Saving Seafood

MASSACHUSETTS: Lobster bill survives budget deal Legislation to allow in-state sale, processing of unfrozen, shell-on, lobster parts

July 24, 2019 — It’s now up to Gov. Charlie Baker to decide whether Massachusetts will allow more in-state lobster processing to make the Bay State lobster industry more competitive with its contemporaries in Maine and Canada.

The legislation to allow the in-state sale, transport and processing of unfrozen, shell-on lobster parts — a persistent, years-long campaign by state Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr — has survived the Massachusetts Legislature’s conference committee and is contained in the $43.1 billion budget awaiting Baker’s approval or veto.

The governor has 10 days to review and act on the budget prepared by the conference committee, which is comprised of representatives of the Senate and House. Any items vetoed by Baker are subject to legislative override, which would have to be initiated in the House and carry by a two-thirds majority in both the House and Senate.

“We have the second-largest lobster catch in the nation, yet without this change in law, our raw and frozen lobster parts are processed in Canada or Maine, only to be brought back to local consumers,” Tarr said in a statement. “By modernizing these lobster laws, we bolster the fishing industry, give consumers more choices and substantially support coastal fishing communities.”

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Claws out: Rally shows public support for Maine’s lobster industry

July 24, 2019 — Stonington is a tiny hamlet far off the beaten path in Downeast Maine. As the crow flies, it’s about 80 miles from Portland. On the road, it’s double that. Suffice it to say, it’s hard to end up there by accident.

So it was by design that the state’s Gov. Janet Mills, Sen. Susan Collins, and U.S. Reps. Chellie Pingree and Jared Golden were part of a large crowd of elected officials to appear at a rally in the state’s lobster capital over the weekend.

On Sunday, July 21, a local gathering was slated to bring attention to pending federal requirements for the state’s lobster fleet to cut its lines in the water by 50 percent as part of a broad federal proposal to protect endangered right whales. Maine’s fleet has long led the charge to adapt its gear in efforts to reduce interactions with whales. But this proposed rule, industry leaders say, would only harm the fleet without serving to protect the whales.

“NOAA knows that not one right whale has been proven to have been entangled in Maine rope in many years, and the new proposed regulations would only cause extreme danger to our lobstermen,” said lobsterman Julia Eaton, who helped organize the gathering.

On May 28, Sen. Angus King, Collins, Pingree and Golden submitted a letter to acting NOAA Director Neil Jacobs. On July 10, the delegation submitted a similar letter to President Donald Trump, urging him to intervene in the conflict and acknowledge that Maine’s fishing gear does not appear to pose a risk to the whales’ shrinking population.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

MAINE: Penobscot salmon returns top 1,000 for the first time since 2011

July 23, 2019 — River-watchers had a reason to celebrate last week as the unofficial total of returning Atlantic salmon reached 1,000 for the first time in eight years.

As of July 14, that total stood at 1,059, according to Jason Valliere, Marine Resources scientist for the Maine Department of Marine Resources’ Division of Sea Run Fisheries and Habitat.

Only 671 salmon were counted at the Milford Dam fish lift a year ago. The last time more than 1,000 fish were documented as returning to the Penobscot River was in 2011, when 2,915 fish were counted at the Veazie Dam, which has since been removed from the river.

Atlantic salmon are listed as “endangered” under the federal Endangered Species Act in all Maine rivers, and fishing for them is not allowed.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

Maine political leaders promise to press Trump for state’s lobster haulers opposed to new rules

July 23, 2019 — Mainers who haul lobsters for a living do not kill right whales.

That was the message from a rally at Stonington’s commercial fishing pier on Sunday attended by more than 500 people, including Gov. Janet Mills, U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, and U.S. Reps. Jared Golden and Chellie Pingree.

At issue are pending federal regulations aimed at protecting the endangered right whale, which can be killed by getting tangled in lobster trap-lines, but would force state lobstermen to cut the number of lines they can put into the water by 60 percent.

Rally speakers said that the rule would devastate the state’s lobster industry, which contributes an estimated $1 billion to Maine’s economy, while doing nothing to protect the whales, which, as a recent scientific study shows, seldom stray into the lobstering waters of the Gulf of Maine.

According to the National Marine Fisheries Service, no right whales have died from entanglement in Maine fishing lines in many years, as increasingly rising ocean temperatures have driven the whales and the food they eat into Canadian territory.

Mills and the congressional delegation, plus speakers representing former Gov. Paul LePage and U.S. Sen. Angus King, told rally attendees that they would support the state’s approximately 4,500 lobstermen and continue to press President Donald Trump to oppose the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s proposed new regulation.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

MAINE: Lobstermen, politicians rally in Stonington to protest whale rules

July 23, 2019 — The sun was blazing hot, but tempers were moderate Sunday when hundreds of lobstermen gathered at the Municipal Fish Pier at noon for a rally to protest proposed federal rules aimed at protecting right whales.

The rules would force Maine fishermen to cut by 50 percent the number of lines in Gulf of Maine waters that connect lobster traps on the sea floor to their marker buoys on the surface.

Sunday’s rally drew perhaps 300 fishermen, family members, other supporters and politicians to Stonington. Some came from as far away as Corea and Winter Harbor and other Downeast ports, others from as far away as Harpswell. Many came by boat.

“This Governor has your back,” Gov. Janet Mills told an assembled crowd that was adamant in its opposition to the rules.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

MAINE: Rally over whale rules planned

July 19, 2019 — It was almost 45 years ago when a fictional news anchor named Howard Beale, played by Peter Finch in the film “Network,” shouted out to listeners “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not gonna take this anymore!”

Last week, Stonington lobsterman Julie Eaton, speaking for most members of her industry said just about the same thing in a posting on Facebook announcing plans for a rally on the Stonington Fish Pier at noon this Sunday to protest a proposed NOAA Fisheries rule that would force Maine lobstermen to remove half their buoy lines from the Gulf of Maine to reduce the risk that endangered right whales might become entangled in the fishing gear.

“It is official,” Eaton wrote. “We are holding a Lobstermen’s Rally … on the Stonington Commercial Fish Pier.”

Last March, NOAA Fisheries announced that the risk of harming right whales in the Gulf of Maine had to be reduced by 60 percent. Not long afterwards, the regulators adopted a “consensus” recommendation by a stakeholder group including representatives from the Department of Marine Resources, other state and federal fisheries regulators and several conservation organizations — the Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Team — that to reach the risk reduction target, Maine lobstermen would have to reduce the number of vertical buoy lines in the Gulf of Maine by 50 percent even though evidence showed that Maine fishing gear was not the primary cause of most of the right whale deaths over the past several years and that the vast majority of recent whale mortalities had occurred in Canadian waters.

According to Eaton, Sunday’s gathering is emphatically not a protest of the whale rule proposal but is intended “to inform the public that we are not killing whales in Maine, voice our concerns about the proposed whale regulations and how they will not only affect our own futures and safety but the future of our children and our coastal communities.”

Read the full story at The Mount Desert Islander

MAINE: State deals setback to opponents of aquaculture lease on Maquoit Bay

July 19, 2019 — The Maine Department of Marine Resources has rejected a citizens petition that requested a moratorium on aquaculture leases of over 10 acres.

The petition was submitted March 20, with 189 signatures, by a group called Save Maquoit Bay. The petition was drawn up in response to an application by Mere Point Oyster Co. for a 40-acre lease in the bay, off Brunswick, in order to cultivate Eastern oysters, bay scallops and sea scallops.

Although the proposed moratorium targeted one project, it would have applied statewide.

In its decision, the department wrote that it doesn’t see a basis for a moratorium.

“The Legislature has limited the size of any single lease to no more than 100 acres,” the decision reads. “Leases of greater than 10 acres may be appropriate and suitable in some areas and for certain aquaculture activities, just as leases of less than 10 acres would be required in others. The department can adequately deal with the size of a lease requested under the current lease decision criteria.

“Lease applications greater than 10 acres have been found to meet the decision criteria and have been granted, and other lease sites have been reduced in size by the department’s lease decision where the proposed sites were found to be unreasonable. Further, a 10-acre limitation on lease size may have the unintended effect of causing applicants to apply for multiple leases, as opposed to one single lease of a size that is suitable to meet their needs.

“Without further justification, a moratorium on leases of greater than 10 acres is arbitrary, and the department will not implement such a moratorium.”

Read the full story at MaineBiz

Menhaden reopening eases Maine bait worries – for now

July 19, 2019 — A two-week hiatus in the Maine menhaden fishery ended with the Atlantic States Fisheries Management Commission granting an additional 4.7 million pounds of quota, quelling worries about an impeding shortage of lobster bait.

The “episodic event fishery” that started July 15 won’t solve what has become a regular element of suspense for the industry. State officials reopened the season with additional effort controls, and reducing the weekly allowance from four trucks to three.

The harvest is restricted to state waters Monday through Thursday. The Department of Marine Resources had ordered a halt to the fishery June 30, after monitoring showed the fleet had exceeded the Maine annual quote of 2.4 million pounds by 1.5 million pounds – an overage of about 62 percent.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

BANGOR DAILY NEWS: Finding the right way to protect right whales

July 18, 2019 — Last week, Gov. Janet Mills’ administration made it clear that Maine does not support proposed federal regulations aimed at protecting endangered right whales. The issue is not whether right whales are worth protecting — they certainly are and are required to be under the Endangered Species Act — but instead how the federal proposal looks to reduce risk to the whales in part through a significant reduction in underwater lines used by Maine lobstermen.

All four members of Maine’s congressional delegation have also asked President Donald Trump to intervene on the proposed regulations, and together with Mills, have taken heat from environmental groups as a result. One wildlife advocate went as far as to say that Mills’ decision to have Maine pursue its own risk reduction plan amounts to playing “an active role in the right whale’s extinction.”

That’s strong stuff. But let’s be clear: justified concern about the impact of proposed rules on Maine’s lobster industry, and the incomplete data and largely unproven modeling underlying it, doesn’t make Maine officials unsympathetic or complicit to the undisputed plight of the right whale. It makes them appropriately skeptical representatives voicing concerns of their state, and one of its significant industries.

The worrisome decline of the Atlantic right whale has been well-documented in recent years. A once-growing population has dropped to an estimated 411 total whales. Data relative to whale mortality, however, is much less conclusive in terms of the role that Maine’s lobster fishery has played in that recent and troubling dip.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

NOAA Fisheries Sets 2019 Management Measures for Northeast Groundfish

July 18, 2019 — We are approving Framework 58 and implementing new catch limits for seven groundfish stocks for the 2019 fishing year (May 1, 2019 – April 30, 2020), including the three stocks managed jointly with Canada. These revised catch limits are based upon the results of stock assessments conducted in 2018.

In 2019, commercial groundfish quotas increase for four stocks from 2018: Georges Bank cod (+15%), Georges Bank haddock (+20%), Southern New England/Mid-Atlantic yellowtail flounder (+31%), and Acadian redfish (+2%); and decrease for three stocks: Gulf of Maine haddock (-5%), Georges Bank yellowtail flounder (-50%), and American plaice (-7%).

Framework 58 also:

  • Exempts vessels fishing exclusively in the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization Regulatory Area (i.e., in international waters) from the domestic groundfish fishery minimum fish sizes to allow them to better compete in the international frozen fish market.
  • Extends the temporary change to the scallop accountability measure implementation policy for Georges Bank yellowtail flounder to provide the scallop fishery with flexibility to adjust to current catch conditions while still providing an incentive to avoid yellowtail flounder.
  • Revises or creates rebuilding plans for five stocks: Georges Bank winter flounder, Southern New England/Mid-Atlantic yellowtail flounder, witch flounder, northern windowpane flounder, and ocean pout.

In this rule, we are also announcing:

  • Reductions to the 2019 commercial quota for Gulf of Maine cod by 29.2 mt because the quota was exceeded in 2017.
  • A permanent extension of the annual deadline to submit applications to lease groundfish days-at-sea between vessels from March 1 to April 30 (the end of the fishing year); and
  • Changes to the regulations to clarify that vessels must report catch by statistical area when submitting catch reports through their vessel monitoring system.

Read the final rule  as filed today in the Federal Register and the permit holder bulletin available on our website.

Read the full release here