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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.