Saving Seafood

MAINE: Fish For Everyone to celebrate local seafood

July 17, 2020 — The Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries is sponsoring a week-long seafood celebration on the Blue Hill peninsula and the island from August 1-7, Paul Anderson, executive director, has announced.

The festival, dubbed the Fish for Everyone: A Seafood Celebration, has two tracks, according to Bobbi Billings, MCCF’s administrative director.

On one track, the MCCF will donate money to local nonprofits such as the Healthy Island Project, the Island Nursing Home, the Tree of Life and Island Food pantries. They can then buy local seafood with it, Billings said. On August 6, the nursing home will serve lobster and crab rolls and HIP will hold a seafood picnic for Salt Air Seniors.

On the second track, MCCF is encouraging local seafood dealers and restaurants to serve locally sourced seafood, and it will help promote those activities through social media and print, Billings said. A brochure will list where people can buy locally sourced seafood.

Read the full story at the Penobscot Bay Press

MAINE: Microplastics are harming the Gulf of Maine’s baby lobsters, study finds

July 14, 2020 — A study by scientists at a marine research laboratory indicates that plastic pollution in the Gulf of Maine likely is creating problems for the lobster population.

Researchers at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in Boothbay examined how microplastics — pieces of plastic broken down into tiny particles — affect lobster larvae in the gulf. They found that lobster larvae, which float in the water column and typically are found in shallow water, get fibers caught under their shells and sometimes ingest particles.

The issue of pollution in the Gulf of Maine, where millions of pounds of lobster fishing gear is deployed each year, has environmental and economic implications for Maine. The commercial statewide lobster harvest in 2019 alone accounted for more than $485 million in fishing revenue in the state, nearly three-quarters of all of Maine’s fisheries landings value that year.

The study, published in the scientific journal Marine Pollution Bulletin, showed young larvae are more likely to get microplastic fibers trapped under their shells that protect their gills, and were the least likely to survive heavy concentrations of microplastics. Older larvae had less fiber accumulation under their shells but were shown to ingest the plastic, which could pose health consequences as they get older.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

Seafood stimulus: Cash flow and connections for rising stars

July 9, 2020 — From two corners of the seafood sector this week came new projects to encourage industry exploration and expansion. Bristol Seafood and the Genuine Alaska Pollock Producers each paved the way for new funding streams to promote the U.S. seafood sector’s diversity and growth.

Bristol Seafood announced it opened an office at the New England Ocean Cluster in Portland, Maine, and founded sponsorship of a program to support under-represented blue economy entrepreneurs.

Inclusion in the Blue Economy will provide dedicated workspace at the New England Ocean Cluster House as well as mentorship opportunities for entrepreneurs, focusing on women, people of color, and individuals from non-marine industries who are passionate about building responsible marine-related businesses.

“Innovation and inclusion are two essential parts of our culture,” said Peter Handy, Bristol Seafood’s president and CEO. “Our presence at the New England Ocean Cluster and our sponsorship to support under-represented entrepreneurs aligns with our mission to make seafood America’s favorite protein.”

Read the full story at National Fisherman

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