Saving Seafood

MAINE: One solution for Maine’s struggling fishing industry? Give fillets away for free

May 26, 2026 —  Surging food costs and fuel prices are pummeling Maine’s struggling groundfishing industry. But a pandemic-era program is helping to keep it afloat as inflation worsens, while also aiming to create a new generation of seafood lovers.

Fishermen Feeding Mainers began in late 2020 and raises money to buy locally caught fish, process it and donate the frozen fillets to schools and food banks in Maine. So far, it has spent more than $4 million on the purchasing and processing of about 1.3 million pounds of locally caught fish.

“Before this [program], chances were you could get down to some really scary-low prices,” said Boothbay fisherman Devyn Campbell of the amount he could earn for his catch.

That’s in part because the market for local fish dried up early in the COVID-19 pandemic when restaurants closed to in-person dining. “COVID destroyed all fish prices,” Campbell said.

Read the full article at KUOW

MAINE: Downeast groundfish vanish, leaving stories and questions behind

May 21, 2026 — As summer approaches in Downeast, Maine, there is a certain sadness about visitors who no longer arrive in the border waters shared with Canada and the Passamaquoddy Tribe. For tens of thousands of years, big cod, pollock, and haddock swam into what we now call Cobscook Bay, Passamaquoddy Bay, the St. Croix River estuary, and surrounding waters. And for thousands of years, the Passamaquoddy Tribe, the people of the pollock, lived a rich life harvesting these fish.

“By 1988 it was all over,” says Jane Cowles, who with her late husband, Rick, once bought fish from the mosquito fleet in Eastport, Maine. “We were there for about ten years,” she says.

“I imagine you can still catch some to eat,” says Edward French, owner and editor of the Quoddy Tides, the easternmost newspaper in the USA. In 1998, French interviewed Reid Wilson of Eastport, Maine. Wilson had been a leader of the mosquito fleet—about twenty fishermen who buzzed out of the harbor before dawn, racing their outboard skiffs to fishing spots no one knows the names of anymore. They’d be back by noon, unloading hundreds of pounds of large and whale cod, pollock, and haddock. Eastporters loved the haddock but not the cod. “Too wormy,” they said. You couldn’t give cod away in Eastport; it all went down the road to processors in Portland and Boston. Those high-quality fish, less than 24 hours out of the water, sold for the same price as 10-day-old cod from the offshore draggers.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Warming Accelerates Ecological State Shift Along Maine Coast

May 20, 2026 — The loss of dense kelp forests along the Maine coast — and the northward proliferation of small, carpet-like turf algae in its place — is accelerating as the ocean warms, according to new research by scientists at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences.

Published recently in Ecology, the research shows that warming is facilitating the arrival of new species into the Gulf of Maine, and that the transition from kelp forests to turf reefs has progressed rapidly in recent years. The study, which covers some of the hottest years on record in the region, highlights both the direct and indirect impacts of environmental change on temperate reef ecosystems and the vital services they provide.

“The progression of this shift from kelp forests to turf algae played out right before our eyes,” said Senior Research Scientist Doug Rasher, the senior author on the paper. “We’re digging into what’s driving this transition, and what’s being gained or lost as a result, which allows us to speak more to the future of this ecosystem.”

The new paper builds on previous research published by Rasher’s team, including a study published in 2024 that provided a coastwide assessment on the state of Maine’s kelp forests up to 2018. That analysis, combined with long-term monitoring data from the Department of Marine Resources, drew a causal link between kelp forest decline and rising ocean temperatures. It also documented a widespread shift to turf algae in the southern reaches of the coast. Subsequently, the team examined several of the consequences of that state shift, including changes to the reef’s chemical environment and its food web dynamics.

Read the full article at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences

MAINE: Inside the effort to restore ‘Big Jim,’ an icon of Maine’s bygone sardine industry

May 14, 2026 — For more than a century, the sardine — not lobster — was the king of Maine’s coastal fisheries.

The industry may be gone but the people who helped catch and pack the little fish for sale around the world remain with stories to share. There’s an effort underway in Searsport to preserve that history.

From ‘Sardineland’ to ‘Vacationland’

At the height of production during the 1950’s, dozens of canneries fueled the economies of towns like Lubec, Belfast and Eastport. At that time, two out of every three sardines sold in the U.S. were packed in Maine.

That effort took entire communities helping to steer canned fish production. While the men of Maine’s coastal villages were on the water catching the fish, it was women who stood for hours in the canneries cutting up the tiny fish and packing them into tin cans.

“I remember cutting off the heads and the tails and having all these fish heads staring up at me,” said Anne Shure, who worked at the Stinson Cannery in Belfast during summers from 1971 to 1973. She still remembers all the sights — and other aspects of the cannery.

Shure said she was paid by the can and aimed to pack hundreds of fish a day. She remembers wrapping her fingers to prevent cuts from scales and scissors.

“It definitely smelled,” she said. “No one would go in my car because it smelled like sardines.”

The Maine sardines are actually a species of herring but were marketed as sardines to compete with European markets when canneries opened in the late 1800s.

During World War II, preserved fish were ideal to send to soldiers fighting overseas. After the soldiers came home, Maine boasted over 40 active canneries along its coast.

But by the 1970s, when Shure was putting in long hours at the Stinson Cannery, the industry had already started to lose steam.

Read the full article at Maine Public

MAINE: Harvesters, scientists and town officials coordinate steps to rebuild clam population

May 12, 2026 — On a cool, overcast Thursday morning, a little before low tide, more than a dozen clam harvesters and Russell Wright, Lubec’s shellfish warden, gathered on the Narrows flats to collect juvenile clams as part of an effort to maintain the local population.

The juvenile clams collected that day were later planted on the Pirates Creek flats, which are expected to remain closed to harvesting until Dec. 1 to protect them as they mature.

The effort was part of the Lubec Shellfish Committee’s two‑pronged approach to clam conservation, which the committee discussed at its May 4 meeting: moving juvenile clams from one flat to another and planting nursery‑grown clam seed.

Read the full article at Maine Monitor

Endangered whale protections may be delayed to 2035 under Trump-backed plan

May 5, 2026 — For roughly 380 right whales left in the North Atlantic, which can die after getting tangled in fishing ropes or hit by ships, the Trump administration said this month it wants to delay new protections by almost a decade in favor of commercial fishing interests.

The sleek black whales, which weigh as much as a midsized bulldozer, are critically endangered and their numbers have declined sharply in recent decades. Environmental groups say reducing deaths and injuries caused by people is essential to the species’ recovery.

The whales give birth off Florida and Georgia before making a long migration north to feed off New England and Canada. Protected areas of ocean aid them on their journey, but scientists have said they have strayed from those zones in recent years in search of food as the oceans have warmed.

A proposal by U.S. Rep. Jared Golden, a Democrat from Maine, would push back new federal protections for right whales to 2035, and allow time to craft regulations that are less burdensome to the fishing industry. The White House released a memo Friday saying it “strongly supports” the plan and that President Donald Trump’s senior advisors would recommend he sign it into law if it passes Congress.

Read the full article at the Associates Press

Bill to delay right whale regulations gains support from Trump and Maine fishermen

May 4, 2026 — A bill proposed by Democratic U.S. Representative Jared Golden is gaining support from President Donald Trump and some in Maine’s fishing industry.

The legislation, known as H.R. 8509, would extend a moratorium on fishing regulations aimed at protecting the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale. Those rules are currently set to take effect in 2028, but the bill would push that timeline back to 2035 if approved.

Lobstermen with the New England Fishermen’s Stewardship Association said the data used to create those regulations is inaccurate. They argued the rules could lead to unnecessarily strict limits on where they can fish and how they operate.

“Give fishermen and the state of Maine DMR time to see where the whales actually are and give a chance for us to see the impact the seasonal closures and the changes we’ve already made to our gear have made.”

Joyce said some of the proposed regulations could include restricting access to certain waters and requiring the use of “ropeless” lobster gear. That type of gear removes the vertical rope connecting traps to buoys—a line that can entangle whales.

But Joyce and other fishermen believe that the solution is unsafe and costly.

Read the full article at News Center Maine

MAINE: Downeast fleet mourns loss of Steuben lobsterman found

April 29, 2026 — The Downeast Maine fleet is mourning the loss of one of its own after a longtime Steuben lobsterman was found dead in the water.

63-year-old Thomas West was discovered in Dyer Bay early Wednesday morning near his 35-foot lobster boat Aces and Eights. The Maine Department of Marine Resources said West was found around 6 am after a search effort that began the night before, when local fishermen reported his vessel running with no one aboard.

Maine Marine Patrol launched a search on Tuesday night, deploying a remotely operated vehicle to scan the area near the moored boat. The effort was suspended in the early morning hours due to low visibility but was set to resume before West’s body was ultimately located by family members and brought aboard a relative’s vessel, according to News Center Maine.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

US secretary of commerce testifies before Senate on Maine lobster, fishery disaster requests, surveys

April 24, 2026 — U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick commented on a handful of fisheries issues under questioning by lawmakers on the Senate Appropriations Committee during an 22 April hearing.

Senators demanded answers from the Trump administration official on regulations surrounding Maine lobster, the backlog of fishery disaster determination requests, and NOAA Fisheries’ capacity to conduct surveys in the face of budget and staffing cuts during a hearing ostensibly about the Department of Commerce’s fiscal year 2027 budget.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

 

MAINE: Fishermen have recycled thousands of old lobster traps on Vinalhaven this winter

April 23, 2026 — The sun is just starting to peak through the dense clouds on this late morning in April, as Buzz Scott hoists up a heavy wire lobster trap.

Scott is working with a small crew of fishermen, and the traps, and the jokes, are flying.

“See this is why fishermen have big bellies,” Scott says, as he uses his stomach to lift one of the traps and heave it onto the bed a trailer.

Very few of these traps are useable. Some are caked with moss and mud. Others have been crushed. Curt Bryant, known to the guys as “Chief,” said the traps on this property have been sitting idle for years.

“This was all traps and it was all five high, four and five high like that,” Bryant said. “This whole thing was solid.”

This is a common scene up and down Maine’s coast — battered wire fishing traps piled high in a front yard, tucked back in the woods, or strewn along the shore after a storm. Wire pots wrapped with polyvinyl plastic replaced wooden, biodegradable traps in the 1980s, and they’ve been piling up since, shedding microplastics and creating hazards for birds and other creatures.

Read the full article at nhpr