Saving Seafood

The Gulf of Maine is warming up. To see potential effects, consider the lumpfish.

November 18, 2024 — The lumpfish is small. As its name suggests, it’s rather lumpy – not streamlined, like the fish that interest most recreational and commercial anglers. It isn’t eaten or harvested in New England. Until recently, lumpfish populations in the Gulf of Maine haven’t been studied much.

But to anyone who has interacted with one, the lumpfish is beloved, says University of New Hampshire researcher Elizabeth Fairchild.

“They love to come swim up to the top of a tank to check out anybody who walks by,” she said. “They’re very personable. They’re very curious and they’re hungry all the time, so they come right up to you thinking that you’re going to feed them.”

Fairchild has focused on studying lumpfish in part because they have a special quality. They’re a “cleaner fish,” eating parasites that cling to other fish. Salmon farmers in other parts of the world have used lumpfish to help manage sea lice, a small crustacean that attaches to fish and can cause health problems.

Instead of using harsh chemicals or thermal baths to get rid of the sea lice, farmers can let lumpfish eat the parasites instead.

Read the full article at nhpr

MAINE: Auction to help fisheries nonprofit

November 13 2024 — An online auction is underway to support the Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries “as we pursue our goals to secure a sustainable future for fisheries and fishing communities in Eastern Maine and beyond,” said a statement on the center’s website.

To browse through “an extraordinary array of one-of-a-kind, inspiring items and experiences, thoughtfully curated to evoke local pride and connection to our vibrant community,” said an email, go to new.biddingowl.com/FishForever.

Read the full article at The Ellsworth American

MAINE: Why this Maine native is concerned about his state’s lobster fishery

November 13, 2024 —  Andrew Goode grew up lobstering with his father in Boothbay, Maine, a coastal town whose economy and culture have long been defined by the fishing industry.

Goode: “It’s essentially what built the town.”

Today, as a researcher at the University of Maine Darling Marine Center, Goode studies how the warming climate is affecting lobster in his region.

Read the full at Yale Climate Connections

US East Coast states select firms to run offshore wind development compensation fund for fishers

November 12, 2024 — A coalition of U.S. East Coast states have selected two firms to manage the Offshore Wind Fisheries Compensation Fund, a mitigation program built to compensate commercial and recreation for-hire fishers for revenue lost due to offshore wind developments.

The fund is a collaboration between the governments of 11 East Coast states – Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina – to provide financial compensation for economic loss caused by offshore wind projects along the Atlantic Coast. The states launched a competition earlier this year to select an administrator to run the new fund.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Richmond firm to oversee fishermen compensation related to offshore wind farms

November 6, 2024 — Richmond claims resolution firm BrownGreer PLC and London’s The Carbon Trust have been tapped to design and roll out a regional fisheries mitigation program on the East Coast.

The program is aimed at providing financial compensation to the commercial and recreational for-hire fishing industries related to the impacts of new offshore wind farms.

BrownGreer and The Carbon Trust will work with 11 East Coast states and their respective fishing industry communities on the program. The groups have established a design oversight committee and a for-hire committee to provide advice and guidance from respective parties on the program.

The involved states include Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina.

Read the full article at Richmond Inno

MAINE: Commercial alewife fishing may return to this Maine town

November 4, 2024 — Bailey Bowden, chair of Penobscot’s alewife committee, just received news he’s been hoping to hear for a decade.

On Oct. 23, the quasi-governmental Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) approved the management plan for shad and river herring, including alewives, submitted by the Maine Department of Marine Resources (DMR). That state plan includes a proposal to reopen Penobscot’s commercial fishery at Wight’s Pond.

“It’s been over 10 years,” Bowden said of the permitting process. It’s been decades more — since 1974, to be exact — since Penobscot’s last commercial harvest of alewives, Bowden said.

In recent years, volunteers on the town’s alewife committee painstakingly counted alewives each spring as they entered the fresh waters of the pond via Winslow Stream from the salt water of Northern Bay.

Read the full article at Bangor Daily News

MAINE: Maine lobstermen worried about cuts to how much herring they can catch for bait

November 1, 2024 — Fishermen in Maine say they’re dealing with a new setback: a nearly 90 percent cut in how much herring they can bring in to bait lobster.

Congressman Jared Golden says he’s opposed to the limit, which would reduce the herring catch by 89 percent over three years.

Fishermen in Maine say they question how regulators came to that catch limit, saying the fish are out there.

Read the full article at Fox 23

Maine offshore wind auction draws a few takers

October 31, 2024 — Two companies have won development rights to construct floating offshore wind turbines off Maine’s coastline, but lackluster interest in the bids highlights the impact of inflation and other economic challenges that have slowed the industry.

On Tuesday, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management announced that the federal government’s “first-ever” wind energy lease sale resulted in nearly $22 million in lease payments for four parcels off the coast of Maine and Massachusetts.

Connecticut-based Avangrid Renewables submitted winning bids of $4.9 million and $6.2 million for two parcels about 30 miles off the coast of Cape Cod in Massachusetts. In comparison, Invenergy NE Offshore Wind won a $4.9 million bid to develop wind energy more than 46 miles off Maine’s coastline and another project off Cape Cod for $5.8 million. Combined, the companies leased nearly 440,000 acres of federal waters.

However, only half of the areas offered for lease by the federal agency were bid on, far less than offshore wind leases in previous rounds. In 2022, developers bid $4.37 billion on six lease parcels off the coast of New York and another $757 million on areas off California’s shores, according to agency data.

Read the full article at The Center Square

US Gulf of Maine offshore wind auction attracts scant interest

October 30, 2024 — A U.S. auction of offshore wind development rights in the Gulf of Maine on Tuesday drew bids for only half of the eight offered leases, for a total of just $21.9 million in high bids, in the latest sign of deep industry malaise.

The sale was a stark display of the lack of industry appetite for new investment after a year of high-profile setbacks that include canceled projects, two shelved lease sales in Oregon and the Gulf of Mexico and a construction accident at the nation’s first major offshore wind project.

It also demonstrated a reluctance to bet big money on projects that will require floating wind turbines, an emerging technology required in very deep waters like those of the Gulf of Maine.

After just one round of bidding, four of eight offered leases sold to developers Avangrid (AGR.N), opens new tab and Invenergy, the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management said. They were among 14 companies that had been qualified to bid at the sale.

Read the full article at Reuters 

These divers are trying to make a dent in Maine’s ‘ghost gear’ problem, one abandoned trap at a time

October 30, 2024 — There’s a chill in the air on this overcast morning in late September, as Buzz Scott steers his boat, the “Hurry Sundown,” out of a Rockland marina and toward the granite breakwater that protects the harbor.

He points to small specks displayed on the vessel’s navigation system. They’re abandoned fishing traps sitting on the ocean floor. Scientists estimate there are millions of them littering the bottom of the Gulf of Maine.

The plastic-coated wire traps are torn loose from their buoy lines in storms or accidentally cut off by propellers in high-traffic areas and collect at the bottom of Maine’s many coves and harbors.

“I think right in here is going to be a gold mine,” Scott said. “There’s one every ten feet it looks like on the sonar.”

Scott’s nonprofit, OceansWide, has been training scuba divers to recover derelict, or “ghost gear,” from the seafloor. They’ve primarily been diving in Boothbay Harbor but are in Rockland for the first time.

Scott tosses a buoy with a small orange flag into the water to mark their dive spot.

Read the full article at Maine Public