Saving Seafood

Maine Lobstering Union’s Lobster 207 wins $5M settlement

January 9, 2025 — The Maine Lobstering Union’s cooperative, Lobster 207, recently closed a significant chapter with a settlement exceeding $5 million, marking the end of a five-year legal battle against its former CEO, Warren Pettegrow, and his family.

This victory represents not only a financial win but also a pivotal moment in the co-op’s mission to uphold fairness in Maine’s famed lobster industry.

According to Maine Biz, the dispute began after Lobster 207 purchased the wholesale division of Trenton Bridge Lobster Pound in 2017, bringing Warren Pettegrow on as CEO. The Pettegrows agreed to step away from the wholesale business to avoid competition with Lobster 207. However, by 2019, allegations of financial misconduct and breaches of this agreement surfaced, leading to a lawsuit in federal court. The co-op accused the Pettegrows of fraudulent practices, which included issuing false invoices and competing directly with the business they had sold to Lobster 207.

Read the full article at National Fisherman

MAINE: Select group of Maine’s fishing industry will get rare chance to catch Northern Shrimp

January 8, 2025 — Dozens of fishermen have applied for a rare chance to catch Northern Shrimp once again, after the population has been off limits for over a decade.

The Maine Department of Marine Resources will soon select just seven members of Maine’s fishing industry to participate in a winter sampling research program for northern shrimp.

In partnership with the Atlantic State Marine Fisheries Commission Northern Shrimp Board, it aims to collect data for the stock assessment to determine if the moratorium that began in 2013 can be lifted.

The moratorium was put in place due to low population levels that scientist attribute to climate change.

Read the full article at Fox 22 

New England Fishermen Get Partial Win In Court Decision on Council Un-Constitutionality

January 3, 2024 — A federal court judge in Maine granted partial approval to a claim brought by New England Fishermen Stewardship Association (NEFSA) that certain authorities of regional management council members and the agency that implements their decisions into regulation, are unconstitutional. The authorities center on whether and how councils may override a decision made by the Secretary of Commerce in the process of putting council decisions into fisheries regulations.

Citing two other cases from last year — United Cook Inlet Drift Associaiton, et al v. National Marine Fisheries Service, et al and Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo — Judge John Woodcock agreed with both and went one step further.

Woodcock’s decision ordered that the provisions referred to as unconstitutional be “…severed as unconstitutional from the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act.”

Read the full article at Seafoodnews.com

Right whales returned in higher numbers to eastern Gulf of Maine this year

January 2, 2024 — For the first time in more than a decade, North Atlantic right whales returned in larger numbers this year to the eastern Gulf of Maine. Scientists believe their return may be due to colder deep water temperatures in the Gulf of Maine this past Spring.

Scientists collected the data from buoys placed in the Gulf of Maine, and observed that deep water temperatures were noticeably colder than in recent years.

Read the full article at Maine Public

Small winter catch set for New England’s long-closed shrimp industry

December 17, 2024 — New England shrimp, long lost from the marketplace as waters have warmed, will come back to seafood counters in small amounts next year due to a research fishing program.

Also called Maine shrimp or northern shrimp, the small pink crustaceans were long beloved by seafood fans in winter. But for a decade now, the seafood industry has been under a fishing moratorium for the shrimp because of concerns about low population levels, which scientists attribute to climate change and warming oceans.

That moratorium is going to remain in place as the shrimp population has failed to improve, according to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission. Yet because the regulatory body said there is interest in collecting data about the shrimp, this coming winter there will be a fishing industry-funded winter sampling program for them.

The program will allow fishermen to catch up to 58,400 pounds (26,490 kilograms) of the shrimp this winter. It’s a far cry from the early 2010s when fishermen caught more than 10 million pounds (4.5 million kilograms) of the shrimp per year. But the program will provide important data to better understand the status of the shrimp population while also allowing a small amount of catch, the commission said.

“The sampling program is intended to run early in the new year from mid/late January through March 2025. Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts are currently working together to finalize the logistics of the program including the start date,” said Chelsea Tuohy, a fishery management plan coordinator with the commission, on Tuesday.

Fishermen long sought the cold water-loving shrimp in the Gulf of Maine, a body of water off New England that has experienced significant warmth in recent years. The commission said in a statement that recent science has found “no improvement in stock status” for the shrimp. The commission has also described the Gulf of Maine as “an increasingly inhospitable environment” for the shrimp.

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Read the full article at the ABC

MAINE: Moratorium on fishing Maine shrimp to continue through 2025

December 16, 2024 — The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Northern Shrimp Section is maintaining the current moratorium on northern shrimp fishing through the 2025 fishing year. That makes 11 years of no commercial shrimp fishing in Maine.

That action followed the 2024 Stock Assessment Update, “which indicates the northern shrimp stock has been at low levels of biomass for over the past decade despite the fishery being under a moratorium since 2014,” said the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission in a Dec. 13 news relesae.

The Update found no improvement in stock status and 2023 summer survey indices of abundance, biomass, and recruitment were the lowest in the 1984-2023 time-series.

There will be a pilot industry-funded winter sampling program for 2025 with a research set-aside quota of 26.5 metric tons (or approximately 58,400 pounds).

Read the full article at the Penobscot Bay Pilot

$2M Grant to Fishermen’s Alliance Means More Boats Gathering Ocean Data

December 5, 2024 — Strange things have been happening in recent years in the Gulf of Maine, the 36,000 square miles of relatively enclosed ocean stretching from Cape Cod to Nova Scotia. Low-oxygen zones have become annual occurrences, a large brown algae bloom in summer 2023 grew from Maine to northern Massachusetts, and looming over it all is the accelerating warming of surface waters. The Gulf of Maine is warming three times faster than the global average, according to the Maine Climate Council, which is faster than 99 percent of the world’s oceans.

Understanding these phenomena and their effects on fisheries is difficult, said Owen Nichols, Director of Marine Fisheries Research at the Center for Coastal Studies, because of the lack of data available on the ocean water below the surface — at the depths where most fish live.

There is one group of people, however, who regularly put equipment deep in the ocean: fishermen. And many of them are already working with scientists to gather data on the water.

But on Oct. 31, Gov. Healey’s administration announced a nearly $2 million grant to the Chatham-based Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance that will significantly expand fishing vessel-based measurements. The grant is from the quasi-public Mass. Technology Collaborative.

Since 2001, a Northeast Fisheries Science Center project has partnered with local fishermen to try to fix the lack of data about the depths. The project, called eMOLT (Environmental Monitoring on Lobster Traps and Large Trawlers), has so far installed sensors on about 100 fishermen’s gear to gather data on stratification of water temperature, dissolved oxygen levels, and other parameters.

Read the full story at The Provincetown Independent

MAINE: Want local scallops? Now’s the time to find ’em

December 3, 2024 — Scallops, briny and delicious and from local waters, are ready for dining at home and in restaurants as the commercial scallop season opens across all Maine fishing zones.

Commercial diving and dragging for scallops is divided into three zones, with fishing areas in Hancock County and parts of Washington County within Zone 2. Divers in Zone 2 began hand-catching scallops Nov. 17 but dragging is just underway, while both diving and dragging open in Zones 1 and 3 in early December.

As Maine Department of Marine Resources (DMR) balances the health of the state’s scallop resources against the needs of the commercial fishing industry, Upper Machias Bay, Moosabec Reach and Upper Cranberries in Zone 2 are closed for recovery and rebuilding, while scallop fishing grounds in Gouldsboro and Dyers Bay, along with Upper Blue Hill Bay, are established as new limited access areas.

Read the full story at the Mount Desert Islander

Maine Lobstermen Lawsuit Over Boat Monitoring Tossed

November 26, 2024 — A federal judge is throwing out a lawsuit from Maine lobstermen over a rule that went into effect more than a year ago.

The rule requires lobstermen with federal fishing permits to put monitors on their boats, which tracks their location on the water.

Five lobstermen had argued that the monitors violate their constitutional rights to privacy, equal protection and due process.

Read the full article at WGAN

Scientists at the University of Maine developing new tools to adapt to warming Gulf of Maine

November 25, 2024 — Scientists say the Gulf of Maine is now warming faster than almost anywhere else in the world. What does that mean for the state’s billion-dollar fishing industry?

Researchers at the University of Maine are developing new tools to ensure the sustainability of Maine’s commercial fisheries.

For years, scientists have been tracking how less cold water enters the Gulf of Maine while the hotter Gulf Stream is shifting north and adding warmer water to the region. This is impacting populations of different species, including Atlantic cod.

Read the full article at News Center Maine