Saving Seafood

MAINE: Body recovered from missing Maine fishermen’s sunken fishing vessel

February 3, 2025 –A team of volunteer divers recovered a body from inside the cabin of sunken fishing vessel Sudden Impact, which was carrying two Maine fishermen who have been missing for multiple weeks. 

On Jan. 18, a 34-foot scallop vessel carrying Chester Barrett and his son, Aaron Barrett, changed course due to poor sea conditions and did not arrive at its expected destination.

The two fishermen had left Cobscook Bay State Park around 5 a.m. that day. They had been expected to return home to South Addison from Edmunds that evening.

Read the full article at News Center Maine

Trump tariffs worry lobster fishermen in Maine and Canada

January 31, 2025 — Leaders from the U.S. and Canada’s lobster fishing communities came together in Bar Harbor Wednesday to tackle what they said are pressing issues facing the industry.

At the top of mind at this year’s 21st annual meeting was the potential impact of President Donald Trump’s planned tariffs on Canadian products.

“These tariffs, if they actually happen, will badly impact Maine harvesters and the Maine lobster sector — just as it will impact Canadians,” said Geoff Irvine, the executive director of the Lobster Council of Canada.

Solving this issue could mean lobbying U.S. political figures, Irvine said.

Read the full article at Spectrum News 13

Appeals court reinstates lobster fishing limits to preserve right whales

January 31, 2025 — Conservation groups are praising a recent decision to reinstate protections for endangered North Atlantic right whales in a particularly precarious stretch of ocean off the coast of Massachusetts.

The First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston decided Thursday to restrict lobster fishing, which in turn restores protections for endangered right whales. That decision overturned a district court verdict by reinstating a 2024 National Marine Fisheries Service rule that cordoned off a 200 square mile area of federal waters between February and April, when right whales are present.

“The First Circuit’s decision represents a major victory for right whale conservation,” said Jane Davenport, senior attorney at Defenders of Wildlife, who argued the case for conservation groups. “The wedge closure affects only a handful of lobstermen for three months but protects right whales from the deadly fishing gear entanglements driving this species towards extinction.”

Found along the East Coast, the whales’ migratory paths overlap with highly productive lobster fishing areas in Maine and Massachusetts, making entanglements in fishing gear one of the major threats for the animals. With a population of less than 400 and even fewer reproductively active females, right whales are approaching extinction with more than half a dozen threats to their existence, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries.

Read the full article at Maine Morning Star

MAINE: Maine Republican legislators write Trump asking for further action to stop offshore wind

January 31, 2025 —  Maine Republican legislators wrote a letter to President Donald Trump thanking him for his recent action on offshore wind and asking him to take it a step further.

The letter sent Thursday was authored by Rep. Reagan Paul (R-Winterport). Offshore wind was a key issue for Paul in her reelection campaign last year after the state announced its hopes to build a port in her district to support its larger goals to develop 3,000 megawatts of offshore wind in the Gulf of Maine by 2040.

“Common sense, economics and environmental concerns are against the offshore wind projects proposed by Democrats for the Gulf of Maine,” Paul said in a news release Thursday, noting her appreciation for Trump’s swift action on the matter.

She went on to say that she and her Republican legislative colleagues “are asking his administration to finish the job before irrevocable harm is inflicted on marine wildlife, coastal communities and our quality of life.”

Read the full article at Maine Morning Star

Lobster industry hails UMaine study on economics of Maine fishery

January 30, 2025 — Researchers from the University of Maine have created a new, holistic measure to study the resilience of the Maine lobster industry, which is drawing praise from industry leaders for identifying the structural and market factors that impacted it in recent years.

That industry has seen dramatic fluctuations in value in recent years, spiking to a record USD 724 million (EUR 694 million) in 2021 before dropping to USD 388 million (EUR 372 million) in 2022. The UMaine team said it hopes to quantify some of the challenges causing those flucuations in new ways, which can help fisheries management – something members of the industry said is sorely needed.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

MAINE: $2M in grants secures Maine’s fishing legacy

January 29, 2025 — Back in October, Maine’s fishing future received a significant boost when U.S. Senators Susan Collins and Angus King, alongside Representatives Chellie Pingree and Jared Golden, announced over $2 million in grant funding for workforce development.

The funding, awarded through NOAA’s Young Fishermen’s Development Program (YFDP), is directed toward two local fishing organizations dedicated to training the next generation of Maine’s commercial fishermen and women.

The Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association (MCFA) will receive $1,771,092 to develop an online knowledge hub packed with educational content for young fishermen and women. The resources will focus on career development, industry training, and wellness, helping new entrants to the industry navigate the work and the challenges of physical and mental health on the water.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

ME and NH reject lobster gauge increase, MA stands firm

January 28, 2025 — The New England lobster industry is facing some potential challenges.

Maine and New Hampshire have announced their decision to withdraw the proposed gauge increase to the minimum legal size for lobsters being caught, following strong opposition from the fishing community. Massachusetts has announced that it still supports the gauge increase, even following recent announcements from Maine and New Hampshire.

The Maine Department of Marine Resources (DMR) recently held a meeting in Augusta to discuss the proposal which aimed at raising the minimum size limits for lobsters by 1/16 of an inch. The proposed as intended to address a reported 35 percent decline in the lobster population within Lobster Management Area 1 (LMA 1), as highlighted by data from the Atlantics States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC). The proposal has faced fierce opposition from the lobstering communities, who feared the economic repercussions of the increase.

New England Fishermen’s Stewardship Association (NEFSA) has strongly advocated for opposing the increase. Two days ago, NEFSA COO Dustin Delano stated, “Imagine losing 10 percent or 15 percent of your landings. For a fisherman catching 40,000-50,000 pounds of lobster annually, that could be a loss of up to $40,000 or $50,000- more than half of their take home income. Expenses like bait, fuel, gear, and boat payments would not decrease, but their livelihoods would.”

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

MAINE: Midcoast hits the jackpot with Maine shrimp temporarily back on the market

January 28, 2024 — Coming up in February, Midcoast Mainers will see their favorite Maine shrimp on the market again—for a very short time.

Only seven fishermen were chosen out of 40 applicants to participate in a Winter Sampling Research Program for Northern shrimp and will be allowed to catch 58,000 pounds of Maine shrimp for the first time in more than a decade. Shrimpers will collect samples by either trawling and trapping in one of three regions of the Maine coast: Western Maine (Kittery to Phippsburg), Midcoast Maine (Phippsburg to Owls Head), or Eastern Maine (east of Owls Head).

In contrast, when the fishery was forced to close due to a stock collapse in 2013, more than 10 million pounds were caught. At that time, the average price per pound was $1.81.

This is driving up a supply and demand frenzy for Northern Maine shrimp, which has not been seen before in Maine.

All but one fisherman chosen to catch Maine shrimp are located in the Midcoast.

Two Midcoast markets, Delano Seafood Market in Waldoboro and Port Clyde Fresh Catch, have announced they will be selling shrimp on a temporary basis—and people are lining up out the door.

Read the full article at Penobscot Bay Pilot

Maine official warns of large right whale presence, asks lobstermen to take precautions

January 28, 2025 — An official in the U.S. state of Maine has alerted lobstermen to take precautions to prevent entanglements with right whales after a large presence of the mammals have been seem off the state’s southern coast.

Maine Department of Marine Resources Commissioners Patrick Keliher said regulators have detected as many as 90 individual whales on the western edge of Jeffreys Ledge off the southern coast of the state.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

MAINE: Golden wants to ensure fishing areas are protected from offshore wind

January 27, 2025 — Amid efforts by President Donald Trump to halt future offshore wind efforts, U.S. Rep. Jared Golden is hoping to codify protections for lobster fishing in the Gulf of Maine.

“Maine’s fishermen deserve to know that waters critical to our historic, high-value industry are protected — not by promises, but by federal law,” Golden said. “President Trump’s recent Executive Order provides some measure of reprieve, but we need a more permanent solution.”

Even though the fishing area is currently excluded from approved offshore wind development areas, Golden wants to “take protections for Maine’s fisheries out of the discretion of the chief executive and codify it into law,” according to the news release from his office. Just days into his second term, Trump has taken steps to undo the offshore wind advances of the Biden administration.

Read the full article at Maine Morning Star