Saving Seafood

Herring, key to coastal health, slowly returning to rivers

October 15, 2018 — A little fish on the East Coast that once provided vital protein for American colonists and bait for generations of New England lobstermen is slowly making a comeback after falling victim to lost habitat and environmental degradation.

River herring once appeared headed to the endangered species list, but they’re now starting to turn up in rivers and streams at a rate that fishing regulators say is encouraging. The fish is a critical piece of the ecosystem in the eastern states, where it serves as food for birds and larger fish.

The comeback is most noticeable in Maine, the state with by far the largest river herring fishery in the country. Maine fishermen capture alewives, a species of river herring, and their catch of nearly 1.7 million pounds last year was the second largest in the last 37 years.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The News Tribune

Ropes are latest flashpoint in tug of war over endangered right whales

October 15, 2018 — The lobster industry is willing to consider switching to weaker rope to protect the endangered right whale from deadly entanglements, but whale defenders say that doesn’t go far enough to help a species that can’t bear even one more death.

A team of scientists, regulators, animal rights groups and fishermen met this week in Providence to review proposals to help a species that has dwindled to about 450 individuals after coming back from the brink of extinction.

The team is advising the National Marine Fisheries Service on how to prevent whales from getting entangled in fishing gear as they migrate, feed and mate as they travel back and forth along the East Coast of the United States and Canada.

The team agreed on a lot of measures that could help them understand why the whales are dying, like putting distinctive marks on all fishing gear so regulators can know which fisheries pose the biggest threat, but not on how to actually stop entanglement deaths.

Led by Maine regulators and fishermen, the lobster industry agreed Friday to explore weaker vertical lines – the rope that links seabed traps to a surface buoy – in areas where whales gather in numbers or eat, an act that puts them at greater risk of a fatal entanglement.

Rope strength limits would represent “a giant step forward,” lobster industry officials said.

“We pushed ourselves way beyond our comfort zones to present this idea with a bow on it,” said Patrice McCarron, director of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association. “Let’s get the low-hanging fruit and find gear that we could actually fish and get in the water.”

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

New England Shrimp Population Still Depleted, Board Says

October 11, 2018 — A regulatory board says New England’s shrimp population remains depleted years after the fishery for the species was shut down.

Fishermen in Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts used to harvest Northern shrimp in the winter, but regulators shut the fishery down in 2013 amid concerns about low population and warming waters.

An arm of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission says it has reviewed a new assessment of the shrimp population that says there are far fewer of the crustaceans off of New England than there used to be. The commission says the rising temperatures of the Gulf of Maine are a threat to the shrimp.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at U.S. News

Northern shrimp surveys point to another year of moratorium

October 10, 2018 — The shrimp section of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission met in Portland, Maine, last week and voted to accept the 2018 benchmark assessment for northern shrimp — a report that shows a bleak future for the fishery.

The assessment indicates the northern shrimp population remains severely depleted, spawning stock biomass remains at the same low levels that have kept the fishery shuttered since the 2013 season. The assessment also recorded historically low recruitment of new shrimp into the fishery.

“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.”

The decision on whether or not to close the fishery for the sixth year straight will be made during a Nov. 15-16 commission shrimp managers’ meeting with the advisory panel to discuss the 2019 season.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

 

Whale protection, trawl limits entangle Maine lobstermen

October 10, 2018 — DEER ISLE, Maine — October is a peak month, according to the state Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry, for feistiness in Maine’s population of hornets and wasps. Lobstermen too, judging by last week’s meeting of the Zone C Lobster Management Council at Deer Isle-Stonington High School.

The principal irritant is the still-simmering conflict over a rule adopted by DMR at the beginning of August establishing a five-trap maximum trawl limit for a 60-square-mile rectangle centered, more or less, on Mount Desert Rock.

The trawl limit was proposed by the Zone B management council last winter. The problem is that much of the western part of that area is fished by lobstermen based in Zone C — primarily Stonington and Deer Isle — who bitterly opposed adoption of a rule that Department of Marine Resources Commissioner Patrick Keliher called “one of the more difficult decisions that I have made.”

Last week, the Zone C council reviewed a proposed rule change that would eliminate the five-trap maximum in a large area west of Mount Desert Rock. While that might improve the situation for some Zone C lobstermen, the underlying problem reflects unhappiness on the part of lobstermen from Zone B, with limited entry for new fishermen, over the number of lobstermen from Zone C who fish across the zone line in waters they fished before the zones were ever established.

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American

 

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