Saving Seafood

Mills requests federal assistance for Maine’s seafood industry

March 23, 2020 — Gov. Janet Mills is asking President Trump for help to support Maine’s fishing industry.

In a letter to the president Friday, Mills pointed to a collapse of the markets for seafood both locally and globally due to the COVID-19 pandemic and asked the administration to consider direct financial assistance, subsidies, operating loans or loan deferment, or tweaking existing programs to make them more accessible to fishing and seafood businesses.

“In the short-term, harvesters have only limited opportunities within their communities to sell small quantities of product in hopes to earn just enough money to buy weekly necessities,” wrote Mills, calling the men and women who fish for lobster, herring, groundfish and shellfish “the very backbone of our rural coastal economy.”

In the long term, Mills said, “it is clear that the collapse of the international and larger domestic markets will devastate Maine’s commercial fisheries.”

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Maine scallops continue downward trend after years of growth

March 23, 2020 — Maine’s prized scallop fleet caught fewer of the shellfish for the second year in a row despite nationwide trends toward increased catch.

Maine is home to a scallop industry that operates in near-shore waters and is beloved in the culinary world. The state’s scallops have cachet in part because of how quickly fishermen are able to get freshly caught product to consumers.

But the fishermen harvested about 415,000 pounds of scallop meat in 2019, down more than 200,000 pounds from 2018. And that year was a dip from 2017, when fishermen brought nearly 800,000 pounds to land.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The Washington Times

Floating wind farms a hot topic at forum

March 20, 2020 — If a changing climate, whale protection regulations and, now, the as yet immeasurable threat arising from the emergence of the coronavirus aren’t enough to keep fishermen awake at night, the potential development of offshore power generation facilities in the Gulf of Maine should do the trick.

Earlier this month, the Maine Fishermen’s Forum opened with a day-long seminar on the state of wind energy development in the Northeast in general and the Gulf of Maine in particular. So far, there are no wind generators in the Gulf of Maine or pretty much anywhere else in New England. The exception is off Block Island, in Rhode Island, where five, 600-foot-tall wind turbines anchored by piles driven into the seabed about 4 miles offshore are anticipated to generate 125,000 megawatt hours of electricity annually.

Plans for a giant windfarm sited in the waters of Nantucket Sound south of Cape Cod were abandoned in 2017. The proposed project known as Cape Wind was to cover some 24 square miles and was expected to generate 454 megawatts of electricity when complete. Plans for the wind farm called for 130 wind turbines with hubs 285 feet above the water and a total height of 440 feet. After years of controversy and litigation, the developer received all the permits needed to build the windfarm, but ultimately lost its contracts for the sale of the electricity and gave up on the project.

Currently, the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) is responsible for oversight of proposed offshore wind power projects. Fishermen at the forum heard from representatives of the New England Fishery Management Council that there is increasing interest in the possibility of developing floating windfarms in the Gulf of Maine. That, according to Michelle Bachman of the NEFMC, could make fishing “much stickier” than in fixed windfarms such as the roughly 60 large farms already in operation in off the coasts of Holland, Germany, Belgium and the United Kingdom.

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American

MAINE: Keliher advises caution, communication

March 20, 2020 — Patrick Keliher, the state Commissioner of Marine Resources, said in a letter to the lobster industry Monday afternoon that he does not have “any immediate plans to close any commercial fishery in response to the coronavirus.” 

He advises fishermen and dealers to “actively communicate with each other about the realities of the market” and “refrain from landing product if there is no market for it.” But he does not have the authority, under the current circumstances, to order the lobster fishery to close. 

Read the full story at the Mount Desert Island

Coronavirus concerns push back Maine elver season

March 20, 2020 — Maine is delaying the start of its $20 million elver fishery for at least two weeks to prevent the spread of coronavirus.

The 11-week fishing season was set to begin on Sunday, but Maine Department of Marine Resources Commissioner Pat Keliher decided to close the fishery for now to avoid the kind of crowded conditions on Maine’s rivers and in fishing shops that have become a hallmark of elver fishing season.

“The coronavirus pandemic continues to impact Maine’s fisheries in ways we could not have imagined,” Keliher said Friday. “It has become clear that the typical crowded conditions could not only allow transmission, but also speed the spread of the disease throughout the state as fishermen traveled along the coast to harvest and sell elvers.”

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

New England commercial fishermen feeling effects of COVID-19 outbreak

March 20, 2020 — The impact of the coronavirus outbreak is now taking a toll on the fishing industry in New England.

From clams to lobster, fishermen in Maine are having trouble finding places to sell their product.

Lobsters are selling for about $5 a pound, which is good for the customer, but bad for the fishermen who said it usually sells for much more than that this time of year.

Read the full story at WMUR

JESSICA HATHAWAY: Why local fisheries matter — with or without a global pandemic

March 18, 2020 — The topic of food security has been on the mind of forward thinkers for years now, who primarily have focused on access to food as affected by natural disasters. As Covid-19 closes ports, markets and distributors, and social distancing practices threaten the supply chain for goods and services, many of us are discovering how valuable local products are.

Some of my Maine-based social media groups have been filled with posts from the staff of locally owned stores, detailing the products they have for sale, and from local farmers hoping to find new distribution points for their goods and to remind local buyers that not everything is sold out, despite the popularity of Empty Shelf Shots.

I’m feeling lucky to live in a state with small-scale farmers and fishermen. The products being delivered locally are made, grown and caught right here. On Friday, as my office was closing for the foreseeable future, I hauled home 20 pounds of Maine blueberries and 10 pounds of Gulf of Maine scallops for the freezer.

This pandemic is a reminder that a global marketplace can satisfy our worldly desires, but it cannot sustain us through deeply troubled times when our access is limited. Diversification of markets would ideally include expanding local distribution points, as well as global ones. And if we as consumers want access to our local products in times of trouble, then we have to keep buying them even when the world opens up to us again.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Coronavirus takes a toll on the Maine lobster industry

March 16, 2020 — As of 4:30 p.m. Sunday, March 15, seven Maine residents have been confirmed positive and five others are presumed positive for the coronavirus, according to the state. Click here for the latest coronavirus news, which the BDN has made free for the public. You can support this mission by purchasing a digital subscription.

Maine’s first probable case of the new coronavirus was only diagnosed on Thursday, but the global pandemic has already left its mark on the Maine lobster industry in the form of shrinking demand and dropping prices.

Unfortunately, there’s no end in sight to the economic disruption caused by the virus, according to Annie Tselikis, the executive director of the Maine Lobster Dealers’ Association.

“The market situation right now is real. There is not a lot of demand,” she said Friday. “You’re seeing this across all commodities. It’s not just lobster. It’s not just seafood. Uncertainty is challenging for any industry and any movement of goods.”

Problems stemming from coronavirus seemed to begin in January, after the spread of the virus paused Canadian charter flights to Asia during a time that is usually very busy for lobster sales because of Chinese New Year celebrations, according to Bloomberg News. Because of that, thousands of pounds of unsold lobster flooded North American markets, causing wholesale prices to drop.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

Coronavirus outbreak is sinking lobster prices, reports claim

March 13, 2020 — Bring in the dancing lobsters, and get ‘em while they’re hot.

The ongoing coronavirus outbreak is drowning Chinese demand for American lobster, reportedly plunging market prices to record lows.

Amid the COVID-19 crisis, lobster prices in the U.S. have hit their lowest in at least four years, Bloomberg reports. China is one of the biggest export destinations for live lobster, where the delicacy is “a sign of wealth and status” among the middle class, as well as a popular choice for Lunar New Year celebrations and weddings as a “symbol of good fortune,” according to The New York Times.

However, no one is quite indulging like they used to during widespread lockdowns and the continued outbreak. Travel restrictions, too, have effectively canceled the once-frequent charter flights of the crustaceans from the U.S. and Canada to the Asian nation.

Read the full story at Fox News