Saving Seafood

Maine Aquaculture Association’s Sebastian Belle forecasts bright future for industry in state

September 20, 2019 — In 2017, the governor of Washington State ordered all agencies to ban salmon farming in state waters after a net-pen failure at a Cooke Aquaculture-owned Atlantic salmon farm caused a fish escape into the surrounding Pacific.

That event in the Northwest became an obvious opportunity for the Northeastern U.S. state of Maine, which was once home to an Atlantic salmon fishery. While the wild fishery has been nonexistent for years due to wild populations of Atlantic salmon being deemed endangered in the state, aquaculture operations continue to see results.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Maine gov, delegation: Whale rules must protect lobstermen

September 19, 2019 — Maine’s most prominent politicians are calling for the federal government to take a new approach to saving an endangered species of whale so protections don’t threaten the state’s lobster industry.

The four members of Maine’s congressional delegation sent recommendations to federal fisheries regulators late Tuesday about how to protect the North Atlantic right whale, which numbers about 400. Maine Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat, also called on the government Wednesday to protect whales in a way that keeps lobstering viable.

Read the full story at Sea Coast Online

The Gulf Of Maine’s Temperature Was ‘Normal’ This Year — Which Is The New Cool

September 19, 2019 — It’s often reported that the Gulf of Maine’s waters are warming faster than 99 percent of the largest saltwater bodies on the planet. But scientists will tell you the trend can be volatile. This year, for instance, surface water temperatures in the Gulf have been their coolest since 2008. That may be providing some relief for some of the Gulf’s historic species, but ongoing climate change means that long-term prospects are still uncertain.

Lobsterman Seth Dube fishes 400 traps from his boat, the Alison Nicole, out of Camp Ellis in Saco.

“Off and on most of my life, and my father did it and my grandfather and now me, hopefully my boy,” Dube says.

This has been a good decade for Dube and the rest of Maine’s lobster fleet, with record catches most years since 2010. But this year, the beginning of the big summer harvest – when lobsters molt, shedding their old hard shells to reveal new, soft shells – was slow. Lobstermen and some scientists associate that with cooler water temperatures earlier this year.

Read the full story at Maine Public

Maine regulators to meet with lobstermen again about new whale rules

September 18, 2019 — Maine regulators are working on a new slate of meetings with the state’s lobstermen to discuss potential new whale protection rules that could impact the fishery.

The Maine Department of Marine Resources is developing a proposal for the federal government about how to better protect endangered North Atlantic right whales. It had scheduled several meetings with lobstermen about the proposal for this month, but has temporarily put them on hold.

Department spokesman Jeff Nichols said a revised schedule will be out after regulators have had a chance to develop a proposal that reflects “another review of all data.”

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Bangor Daily News

Atlantic Herring Days Out Call Information and Notice of Spawning Closures for Western Maine and Massachusetts/New Hampshire in Effect September 23 through November 3, 2019

September 18, 2019 — The following was released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission:

The Commission’s Atlantic Herring Management Board members from Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts set effort control measures for the Area 1A (inshore Gulf of Maine) fishery via Days Out meetings/calls. These members are scheduled to convene via conference call on October 2nd from 9:30 to 11:30 AM to consider fishery specifications for Quota Period 4. The details of the call are as follows:

Meeting webinar: https://global.gotomeeting.com/join/239062933

Join the conference call:

Phone: 1.888.585.9008

Passcode: 853-657-937

Spawning Closures

The Atlantic Herring Area 1A fishery regulations include seasonal spawning closures for portions of state and federal waters in Eastern Maine, Western Maine, and Massachusetts/New Hampshire. The Atlantic Herring Management Board approved a forecasting method that relies upon at least three samples, each containing at least 25 female herring in gonadal states III-V, to trigger a spawning closure. However, if sufficient samples are not available then closures will begin on predetermined dates.

Read the full release here

Maine lobsterer group calls Rep. Seth Moulton to task

September 18, 2019 — The head of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association countered comments Monday by U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton, saying Moulton mischaracterized the organization’s motives and actions when it withdrew its support for the federal plan for increased protections to the North Atlantic right whales.

“Contrary to the congressman’s characterization, the MLA remains engaged in the (take reduction team) process and will continue to work with the agency and our members to identify measures to the risk that the Maine lobster industry poses to right whales,” Patrice McCarron wrote in an email to the Gloucester Daily Times. “However, the MLA cannot support the Northeast lobster fishery being singled out as the sole source of entanglement risk.”

The Maine Lobstermen’s Association on Aug. 30 withdrew its support for the most current plan devised by the Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Team because of what it described as questionable data from NOAA scientists and an unfair portrayal of the industry’s culpability as a primary cause of injury or death to the right whales. It also criticized the rule-making process as rushed.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Scientists See A Hotter, Wetter, Less Snowy Future For Maine

September 17, 2019 — All this week, Maine Public – and more than 250 other news outlets all around the world – are reporting stories on climate change as part of the  “Covering Climate Now” project. In Maine, scientists say that climate change means hot summers, warm winters, more rain, and less snow, along with a warming gulf of Maine, and that will affect the state’s fisheries, its  economy and traditional ways of life.

Professor Ivan Fernandez of the Climate Change Institute at the University of Maine is one of the authors of the report, “Maine’s Climate Future.”  He told Maine Public’s Nora Flaherty that since the findings came out out in 2015, there have been many big changes in the state and globally, including an acceleration in the pace of change.

FERNANDEZ: What we’ve seen in the last five years is, obviously, a continuation – most of the time, evidence of an acceleration of many of the trends for climate change. We’ve also, obviously, lived through a few years where we have hurricanes and fires, and where we’re witnessing the loss of communities and island nations due to these sorts of climate related disasters. And so the I think the public awareness and the mounting evidence of these extreme events has picked up the pace in the last few years.

Read the full story at Maine Public

Lobster distributor Maine Coast receives “Excellent” score under SQF’s Food Safety Code

September 17, 2019 — York, Maine-based company Maine Coast has achieved certification under Safe Quality Food’s (SQF) Food Safety Code for Manufacturing, the North Atlantic lobster distributor announced on 17 September.

The company, which is known for its Lively Lobster, achieved a score of 97 and an “Excellent” status under SQF’s criteria, it confirmed in a press release. Maine Coast sources its lobster from Maine and Canadian fisheries that are certified by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) and recognized as producing “Good Alternative” catch by the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Waters off the coast of Maine vulnerable to changing climate

September 16, 2019 — From the one-lane bridge over the Little River at low water, you can see men hunched over the mudflats, hundreds of yards from shore, flipping the sea bottom with their pitchfork-like hoes to reveal the clams hiding there.

The clams, the basis of livelihood for generations of diggers from Cape Porpoise to Lubec, are back, at least for now, their numbers slowly recovering from a climate-driven disaster that will almost certainly strike again.

Six years ago, after the Gulf of Maine warmed to unprecedented levels, green crabs flooded over these northern embayments of Casco Bay like a plague of locusts, tearing away seagrass meadows, pockmarking salt marshes with their burrows, and devouring most every mussel and soft-shell clam in their path.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

MAINE: Right whales and lobsters: what to do?

September 16, 2019 — When the Maine Lobstermen’s Association informed the National Marine Fisheries Service at the end of August that it was withdrawing its support for the agency’s proposed whale protection rules, it also offered a list of 10 “actions” NMFS should take.

The proposed rules could force lobstermen to remove half their vertical buoy lines from the waters of the Gulf of Maine. The Lobstermen’s Association in its letter offered 10 alternative suggestions “to develop an effective right whale protection program.”

The suggestions, most of which dealt with the way NMFS collected, interpreted or disseminated the data on which it based its proposals, ranged from the general to the extremely specific.

The association called on the fisheries service to “publish a thorough analysis of its own data regarding known sources of entanglement risk to right whales,” and to “conduct a new analysis of the risk reduction target” based on MLA-supplied data and to “reconsider” the risk reduction role in light of what the group described as NMFS’s “flawed assumptions and omission of consideration of risk posed by other U.S. fixed gear fisheries.”

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American