Saving Seafood

Massachusetts Joins Several States to Support Offshore Drilling Bans

January 9, 2019 — Legislators from several states, including Massachusetts, announced a collaborative effort to protect their regions from offshore drilling.

More than 225 lawmakers from coastal states have voiced their opposition to the Trump Administration’s proposed OCS Oil and Gas Leasing Program.

Barnstable, Dukes and Nantucket State Representative Dylan Fernandes joined legislators from Georgia, Hawaii, Maine, New York, Oregon, New Hampshire and Rhode Island to announce legislative initiatives in each state to block offshore drilling in state waters now and in the future.

Connecticut legislators could not participate on the conference call but will also introduce a ban bill.

Read the full story at CapeCod.com

MAINE: Good scallop season may be bound for a change

January 9, 2019 — Maine’s scallop season got off to a good start last month, with supplies plentiful and a strong price, but that may be about to change.

Early on, according to Melissa Smith, the scallop resource manager at the Department of Marine Resources, along most of the coast between Penobscot Bay and Cobscook Bay landings varied were “variable depending on the location.”

Scallop meat sizes also ranged from quite large to relatively small depending on where they were brought up, “as is the norm for any fishing year.”

Harvesters were generally able to get their daily limits — three 5-gallon buckets or about 135 pounds of shucked scallop meats — by the early afternoon or even earlier.

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American

‘Lobster War’ Tackles Global Issues From a Tiny Island in Maine

January 8, 2019 — Machias Seal Island is an unlikely location for an international border dispute, a heated and increasingly dangerous conflict and an illuminating flashpoint for the worldwide crisis that is global warming, and yet here we are. The island off of Cutler is about 20 acres’ worth of bare rock, protected puffins and seals, and the only manned lighthouse left on the coast. (More on that later.) It’s just another speckled rock in the Gulf of Maine, weathering the warring tides between the United States and Canada in unassuming silence.

Machias Seal Island – and the miles of fishing grounds around it – is also the subject of the new film “Lobster War.” Hardly hyperbole, the title refers to the fact that the changing environment in the gulf has turned the largely ignored waters surrounding the island into one of the most contentiously contested fishing grounds in the world, and how its newfound value is emblematic of the coming conflicts caused by manmade global warming in miniature. Co-directed by Boston Globe reporter David Abel and filmmaker Andy Laub, the film, which screens at The Strand Theatre in Rockland on Sunday and the Lincoln County Community Theater in Damariscotta on Jan. 17, is the duo’s third collaboration. Like their previous films, “Sacred Cod” and “The Gladesmen,” “Lobster War” was inspired by Abel’s position as environmental reporter at the Globe, a job that necessarily brings him to Maine quite frequently.

Read the full story at Maine Today

Lawmaker introducing offshore drilling ban bill

January 9, 2019 — A state representative from Falmouth plans to join his colleagues from Hawaii, Georgia and other states Tuesday to collectively oppose the Trump administration’s offshore drilling plans and to introduce drilling ban legislation in the states.

Officials from Maine, New York, Oregon, and Rhode Island also plan to join a Tuesday afternoon conference call with Rep. Dylan Fernandes to discuss the situation, which stems from the release of the Trump administration’s proposed OCS Oil and Gas Leasing Program.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

New Maine governor Mills renominates Keliher for state fishing commissioner

January 7, 2019 — The commercial fishing industry, including lobster harvesters, in the US state of Maine, got one of their holiday presents delivered a bit late. Newly elected governor Janet Mills, a Democrat, announced Thursday that she has renominated Patrick Keliher as commissioner of the Department of Marine Resources, the Portland (Maine) Press Herald reports.

Keliher was appointed to the post in 2011 by Republican governor Paul LePage and was not a sure bet to retain the position, though he has received significant industry support. The leaders of eight commercial fishing groups in the US’ second-largest seafood state wrote Mills in late November to express their support for his retention.

Mills has been filling out her cabinet in recent days, but saved the Keliher news to near the end. His name was included in an announcement that also noted the renominations of Ann Head as commissioner of Professional and Financial Regulation, and Maj. Gen. Douglas Farnham as commissioner of Defense, Veterans and Emergency Management.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

Film Notes: ‘Lobster War,’ Screening in Woodstock, Documents a Changing Fishery

January 4, 2019 — Before deciding whether to see Lobster War: The Fight Over the World’s Richest Fishing Grounds at Woodstock Town Hall Theatre next week, Upper Valley cinephiles need to distinguish David Abel’s new documentary from Lobster Wars, plural.

While Lobster Wars, a six-part reality TV series that ran on the Discovery Channel in 2007, followed fishermen from the United Kingdom pursuing crustaceans over Georges Bank, the feature Lobster War (singular) focuses on American and Canadian lobstermen pursuing the creatures around an island off Maine’s Down East that both countries claim.

Abel is screening Lobster War, which does not yet have a distributor, at venues around New England. The veteran print journalist’s current tour, which follows a round of film-festival appearances, is scheduled to begin in the fishing town of Gloucester, Mass., tonight and to make its Vermont premiere in Woodstock on Wednesday.

“My first two docs were on cable, on network distribution deals that hemmed us in except for the odd festival,” Abel, who writes about environmental issues for the Boston Globe, said during a telephone interview on Wednesday. “This is the first time I’ve decided to go the theater route.

“It’s really gratifying to show your work, to meet folks who are really interested in these issues.”

Climate change is the issue at the center of Lobster War, which documents a dispute between fishermen from Maine and Atlantic Canada. Over the last decade, with ocean waters warming off the New England coast, lobsters have been migrating north and east in search of colder waters for breeding, many of them are now clustering in a 277-square-mile patch of ocean described in the movie as a “Gray Zone” around Machias Seal Island.

Read the full story at Valley News

Fishing industry lobbies for Maine commissioner to retain his post

January 1, 2019 — The leaders of Maine’s fishing industry want Patrick Keliher to stay on as head of the state’s Department of Marine Resources under incoming governor Janet Mills.

“Our industries are confronted by major issues on the water, in international waters, and within several regulatory arenas that have major consequences for our ability to do business and remain profitable,” industry leaders wrote in a rare joint letter to Mills. “The future success of Maine’s seafood industry depends on the continued strong leadership, stability, institutional knowledge and political capital that only Commissioner Keliher possesses.”

There is no word on whether Mills, who worked with Keliher as state attorney general, wants the seven-year commissioner to stay in his appointed post. Mills is taking the industry’s recommendation into consideration, spokesman Scott Ogdon said Monday. She expects to make an announcement on Keliher’s fate soon, as well as other remaining Cabinet positions, so her administration can “hit the ground running,” he said.

At a campaign forum in October, Mills said she wanted honest, hard-working commissioners with expertise in their fields and willingness to enforce state laws. She said the ideal candidate would understand all the state’s fishing industries, including aquaculture, and would have “come up through the ranks.” Most importantly, Mills said her DMR commissioner must be a good communicator with consumers, industry and policy makers. “There’s been too little of that in the last eight years,” Mills told the forum, which was organized by the seafood industry. “We need openness and transparency.”

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Maine begins scallop fishing area closures for ’18-’19

January 2, 2019 — Maine fishery regulators are shutting down a couple of scallop fishing areas for the first time this season.

Maine’s home to some of the most lucrative scallops in the country, and the state maintains the population of the shellfish by closing some areas to fishing over the course of the season. The Maine Department of Marine Resources says it’s closing Machias and Little Machias Bays for the rest of the season.

The closures went into effect on Dec. 30.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The Miami Herald

Coast Guard crews in Maine to be paid Monday after all, despite shutdown

December 31, 2018 –After a last-minute intervention by Sen. Susan Collins, employees of the Coast Guard, including hundreds in Maine, will receive their pre-shutdown pay Monday on schedule.

Previously, the employees had been told they would not be getting their second paycheck of the month because of the partial shutdown of the federal government.

A spokesman for Collins said she contacted the White House on Friday afternoon to urge an immediate fix to the payment issue, and a few hours later was told that Coast Guard members would now receive pay for their pre-shutdown work.

“Good news for the Coast Guard!” Collins, a Republican, tweeted at 8:26 p.m. Friday. “White House staff called to tell me CG members will receive their paychecks as did other federal employees. I continue to work to end the shutdown, but this will provide immediate relief to CG members & their families.”

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

There’s new hope for Mainers fighting to save working waterfronts

December 31, 2018 — In Maine’s decades-long fight over working waterfront, developers have consistently held a distinct cash advantage over fishermen.

That hasn’t changed, so advocates for ensuring that enough Maine piers and wharves remain available to preserve the state’s embattled maritime workforce have adopted new tactics. And there’s hope the state could free up more cash soon for working waterfront preservation.

When Portland’s city council earlier this month enacted a six-month moratorium on non-marine-related development along the city’s working waterfront, even The New York Times paid attention.

The moratorium resulted from a signature-collecting effort for a referendum that would seek to reinstate a requirement that all new projects in the waterfront zone be water-dependent, a rule that would effectively block new construction of hotels, restaurants and offices, which have proliferated in the area in recent decades.

Among other developments, the petition was triggered by a $40 million development project — four-story hotel, retail shops, office space and a parking garage — proposed for Fisherman’s Wharf.

Read the full story at Bangor Daily News