WMTW

MAINE: Maine lobster landings hit a 15-year low in 2024

March 3, 2025 — Maine lobster landings were at a 15-year low, at about 86 million pounds in 2024.

It’s a 10 million pound decline from the previous year, according to preliminary data released Friday by the Maine Department of Marine Resources. The 2024 decrease also comes after landings dropped by another 10 million pounds from 2022 to 2023.

Fishermen set 285,000 fewer traps in the water in 2024 compared to the previous year, the data show.

Spruce Head fisherman Bob Baines said landings are leveling off and fluctuating after a few years of record harvests. He believes the fishery is still in good shape.

“There’s only a certain amount of lobsters every year available to be caught; we’re very good at it,” he said Friday from the Maine Fishermen’s Forum in Rockport. “And since the biomass has gotten smaller, there’s just less lobsters to be caught.”

Read the full article at Maine Public

US lobster catch drops as crustaceans migrate to colder Canadian waters

March 3, 2025 — The US lobster industry’s catch keeps sliding as fishermen contend with the northward migration of the valuable crustaceans.

The industry is based mostly in Maine, where lobsters are both a cultural signifier and the backbone of the coastal economy. The state’s haul of lobsters has declined every year from 2021, when it was nearly 111 million pounds, to 2023, when it was less than 97 million pounds.

That decline extended into 2024, when the haul was about 86.1 million pounds, according to data released by state regulators on Friday. That is the lowest figure in 15 years. A series of major storms that damaged waterfront communities and disrupted fisheries was a key factor in the reduced catch, officials said.

Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat, praised the industry for its perseverance.

Read the full article at the Boston Globe

MAINE: Trump administration terminates Maine Sea Grant

March 3, 2025 — The Maine Sea Grant program was abruptly ended by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, amid sweeping cutbacks to NOAA’s budget.

The news came Saturday during the Maine Fishermen’s Forum, an annual industry gathering in Rockland that Maine Sea Grant first helped organize in the 1980s. The Trump administration budget ax would cut $1.5 million in funding this year, $4.5 million through January 2028 and affect 20 Sea Grant workers at the University of Maine in Orono and the state’s small coastal ports.  

“It has been determined that the program activities proposed to be carried out in Year 2 of the Maine Sea Grant Omnibus Award are no longer relevant to the focus of the Administration’s priorities and program objectives,” stated a notification letter from NOAA to University of Maine officials.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Lobster fishermen can sue environmental group for defamation, judge says

March 3, 2025 — A group of lobster fishermen can sue one of the world’s largest seafood watchdog groups for defamation, a federal court has ruled, over a report that described Maine lobster as an unwise choice for consumers.

The threat to a rare whale species from getting tangled in fishing gear has prompted Monterey Bay Aquarium in California to caution against eating a variety of lobster that New England fishermen have harvested for centuries.

Seafood Watch, a conservation program operated by the aquarium, placed lobster from the U.S. and Canada on its do-not-eat “red list” in 2022. Some retailers pulled lobster from stores after the recommendation.

Read the full article at the Associated Press

Most Maine lobstermen have resisted alternative fishing gear. A new initiative hopes to change that

February 28, 2025 — The wind is whipping the sides of the dock on this bright, cold afternoon in Jonesport.

“I think my fingers are too frozen.”

Brooke Hachey of the Sunrise County Economic Council is leading a demonstration of a kind of “on demand,” sometimes called “ropeless” lobster fishing gear.

In a bid to protect North Atlantic right whales from extinction, many scientists are promoting this kind of alternative lobster fishing gear that minimizes the risks of entanglement.

While some lobstermen in Massachusetts have agreed to use this new gear in exchange for accessing closed areas of Cape Cod Bay, most Maine lobstermen have been reluctant — if not outright resistant — to the new technology.

Read the full article at wbur

MAINE: The Lobster Trap: Can Stonington, Maine, Survive the Tide of Change?

February 28, 2025 — I first visited Stonington, Maine, in the summer of 2003 to write a story for Yankee about the community’s proudly held identity as a fishing town. Even then, Stonington was an anomaly. While other main streets and harbors along the Maine coast had become the shiny domain of tourist shops and pleasure boats, here, on the rocky outermost tip of remote Deer Isle, lived just over 1,000 people whose lives were still largely built around what they hauled from the sea.

The challenges Stonington faced back then—tighter regulations, increasing costs, wild swings in the price of lobster—still confront the town more than two decades later. But now it’s increasingly feeling the threat of climate change, too. Early last year, two powerful storms slammed into the island, cutting off Stonington from the mainland, devastating businesses, and swamping the public pier. The Gulf of Maine’s warming waters, meanwhile, are putting the very survival of the state’s signature lobster industry at risk. Even for a community long accustomed to dealing with headwinds, these latest developments beg the question: What will it take for New England’s largest lobster port to endure?

Last June, I returned to Stonington to find out.

Robbie Eaton is ready to get on the water.

It’s pushing 5:30 on a Thursday morning in early June, and for the past half hour the 24-year-old has been prepping his boat, the Legacy, a mint-green 35-footer docked at the Stonington Fish Pier. It’s not quite summer but it’s starting to feel like it, warming up even at this hour, and the surrounding harbor is quiet, a testament to just how early the workday starts around here. In Maine’s largest lobster port, many of its 350 boats motored off nearly two hours ago.

Read the full article at NewEngland.com

 

MAINE: Maine’s commercial catch value increased to over USD 700 million in 2024

February 28, 2025 — The U.S. State of Maine recently released its preliminary 2024 data on harvest volume and value, indicating a significant increase over 2023.

Maine Department of Marine Resources (DMR) statistics for 2024 indicate Maine’s commercial harvesters landed seafood worth USD 709 million (EUR 681 million) in 2024, an increase of USD 74 million (EUR 71 million) over 2023.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

MAINE: Mills nominates Department of Marine Resources veteran to be Maine’s top fisheries regulator

February 27, 2025 — Governor Janet Mills is nominating Maine’s former lead lobster biologist to be state’s top fisheries regulator.

Carl Wilson has worked at the Maine Department of Marine Resources (DMR) for 26 years, first leading the state’s lobster research and monitoring programs. He currently leads the Bureau of Marine Science, which recently launched a new program dedicated to the study of right whales in the Gulf of Maine.

“His vast knowledge and experience in the science, policy and economics of Maine’s marine resource industries, combined with the strong relationships and mutual respect he has developed with Mainers who make a living on the water over his 26 years at DMR, will serve him well as the department’s next leader,” Mills said in a statement announcing Wilson’s nomination.

Wilson will replace Pat Keliher, who recently announced his retirement from the department in mid-March following high-profile tensions with the state’s lobster industry.

Read the full article at Maine Public

Scientists seek approval for geoengineering project in Gulf of Maine

February 20, 2025 — A controversial geoengineering project is seeking a permit from EPA to conduct research in the Gulf of Maine — including experiments some scientists say could help the world meet its global climate goals.

Known as LOC-NESS — short for Locking away Ocean Carbon in the Northeast Shelf and Slope — the project is spearheaded by Adam Subhas, a marine scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. If approved, the experiments would help scientists test the possibility of using the ocean to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere — offsetting human emissions of greenhouse gases and combating climate change.

The ocean naturally sucks up CO2 on its own. But scientists say that adding alkaline substances, or materials with a high pH, can cause the water to soak up even more of the climate-warming gas. LOC-NESS proposes to release small amounts of sodium hydroxide alongside a special dye used to trace the material’s movement through the water.

Read the full article at E&E News