Saving Seafood

MAINE: This Atlantic salmon has returned to the Penobscot more than once. Here’s why it’s special.

June 4, 2020 — Atlantic salmon are returning to the Penobscot River at a steady pace thus far. Fisheries staffers from the Maine Department of Marine Resources said the 176 salmon that have been counted thus far are the fifth most to have reached the counting facility by May 29 in the 42 years that salmon have been counted on the river.

Among those fish was a rarity: A male that was making a return trip to the river to spawn.

Jason Valliere, a fisheries resource scientist for the DMR’s Division of Sea Run Fisheries and Habitat, said not many salmon are able to head to the open ocean twice and return to the Penobscot successfully, and called the fish “extra special.”

“We previously captured this fish on June 10, 2018, when we tagged him and sent him to Craig Brook National Fish Hatchery [in Orland] as a brood fish to support the smolt stocking program, a program that he is a member of. He was stocked out as a smolt in 2016,” Valliere said.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

Trump to hold roundtable on commercial fishing while in Maine

June 4, 2020 — President Donald Trump will hold a roundtable discussion with parties involved in the commercial fishing industry during his visit to Maine on Friday, according to a White House official.

The president is slated to come to the Pine Tree State to visit the Puritan Medical Products facility in Guilford, which manufactures medical swabs used in coronavirus testing. The Guilford company is one of the two largest swab manufacturers in the world and is opening a new swab manufacturing facility in Pittsfield this summer to meet the surging demand for swabs.

The company is using $75.5 million in federal funds under the Defense Production Act to open that facility.

The president is expected to discuss regulations and how to expand economic opportunities for the commercial fishing industry, according to the official.

Details of when exactly the visit will take place have not been disclosed.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

Maine Looking for New Ways to Save Whales From Fishing Gear

June 3, 2020 — Maine is in the final year of funding for a project that seeks to better protect endangered whales in the Gulf of Maine from entanglement in fishing gear.

The Maine Department of Marine Resources is using the project to collect data about vertical line fishing in the gulf, and develop a model to determine the fishing industry’s current use of the lines. The department is also hoping to use the model to predict the conservation benefits of new proposed regulations.

The state is slated to receive more than $200,000 in federal funds for the project this fiscal year, bringing the total federal money it has received to more than $700,000, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in a statement.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at U.S. News

Enviros Want Salmon Listed on Maine Endangered List

June 2, 2020 — A coalition of Maine conservation groups is calling on the state to add the Atlantic salmon to its list of endangered species.

Maine’s rivers were once full of the salmon, but their population was decimated by overfishing, damming and environmental factors. They return only to a few rivers, and are protected under the federal Endangered Species Act.

The environmental groups, including Downeast Salmon Federation, the Maine chapter of the Native Fish Coalition, Friends of Merrymeeting Bay and several others, sent their request to the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife on Monday. They said the salmon belong protected by the Maine Endangered Species Act because “the only viable Atlantic salmon population in the United States is the Gulf of Maine distinct population segment.”

Read the full story from the Associated Press at U.S. News

Baby Eel Fishing Wrapping up in Maine With Much Lower Prices

June 2, 2020 — Maine‘s season for baby eel fishing is coming to a close with the lowest prices in a decade.

Baby eels are a lucrative resource in Maine, where fishermen harvest the elvers from rivers and streams and often sell them for more than $2,000 per pound. They’re highly prized by Asian aquaculture companies that use them to make food.

Fishermen are averaging $525 per pound this year. Last year’s price was almost $2,100 per pound. And the seasons almost over, as it’s scheduled to end on June 7 or on the day fishermen exhaust the annual quota. Less than one percent of the quota remained available on Monday.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at U.S. News

Less Effort, More Lobster? New Research Suggests That Fewer Traps Can Still Yield Profitable Results

June 1, 2020 — New research suggests that the U.S. lobster industry could place fewer traps in the water and still gain just as much profit. And that finding could play a role in the debate over what should be required of Maine lobstermen to reduce entanglements with endangered North Atlantic right whales.

The study was published this week in the peer-reviewed Marine Policy Journal. Lead researcher Hannah Myers is a graduate student at the University of Alaska’s College of Fisheries and Ocean Studies. She took a close look at landings and other data from lobster-fishing territory that crosses the international Hague Line between Nova Scotia and Maine.

“We found that Canadian fishers in the Gulf of Maine caught about the same amount of lobster using seven and a half times less effort than Maine fishers on the U.S. side,” she says.

The researchers found that while the Canadians spent fewer days at sea and fished fewer traps, the traps they pulled had almost four times as many lobsters in them.

Read the full story at Maine Public

Lobstermen don’t need all the traps they use, research claims

May 29, 2020 — New research suggests that the U.S. lobster industry could place fewer traps in the water and still gain just as much profit. And that finding could play a role in the debate over what should be required of Maine lobstermen to reduce entanglements with endangered North Atlantic right whales.

The study was published this week in the peer-reviewed Marine Policy Journal. Lead researcher Hannah Myers, a graduate student at the University of Alaska’s College of Fisheries and Ocean Studies, examined landings and other data from lobster-fishing territory that crosses the international Hague Line between Nova Scotia and Maine.

Myers’ research might help to end an impasse between animal-rights activists who are looking to reduce entanglements injurious, if not fatal, to the whales and have said that Maine fishing lines are at least a statistically-significant threat to the creatures. Maine lobstermen criticize activists and researchers as advancing poorly-researched and economically damaging arguments to their way of life. A plan recently advanced by Maine fishermen was criticized by researchers as not going far enough, while Maine’s federal and state government leaders have called on the federal government to back down on encroaching upon Maine lobstermen.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

MAINE: Center for Coastal Fisheries takes talk series online

May 28, 2020 — The Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries will not be able to operate its annual “lunch and learn” series at its facility in Stonington this summer as normal. With a move to virtual meetings, the center has the ability to reach more people.

It is a series folks came to look forward to in the summer. The Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries has been inviting around 40 people to its facility on the last Friday of the month in the summer, bag lunch in hand, to learn about different types of fisherman. This year it cannot happen in person, at least in the early summer, due to COVID-19 safety measures.

“Everything’s changed and we’re unable to open up quite yet to have in person experience, so everyone’s getting used to webinars,” said MCFC president Paul Anderson.

The Center’s summer talk series will go virtual in 2020, starting this Friday, May 29.

As “lunch and learn” starts on Zoom, it is a chance for more people to learn about the coastal fishing industry.

Read the full story at WFVX

Scallop Fishing off New England to Be Limited for Months

May 27, 2020 — Scallop fishing off New England will be subject to limitations for about the next 10 months, federal regulators have said.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said it has closed the northern Gulf of Maine fishing area, which means vessels fishing under federal regulations can’t fish for or possess scallops in the area until March 31.

The closure is necessary because of projects that the total allowable catch for the area has been spent, NOAA said.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at U.S. News

MONIQUE COOMBS: Why We Should Insist on U.S.-Caught Seafood

May 27, 2020 — You know Dave Marciano from National Geographic’s Wicked Tuna. (And I’ve written about him before): To most of us in New England, he’s just a decent guy who goes tuna fishing and happens to be on TV.

TV is just a thing that happened for him, and he sees it as an opportunity to both help his business and do what he can to promote the importance of commercial fishing, American fishermen, and delicious seafood in the U.S.

Marciano is worried about the future of his business, regardless of the TV show. He depends on people visiting and traveling to Gloucester for his charter boat business. “I was a smoker for 40 years so that probably puts me in the high-risk category,” he says. And, despite being outside, being on a fishing vessel is pretty close quarters.

Many of us who work in the fishing industry are worried about a couple of months from now when the fishing season picks up, the weather warms, and visitors flock to the coast. Are the restaurants going to be able to open? Are people going to want to travel? Will people be spending money? Restaurants and tourism are outlets for products like Maine lobster and other seafood in the U.S. What is going to happen when all of the fishermen need to get back to work but there’s no place for the product to go and no mechanism to get it to where it needs to be?

Read the full opinion piece at Heated