Saving Seafood

MAINE: Maine groups receive federal grants to help train the next generation of fishers

October 30, 2024 — NOAA Fisheries has awarded USD 387,404 (EUR 356,478) to two Maine-based groups to help train the next generation of fishers.

“Maine is known around the world for our proud fishing heritage thanks to the generations of hardworking men and women who have sustained it,” Maine’s congressional delegation said in a joint statement. “These investments in youth workforce development will help ensure that young Mainers entering the commercial fishing sector have the skills and support they need to succeed, preserving the strength of this vital industry now and into the future.”

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Plan for stricter lobster fishing rules delayed as species shows decline in babies

October 23, 2024 — Fishing regulators are delaying a plan for stricter fishing rules amid concerns about a decline in baby lobsters in the warming waters off New England.

The regulators are looking to institute a new rule that fishermen need to abide by a larger minimum size for the lobsters they trap. The change is only 1/16th of an inch or 1.6 millimeters, but regulators have said it will help preserve the population of the valuable crustaceans, as many small lobsters will need to be tossed back to the ocean.

Some fishermen have argued the change is unnecessary and will be disruptive to one of the country’s most lucrative seafood industries when it is already stressed by warming waters, surging expenses and new rules to protect whales. They’ve argued for the new rules to be delayed or scrapped.

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission has said the minimum size must be changed because of a recent decline of more than 35% of the young lobster stock in the Gulf of Maine, a key fishing ground. But the commission voted Monday to push back the implementation of the change from Jan. 1 to July 1, 2025.

Read the full article at ABC News

Lobster gauge increase delayed: Maine lobstermen relieved

October 23, 2024 — The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) has officially voted to delay the planned gauge change in Lobster Management Area 1, giving Maine lobstermen more time to prepare. Originally slated to take effect on June 1, 2024, the increase in the minimum catch size—introduced to address a 35 percent decline in juvenile lobsters—will now go into effect on July 1, 2025. Back in August, the second delay was proposed to be voted on and delayed, but as of this week, it has been made official.

While opposed to the gauge increase, the Maine Lobstermen’s Association (MLA) expressed cautious approval of the delay. “We are hopeful that this will provide more time to address unintended consequences of an increase, specifically the fact that unless Canada also changes its gauge size, Canadian lobstermen will still be able to catch smaller lobster,” the MLA said.

Read the full article at National Fisherman

Regulators delay lobster size limits for six months

October 22, 2024 — Fisheries regulators have given the lobster industry a brief reprieve by delaying new size limits for six months.

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission said increasing the minimum lobster size by fractions of an inch will help rebuild stocks affected by troubling declines in young lobsters.

The commission’s lobster board argue increasing the minimum catch size will let younger lobsters live longer and reproduce more. Board members voted overwhelmingly Monday to delay the rules during the commission’s annual meeting.

Under the new rule, the minimum carapace measurement for a legal lobster will increase in July 2025, from 3 and 1/4 inches to 3 and 5/16 inches, and increase again a year and a half later.

Read the full article at Maine Public

The Lobster Industry’s Demise May Be Overstated

October 21, 2024 — Damian Brady spends a lot of his time in lobster boats, scooping up, counting, and measuring baby lobsters in the Gulf of Maine. Along with counts from scuba dives and fishing hauls, Brady’s data goes into the comprehensive Gulf of Maine Ocean Observing System that helps managers regulate the fishery. Brady also looks at “lobster settlement” — under what water conditions do these baby lobsters decide to settle in? He has studied decades of lobster booms and busts, refining the models in search of a “crystal ball,” as he calls it, on lobster futures.

Climate change has course-adjusted the Gulf Stream northward, warming the waters of southern New England, and driving a northward movement of lobster populations. It feels like history repeating: Science suggests warming waters caused the Rhode Island lobster industry to collapse earlier, going from 22 million pounds in 1997 to just over 3 million pounds in 2013.

But in Maine, lobsters are still a vital industry. On a good year, 100 million pounds of lobster may cross the state’s docks, bringing in more than $400 million. Maine’s boon from the northward lobster migration was a record-breaking lobster haul in 2016. But then lobster counts began to decline consistently, year after year into 2023. The fishery’s worst fear echoed across the docks: A Rhode Island-style collapse was heading toward Maine.

But Brady, after years of careful study, is not seeing that future. What many announced as the beginning of the end, he calls a “regime shift.”

The shift drove a downsize in the Maine lobster fleet, particularly from southern Maine towns such as Portland.

“The center of lobstering has moved [north], from the center of Maine to Downeast Maine,” Brady said.

Above Portland on a map, “Downeast” is where Maine juts into the Atlantic Ocean by way of many small islands. There, the island fishing town of Stonington brings in the largest lobster catches. Its boats are able to reach the deep, federal-permit waters far offshore where lobsters are now settling.

“There was a particular boom in deep water settlement,” Brady said, reporting the most recent surveys, “places we haven’t really looked before, or looked at much.” To scientists, new habitats call for more data.

Read the full article at Ambrook Research

Lobsters relocating to different habitats in the Gulf of Maine, study finds

October 21, 2024 — A new study finds that lobsters are relocating to new habitats in the Gulf of Maine.

The findings could have implications for how the lobster stock is measured and how the fishery is eventually managed.

Lobsters have typically favored rocky boulders and used those habitats as shelter. But a research team with the University of Maine found that the use of those habitats dropped by 60% over the last 25 years or so.

Read the full article at Maine Public

MAINE: Nonprofit fishing organizations get federal funds to help develop next generation of industry

October 15, 2024 — Several nonprofit fishing organizations are getting federal funds to help develop the next generation of the industry.

Ben Martens, Executive Director of the Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association, said the business has changed a lot in the last 20 or 30 years.

“It’s not about who can catch the most the fastest. It’s about quality,” Martens said. “We have less in our oceans. We have to bring it in when it’s worth the most. My board member, a lifelong fisherman, said it best when he said you have to fish smarter not harder.”

Martens said there’s real opportunity in the ocean, but we have to plan for it with young adults who want to pursue fishing careers.

“We spend a lot of time managing natural resources and investing in science and data, which are crucial. We also need to be making investments in our people, that are the real asset that Maine brings to the table,” Martens said.

Read the full article at Maine Public

MAINE: The Upstream Battle to Preserve Maine’s Lucrative Elver Fishery

October 10, 2024 — One morning this past spring, after commercial elver fishermen had met their quotas and elver buyers had closed up shop for the season, two fyke nets showed up where the Megunticook River empties into Camden Harbor. Maine Marine Patrol officer Callahan Crosby was perplexed. A few weeks earlier, the harbor would have been lined with nets and fishermen, but the penalties for breaking elver-fishing rules are stiff, and even a first-time violation can result in permanent license revocation. Crosby, wondering who would make such a brazen move, got back in his pickup truck and waited for the owner of the nets to appear.

A few hours later, a white Dodge Ram pulled up, with state-issued Wabanaki license plates that read FISHRMN. Flags of Sipayik, the Passamaquoddy reservation near Eastport, flew from the back, and a large, blue-plastic fish box sat in the bed — the kind typically used by elver buyers and dealers authorized to deal with much greater volumes than individual fishermen. Erik Francis, a 28-year-old Passamaquoddy fisherman, exited the truck and ambled down to the riverbank to check the nets. He had just been upstream, where he released four pounds of elvers that were previously stuck in puddles and pools below the river-mouth dam. A haul like that, if taken to market, would fetch at least several thousand dollars.

Read the full article at the Down East

MAINE: We hopped on a boat off Massachusetts to see what Maine’s offshore wind future could look like

October 9, 2024 — Gov. Janet Mills’ plan to make Maine an international leader in ocean wind power is reaching a critical juncture.

State officials argue that harnessing wind power can deliver a tremendous amount of clean energy, and that Maine is specially positioned to capitalize on the potential industrial boom.

The governor is leading a state delegation to Norway and Denmark this week to get a firsthand view of those countries’ offshore wind industry and to drum up interest in Maine’s plan to become a major player in the business on this side of the Atlantic.

The trip comes on the heels of the federal government’s lease to Maine of the nation’s first floating offshore wind research array. The 15-square-mile plot about 30 miles off the Maine coast will host 12 turbines built on structures developed by the University of Maine and its private sector partner, Diamond Offshore Wind.

Meanwhile, the state is set on building a specialized port on Sears Island in Searsport to construct and deploy floating wind. A 2023 bill passed by the Legislature and signed by Mills set a goal for Maine to produce 3,000 megawatts of offshore wind energy by 2040.

In just a few weeks, the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management will hold a lease sale for eight Gulf of Maine wind sites. If every lease was fully developed, the lease area could potentially generate enough wind energy to power 4.5 million homes.

It will take years for floating offshore wind to become a reality in the Gulf of Maine. But off the coast of Cape Cod, America’s first commercial-scale ocean wind farm offers a glimpse into the future.

Maine Public’s climate desk, along with colleagues from the New England News Collaborative, had a rare opportunity to get an up close and personal view of Vineyard Wind 1, a 62-turbine project under construction south of Martha’s Vineyard.

Read the full article at Maine Public

 

NOAA confirms link between Maine lobster fishing and right whale death

October 4, 2024 — NOAA investigators have for the first time confirmed a link between the death of a critically endangered North Atlantic right whale and the Maine lobster industry.

The whale, right whale #5120, was found dead off the coast of Massachusetts in January 2024, and a necropsy in February found it was entangled in gear with markings that NOAA said were consistent with rope used in Maine state water trap/pot buoy lines used for lobster fishing.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource