Saving Seafood

What can baby lobsters tell us about the future of Maine’s $1 billion fishery?

October 10, 2018 — The woman sitting on the bench above Peaks Island’s Spar Cove trained her binoculars on Curt Brown’s lobsterboat as it rocked in big swells a half-mile or so offshore. What was she thinking as she saw two men heave what appeared to be two very shallow, very heavy lobster traps onto the gunwale, then shove them into the sea? Did she wonder what they could possibly hope to catch with those stunted little lobster pots? Stunted little lobsters?

Well, yes, sort of. The men were researchers, and they were after baby lobsters, which on that steamy, late-June morning were feathery, newly hatched creatures no bigger than mosquitoes floating somewhere just below the ocean’s surface. As the wire crates sank beneath a bobbing white buoy, Brown plowed the boat forward and called out the location’s coordinates and depth, which University of Maine School of Marine Sciences professor Richard Wahle recorded in a notebook, next to the crate’s tag number. Meanwhile, Wahle’s research associate, Bill Favitta, and grad student Carl Huntsberger lifted two more crates onto the gunwale, readying them for the next drop. The team would repeat the routine 60 times over the next two days as it worked its way offshore to depths of 40 fathoms (or 240 feet).

This is a critical moment for research in Maine’s lobster fishery, which contributes more than $1 billion annually to the state’s economy and generates hundreds of jobs. After more than 30 years of ever-increasing landings — including dramatic, record-breaking surges in the last decade — the catch plunged 16 percent in 2017, and scientists and fishermen are concerned that it may prove to be a grim turning point. “A lot of the work we’re doing is trying to understand how environmental and fishing pressures are influencing trends in the abundance of lobsters, both geographically and over time,” says Wahle. A marine ecologist working at the intersection of fishery science, marine biology, and oceanography, he’s been studying lobsters around the world for 30 years.

Read the full story at Down East Magazine

 

Maine aquaculture projects dredge memories of polluted waterways

October 10, 2018 — At a recent hearing in Kittery, so many people showed up to weigh in on the proposed expansion of an oyster-growing operation in a local creek, Department of Marine Resources hearing officer Amanda Ellis had to make a choice.

“Based on the number that we’re seeing we’ve made the decision to postpone the hearing,” she said.

But opponents such as Mike Dowling were still plenty willing to talk.

“I have many concerns, there’s a whole group of us, introducing over 2,500 objects suspended or floating into the creek creates a pinch point, and everyone uses that little sandy beach to go swimming,” he said.

Such complaints do arise with aquaculture enterprises, with neighbors — sometimes including fishermen — worrying about water access, environmental effects and property values. Up the coast in Maquoit Bay, near Brunswick, a proposed 40-acre shellfish farm is meeting some stiff resistance.

And then there’s Belfast, where a proposal to site what would be one of the world’s largest indoor salmon farms is stirring talk of the darker days, when the city was dominated by chicken processors.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

In Changing Climate, Endangered Right Whales Find New Feeding Grounds

October 10, 2018 — Amy Knowlton pilots the 29-foot research vessel Nereid out of Lubec harbor and into the waters of the Bay of Fundy, off of easternmost Maine. A scientist with the New England Aquarium’s Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life Knowlton points to harbor porpoises chasing fish in the wind-swept waters on a recent morning.

Then something much larger appears off the stern.

“Whale behind us,” Knowlton says, steering closer. “It’s probably a humpback or fin whale, we’ll get a better look.”

It turns out to be two humpback whales — a cool sighting, but not the kind she is after.

Knowlton is hoping to find the endangered North Atlantic right whales that she and her colleagues have been studying in these waters since 1980.

Right whales are large cetaceans, with big heads and no dorsal fins. Researchers used to count as many as 200 foraging here in late summer. But the whales became scarce starting in 2010, and their range shifted dramatically. Many more are now summering hundreds of miles north, off Canadian shores in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. More than 130 have been spotted there in recent months.

Marianna Hagbloom, a research assistant on Knowlton’s team, surveyed that area in August and said it was nothing like the Bay of Fundy.

“We had days where we were seeing about 50 individuals,” Hagbloom says. “Just right whales popping up left and right. It’s a beautiful thing to see.”

Read the full story at NPR

MAINE: Groups Say There’s Little Evidence That Lobster Industry Is Harming Right Whales

October 9, 2018 — Maine Department of Marine Resources commissioner Patrick Keliher has sent a letter to NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center, refuting a recent memo which suggests that the lobster industry may be playing a role in the decline of the North Atlantic Right Whale.

“This publication, this technical memo as written, really creates a challenge for folks who want to have a conversation that’s based on really sound science,” says Jeff Nichols, spokesperson for Maine DMR.

Nichols says, as an example, there’s little evidence to support the notion that lobstermen are using “tougher rope” than they did prior to 2015, contributing to entanglements. And he says the memo attempts to link whale entanglement risk to the amount of lobster being landed.

“To say that because Maine landings are on the increase, the risk is also on the increase is not borne out by the data,” Nichols says.

Executive Director of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association, Patrice McCarron, has also questioned the data and its relevance, as none of the 17 North Atlantic Right Whale deaths recorded last year occurred in Maine, where the bulk of lobstering takes place.

Nichols says the department does have “lingering questions” about what role an emerging Canadian snow crab industry may be playing.

The letter reiterates concerns that have emerged from the industry since the report was released.

Read the full story at Maine Public

MAINE: Gubernatorial candidates vow to back lobster industry in upcoming fight

October 9, 2018 — All four candidates for governor pledged to defend Maine’s $434 million-a-year lobster industry a week before regulators consider new rules that could severely affect the industry.

Specifically, the candidates addressed aggressive right whale protections that environmental groups are seeking in court from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, proposals such as moving from a rope-based industry to a ropeless fishery, seasonal closures of western Gulf of Maine lobster fishing in April, and cutting in half the number of traps or vertical lines that could entangle whales.

Independent Alan Caron, Democrat Janet Mills, Republican Shawn Moody and independent Terry Hayes took turns answering some questions, dodging others and hailing the importance of Maine fisheries on Thursday at a forum on the seafood industry in Rockland attended by about 150 people and watched live online by more than 1,000 others.

Moody, a self-made millionaire from Gorham, called the concept of ropeless fishing a joke, something “you can’t even say with a straight face,” which pleased all the lobstermen in the audience. Caron, a political strategist, said NOAA doesn’t understand the whale problem well enough yet to take drastic actions against the fishery that could hurt the Maine economy and put people out of work.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Mainers grapple with risk that a shrimp season this year could be the last one

October 5, 2018 — PORTLAND, Maine — Scientists and policymakers gathered Thursday in Portland to weigh their desire for a 2018 Maine shrimp season — the first in five years — against the very real possibility that allowing shrimp to be harvested this year could leave the species beyond the point of return.

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission presented a draft of its Northern Shrimp 2018 Stock Assessment Report, which those assembled at the Maine Historical Society heard with resignation but not surprise.

The northern (Maine) shrimp stock is depleted and the biomass is at an all-time low due to high fishery removals and a less favorable environment, according to the draft.

The mortality rate in 2011-2012, the last years with shrimp seasons — was very high, and the number of juvenile shrimp has remained “unusually low” since 2010.

Furthermore, the environment in the Gulf of Maine is in flux, Margaret Hunter of the Maine Department of Marine Resources and chairwoman of the assessment subcommittee, said Thursday.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

 

Lobster industry blasts proposed regulations intended to protect whales

October 5, 2018 — Maine officials and members of the state’s lobster industry are blasting a new federal report on the endangered right whale, claiming it uses old science to unfairly target the fishery for restrictions.

The Maine Department of Marine Resources, the agency that regulates the $434 million lobster fishery, and the Maine Lobstermen’s Association, the trade group representing Maine’s 4,500 active commercial lobstermen, question the scientific merits of the report from the Northeast Fisheries Science Center, which was issued in advance of next week’s meeting of a federal right whale protection advisory team.

“They’re painting a big target on the back of the Maine lobster industry, but the picture isn’t based on the best available science,” DMR Commissioner Patrick Keliher said Thursday. “If we use the wrong starting point, and that’s what this report is, the wrong starting point, what kind of regulations will we end up with? Ones that could end up hurting the lobster industry for no reason and won’t do much to help the right whales. That is unfair.”

Read the full story at Portland Press Herald

 

Latest shrimp assessment points to closure of fishery

October 5, 2018 — The shrimp section of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission voted Thursday to accept the 2018 benchmark assessment for northern shrimp that continues to reflect a stock in free fall and facing a highly uncertain future.

The assessment seems to point to another closure for the fishery that has been shuttered since after the 2013 fishing season because of the dire and deteriorating state of the northern shrimp stock.

The final decision on whether to close the fishery for the sixth consecutive year will come in November, when the shrimp section and its advisory panel are scheduled to meet to set specifications for the 2019 fishing season.

It does not look good.

The assessment, according to the section, indicates the northern shrimp population remains severely depleted, spawning stock biomass remains at the same low levels that have existed since 2013 and recruitment of new shrimp into the fishery continues at historically low numbers.

It also underlines the negative impact of the Gulf of Maine’s warming waters on the northern shrimp stock.

“Warmer water temperatures are generally associated with lower recruitment indices and poorer survival during the first year of life,” the section said in a statement. “Ocean temperatures in the western Gulf of Maine shrimp habitat have increased over the past decade, and temperature is predicted to continue rising as a result of climate change. This suggests an increasingly inhospitable environment for northern shrimp in the Gulf of Maine.”

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Maine fishermen demand better science before canceling another shrimp season

October 4, 2018 — Members of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission will meet Thursday in Portland to review the most recent stock assessment and make recommendations on whether Maine will see a shrimp season next year for the first time since 2013.

Initial indications from both federal and state surveys are that the shrimp population is in no better shape than any of the past five years.

“Spawning stock biomass and total abundance remain low, with little sign of recovery,” Toni Kerns, an ASMFC fishery management plans coordinator, wrote in an email about the shrimp population in the Gulf of Maine.

Fifty years ago, fishermen caught 11,000 metric tons of Maine shrimp. But the numbers steadily decreased and, by 2012, the catch was down to 2,185 metric tons. Then, even that bottom dropped out, and in 2013 fishermen brought in only 255 metric tons, prompting complete closure of the fishery other than a small “research set-aside” that in 2018 totaled 13.3 tons, the Press Herald reported.

Trends include the lowest abundance and biomass numbers in more than three decades, ASMFC told the Gloucester Times last month.

And Maggie Hunter, lead shrimp scientist for the Maine Department of Marine Resources, said the inshore trawl survey conducted every spring and fall by the Maine DMR and New Hampshire Fish and Game found “very low” numbers as well.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

US Fishermen Lose Quota in New Fishing Pact With Canada

October 4, 2018 — American fishermen are losing thousands of pounds of valuable fishing quota under a new catch share agreement with Canada.

Fishermen from the U.S. and Canada seek haddock, cod and flounder on Georges Bank, which is a critical fishing ground east of New England, The two countries craft a catch share agreement every year. Under the latest agreement, the U.S.’s eastern Georges Bank cod quota is falling by more than 25 percent to about 415,000 pounds and the eastern Georges Bank haddock quota is falling by about 4 percent to about 33 million pounds.

Yellowtail flounder on Georges Bank is also falling by about half, to about 230,000 pounds. The U.S. gets 76 percent of the flounder quota while Canada gets 71 percent of the cod quota and the haddock is divided evenly.

The loss in quota will present a hardship for New England fishermen, who are already coping with low cod quotas and the collapse of the cod stock, said Terry Alexander, a longtime Maine fisherman and member of the regulatory New England Fishery Management Council that approved the catch share agreement last week.

“It’s going to be tough to get by with for sure,” Alexander said. “Cod seems to be in the cellar and yellowtail is even deeper in the cellar.”

The proposed quotas are based on historical catches and trawl surveys. Canada’s quotas are also proposed to decline. The quotas were recommended by U.S./Canada Transboundary Management Guidance Committee, which is a panel made up of government and industry members that includes representatives from both countries.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The New York Times