Saving Seafood

Summer flounder: good news on quota, but waiting for restaurants’ return

July 7, 2020 — The $25.2 million East Coast market for summer flounder — although a reliable bread-and-butter fish — has faced ups and downs in quotas over the years.

The 2020 commercial quota is 11.53 million pounds, while the recreational harvest limit is 7.69 million pounds. The highest percent of commercial allocation goes to Virginia (21.32 percent) and North Carolina (27.44 percent) while Delaware, Maine and New Hampshire have the smallest allocations.

Anecdotally, in the last few years, the price per pound for jumbo summer flounder (4 pounds or larger) decreased, with some vessels getting around 50 cents less per pound for jumbos compared to smaller sizes. As market conditions have shifted relative to quotas over the past few years, there is some speculation that markets prefer smaller product that fits better on a plate.

Now 2020 is the first full year with higher quotas for the fishery — but with the covid-19 crisis and its impact on markets globally, it remains to be seen if quotas will be fully utilized.

“It’s going to be very hard to predict summer flounder landings for 2020 at this point. Last year, the quotas were revised upward by about 50 percent, based on the new stock assessment, but that change wasn’t implemented until midyear,” says Kiley Dancy of the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council staff.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Bristol Seafood adds office in New England Ocean Cluster

July 7, 2020 — Bristol Seafood has opened an office in the New England Ocean Cluster (NEOC) in Portland, Maine, U.S.A.

Additionally, Bristol Seafood has provided a founding sponsorship to create Inclusion in the Blue Economy, a new program to support underrepresented blue economy entrepreneurs by providing dedicated workspace and mentorship opportunities to women, people of color, and individuals from non-marine industries who are passionate about building responsible marine-related businesses.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Kingfish Maine files its first permit application for proposed RAS

July 7, 2020 — Kingfish Maine, a subsidiary of Kats, the Netherlands-based The Kingfish Company, will formally file its first pre-permitting application for its proprietary land-based aquaculture facility in Jonesport, Maine.

The Maine Pollutant Discharge Elimination System Permit (MEPDES) application is “one of the more critical permits required for the operation of a land-based farming facility,” according to the company.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Atlantic Herring Days Out Meeting Scheduled for July 23, 10 AM – Noon

July 7, 2020 — The following was released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission:

Atlantic Herring Management Board members from the States of Maine and New Hampshire, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts will meet on July 23, 2020 from 10 a.m. to Noon to review landings to date and discuss potential changes to days out measures for the 2020 Area 1A (inshore Gulf of Maine) fishery for Season 1. Days out measures can include specification of the number of consecutive landings days, weekly landings limits, and restrictions on at-sea transfers. This meeting will be held via webinar and conference call. The call and the webinar information are included below:

Atlantic Herring Days Out Meeting

July 23, 2020
10:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m.
Webinar link: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/7337839744604085772.

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email with information to connect to the webinar.

We strongly recommend connecting to the webinar using the computer audio (VoIP).

For those who will not be joining the webinar but would like to listen in, please refer to your confirmation email for dial-in information.

The 2020 Area 1A allowable catch limit (ACL) is 2,957 metric tons (mt) after adjusting for the research set-aside, the 30 mt fixed gear set-aside, and the fact that Area 1A closes at 92% of the sub-ACL. The Board established the following allocations for the 2020 Area 1A ACL: 72.8% available from June 1 – September 30 and 27.2% available from October 1 – December 31. In April, the Board set effort controls for Season 1 in Area 1A (refer to Memo 20-50 for specifics).

Please contact Max Appelman, Fishery Management Plan Coordinator, at 703.842.0716 or mappelman@asmfc.org for more information.

A PDF of the meeting notice can be found here.

For Maine Lobstermen, a Perfect Storm Threatens the Summer Season

July 6, 2020 — As he pulled alongside one of his lobster pots, marked by a red and yellow buoy on the Penobscot Bay, Mike Hutchings extracted and measured several of the crustaceans that would contribute to his 130-pound catch that day. It was a decent haul but his assessment of the fishing season was grim: “The worst it’s ever been.”

Mr. Hutchings’s catch on the final Saturday in June came as the lobster trade approached its money-making time. With the Fourth of July holiday around the corner, Mr. Hutchings and his fellow lobstermen were supposed to be gearing up for a major payday as out-of-staters, cruise ships, warmer weather and bounties of lobsters, having just molted their shells and been lured into the thousands of traps anchored on the rocky bottom of Maine’s coastal waters, came together in a seasonal windfall.

But like many businesses across the country, the Maine lobster industry, which makes up the bulk of the fishing revenue the state brings in every year, is being battered by the coronavirus, which has crushed the tourism trade that Mr. Hutchings and his fellow fishermen rely on for a living.

Read the full story at the New York Times

Coronavirus in Maine: Lobster Industry Hit Hard Despite Few Cases

July 2, 2020 — Blaine Olsen, a lifelong lobsterman, was navigating his 30-foot boat off the coast of Stonington, Maine, when his sternman, who’s also his wife, yelled above the diesel engine’s din about the pittance the local cooperative was paying harvesters. He shot Ginny a doleful stare for a good five seconds.

“Holy sh-t, man,” he said. “It costs us $600 a day to go out.” The dock price — $2.25 a pound for soft-shell lobsters — was half what it was a year ago, making it virtually impossible to earn a profit.

The novel coronavirus has barely touched the public health of this corner of rural Down East Maine, with Hancock County reporting just 16 cases and one death as of June 30. Its economic health is another matter: The fallout from Covid-19 threatens a historically bad year for the Olsens and the rest of the state’s lobster industry.

Fear of contagion and the near-total shutdown of restaurants and cruise lines, where most consumers eat the crustaceans, have devastated demand. Infection-prevention protocols at processing plants have cut capacity, and the drop in air traffic has snarled the logistics of shipping live creatures. Hopes for a recovery anytime soon are dim because prices already typically fall in July.

Some 80 percent of American lobster, the U.S.’s most valuable marine fishery, comes from Maine. And more so than anywhere else, Maine lobster comes from the waters around Stonington. Lobstermen in this county hauled almost a third of the 101 million pounds (worth $485 million) landed statewide last year.

Read the full story at Bloomberg

Lobster prices falling in New England, and they might fall further

June 29, 2020 — Lobster prices are falling in New England as the industry deals with the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, and they could drop even more later this summer, industry officials said.

The American lobster fishing industry, based mostly in Maine, has had to cope with a supply chain that has been disrupted by the pandemic. Wholesale prices were lower than previous years this spring, and consumers started to see lower prices at markets earlier in June.

Members of the industry said prices could likely fall more in July. America’s lobster catch typically picks up in the summer, when lobsters shed their shells and reach legal trapping size. This year, fishers will likely bring lobsters to the docks in a time when restaurants are slowed or shuttered and seafood processors aren’t taking nearly as many of the crustaceans, industry members said.

That could translate to lower prices to consumers, who are already paying less than $6 per pound for lobsters in some Maine markets. Prices around $8 or $9 per pound are typical of this month in Maine.

“The state needs to do something to curb supply, because there is no demand,” said David Cousens, a lobster fisher and former president of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association. “Otherwise we’re going to have a disaster.”

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Sun Journal

Gov. Mills asks Trump administration to reject right whale protection proposal

June 29, 2020 — Gov. Janet Mills has asked the Trump administration to reject a petition from the Pew Charitable Trusts that proposes tight seasonal regulations for some lobster fishing areas to protect endangered right whales.

The proposal “not only fails to provide additional protections for right whales, but contrary to Pew’s assertions, it will cause significant economic impact to Maine’s iconic lobster industry,” Mills wrote in a letter to U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross.

Pew, a national civic engagement and public affairs nonprofit, submitted a petition this month to ban traditional lobster fishing in areas where whales feed during their annual migration. The nonprofit wants alternating three-month periods when only ropeless fishing is allowed in areas including waters off Mount Desert Rock, Jordan Basin and Jeffrey’s Ledge, and year-round ropeless fishing off the coast of Nantucket.

The restrictions to protect the remaining 400 right whales would only minimally impact Maine’s $483 million lobster fishery because most fishing takes place closer to shore, Pew said.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Trump wants to use trade war bailout funds to buoy Maine’s lobster industry

June 26, 2020 — President Donald Trump signed an executive order this week directing the Department of Agriculture (USDA) to provide trade war bailout money to Maine lobstermen, a long-coveted win for the industry, which has been impacted by steep Chinese tariffs since 2018.

The EO instructs Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue to assess trade war damages to the New England seafood industry and distribute aid accordingly, and to include the U.S. seafood producers in future payments.

“It’s good news, definitely, to see the president taking an interest in the lobster industry,” said Sheila Dassatt, executive director of the Downeast Lobstermen’s Association, an organization that advocates for the industry.

Read the full story at The Counter