Saving Seafood

Prices in Maine’s lucrative baby eel fishery sink to 10-year low

April 7, 2020 — A week after Maine’s annual commercial baby eel fishing season got under way, prices for the lucrative catch are the lowest they have been in the past 10 years.

According to information posted on the Maine Department of Marine Resources website, the average price paid to baby eel fishermen in Maine this past week is $512 per pound, which is roughly $360 lower than the lowest average annual price fishermen have received in the past decade.

From 2011 through 2019, baby eels in Maine fetched an average of $1,670 per pound, varying between an average of $875 in 2014 and an average of $2,366 in 2018.

Maine is the only state that has a significant legal fishery for baby eels, which also are known as glass eels or elvers. The vast majority of elvers caught in Maine are shipped live to China, where they are grown in aquaculture ponds and then harvested as adult eels for the global seafood market.

Fishery officials have said that the prices for elvers this year could be unusually low, given the severe adverse impact the global COVID-19 pandemic has had on the economy and the demand for seafood, and in particular on the restaurant market in Asia.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

Seafood Industry Struggling to Stay Afloat Amid Outbreak

April 6, 2020 — The seafood industry has been upended by the spread of the coronavirus, which has halted sales in restaurants and sent fishermen and dealers scrambling for new markets.

Seafood is a global industry that relies on a complex network of fishermen, processors, buyers and distributors, all of which have been affected by the virus. A lack of demand has sent prices tumbling and led some fishermen to tie up their boats until the outbreak subsides.

Members of the U.S. seafood industry are calling on the Trump administration and Congress to help them weather the uncertain time. But for now, the market for big-money items such as scallops and lobster is “pretty much nonexistent,” said Bert Jongerden, general manager of the Portland Fish Exchange, a Maine auction house.

The auction house usually moves up to 60,000 pounds (27,215 kilograms) of fish in a week but is down to less than a third of that, Jongerden said.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The New York Times

Warming Gulf of Maine waters may be stunting lobster growth

April 2, 2020 — The Gulf of Maine is warming faster than 99% of the world’s oceans. And the trend may be having an impact on Maine’s most valuable commercial fishery, if temperature affects lobster larvae and their success in growing to adulthood, scientists say.

The University of New England in Biddeford, Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in East Boothbay, the Maine Department of Marine Resources and Hood College in Frederick, Md., have received an $860,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to study that impact.

“We’ll be studying how temperature influences how larvae settle, where they settle and how successfully they settle,” Markus Frederich, a UNE marine science professor helping to lead the project, said in a news release Tuesday. “The findings of this project will help us make more specific predictions of how many lobsters there will be in the Gulf of Maine in the future.”

Maine’s lobster catch was valued at $485.4 million last year, when Maine lobster harvesters landed 100.7 million pounds. It was a 17% decline compared with 2018, but landings still topped the 100-million-pound mark for the ninth year in a row.

Read the full story at MaineBiz

Pollution Has Slowed Around The World. Scientists Wonder How That Will Affect Maine

April 2, 2020 — Atmospheric and oceanographic scientists are just as concerned as anyone about helping their friends and family, the nation and the world make it through the trials of the COVID-19 pandemic. But it is also their job to pay attention to a kind of grand experiment that’s underway — an unprecedented hiatus in human pressure on global ecosystems and what that hiatus could mean on the ground, and on the water, for Maine.

Paul Mayewski is the director of the University of Maine’s Climate Change Institute. He says that the COVID-19 pandemic has pushed the pause button on pollution worldwide.

“Unfortunately, like 9/11, this is a situation in which there is a tremendous shutdown in activity, even more dramatically than 9/11 because it is happening all over the world,” he says.

For scientists such as Mayewski, it’s a chance to study phenomena that hearken back to the pre-industrial era and, some believe, could provide a snapshot of what a post-fossil future could look like.

Read the full story at Maine Public

As Maine’s Fishing Industry Flounders Amid Coronavirus, Lawmakers Look for Help

April 1, 2020 — With so many restaurants closed and much of life disrupted by the new coronavirus, fishermen in New England are trying to figure out how they’ll pay the bills this year.

Leaders in Maine say that they’ve found some specific ways to help at the local level but think more federal aid may be needed to help those in the seafood industry minimize economic damage.

Last week, Maine Gov. Janet Mills sent a letter to President Donald Trump explaining how dire the situation is.

She told the White House that “a $50 million loss in fishery value” in lobstering by June was a real risk at present.

Mills has provided pathways for Maine small businesses to apply for low-interest loans that could help offset cause during the virus outbreak.

Read the full story at NECN

Coronavirus-related closures impacting US fisheries, driving down prices

April 1, 2020 — As the COVID-19 pandemic continues across the U.S., with many states issuing stay-at-home mandates that will last at least a month, a growing number of fisheries are facing choppy waters.

The restaurant industry is seeking relief as its profits have plunged during the crisis, and many of the fisheries that supply those restaurants with seafood are facing similar downturns. Fisheries and suppliers of premium seafood products have been hit especially hard, with sales of products like lobster plummeting due to lack of demand.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

MAINE: Elver season opens with new safety measures in place

March 31, 2020 — Yes, Virginia, there will be an elver season this year after all.

Last Thursday, the Department of Marine Resources announced that the 2020 elver fishing season would open at 8 a.m. on Monday, March 30. Originally slated to open on Sunday, March 22, the season was delayed by DMR Commissioner Patrick Keliher because of concerns about the spread of COVID-19. At the time, Keliher said he was concerned that some elements of the fishery, “as traditionally practiced,” made it difficult to adhere to social distancing recommendations from the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Those include maintaining 6 feet of separation between people, in order to reduce the spread of this disease.

The announcement last week described a fishing season unlike any other in recent years.

For the first time, licensed elver harvesters will be allowed to fish for and sell the elver quota of other licensed harvesters instead of just their own quota. Dealers also have agreed to limit the number of transactions with harvesters during the season substantially by setting a minimum purchase quantity of 1 pound of elvers.

“Our objective is to reduce the population of harvesters congregating on the shores and at dealers’ shops,” Keliher said in a statement last Thursday. “Key to achieving this objective will be to allow those who are the most vulnerable to remain at home and have another harvester catch the elvers for them.”

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American

Maine’s eel season, delayed by virus, finally gets started

March 30, 2020 — Maine fishermen are expected to begin the state’s lucrative harvest of baby eels on Monday after the coronavirus outbreak forced the season to be delayed.

Maine fishermen catch the eels, called elvers, in rivers and streams every spring. They’re often worth more than $2,000 per pound, as they’re an important part of the worldwide supply chain for Japanese food.

Maine Department of Marine Resources Commissioner Patrick Keliher suspended the fishery earlier this month. It ordinarily would have started on March 22. Keliher said at the time that aspects of the fishery made it difficult to maintain social distancing and help prevent the spread of coronavirus.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Fishermen turn to direct marketing as demand for Maine seafood plummets

March 27, 2020 — For decades, lobster has been the symbol of Maine’s fishing industry, but at the moment the microscopic coronavirus is taking center stage.

As recently as Feb. 27, the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention reported no confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus in the state. By Thursday, the public health agency reported 155 confirmed cases in Maine and the state was on virtual lockdown. All those who could work from home were staying away from their offices, “nonessential” businesses were shuttered, and bars and restaurants were closed except for takeout and delivery business.

While the economic news has been bad for all sectors of the economy, the fishing industry has been particularly hard-hit.

Last Friday, Gov. Janet Mills wrote to President Trump seeking “immediate assistance” for the Maine fishing industry. Harvesters, she said, “have only limited opportunities within their communities to sell small quantities … in hopes to earn just enough money to buy weekly necessities.” Likewise, she said dealers and processors reported there were “no markets for the product already in inventory.”

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Maine’s Elver Fishery Rules Relaxed To Protect Industry During Coronavirus Pandemic

March 27, 2020 — State regulators are relaxing some rules for Maine’s valuable elver fishery, in order to get the delayed season underway while maintaining safe practices during the coronavirus pandemic.

Licensed fishermen will be able to harvest not only their own quotas, but those of others as well, and to bring them all to dealers. The goal, says Department of Marine Resources spokesman Jeff Nichols, is to reduce the number of people involved on a daily basis.

“So that will reduce the number of harvesters on the banks and at the shops where they’re sold,” Nichols says. “At the same time dealers have agreed to a set of guidelines intended to provide protection at the shops.”

Read the full story at Maine Public