August 6, 2024 — After the heavy rain the state saw fall over the weekend, officials are shutting down shellfish harvesting along Maine’s southern coast for contamination concerns.
The Maine Department of Marine Resources says people should not harvest clams, mussels, and oysters from Freeport to Harpswell.
August 1, 2024 — Maine’s offshore wind research project in the Gulf of Maine is the subject of negotiations that are picking up speed among state regulators, the project’s developers and the Public Advocate, who are trying to determine how much the zero-carbon energy will ultimately cost utility customers.
The PUC on July 11 ordered that the price — or how it’s structured for the project in a contract between the developer, Pine Tree Offshore Wind, and CMP or Versant — should be “sufficiently defined and certain” to allow regulators to determine whether the cost to ratepayers is the lowest reasonable amount to finance, build and operate the project. The low-cost provision is required by state law, which mandated that the PUC execute a long-term offshore wind contract between a utility of no less than 20 years.
The project is “intended to be a ‘kick-starter’ for an offshore wind industry in the Gulf of Maine,” regulators said. But it’s still years away from going online.
Jack Shapiro, climate and clean energy director of the Natural Resources Council of Maine, called the research project the “tip of the spear,” helping developers of future commercial wind power determine pricing and other factors.
August 1, 2024 — Maine Governor Mills announced $21.2 million in resilience grants for 68 working waterfronts damaged by winter storms. The Working Waterfront Resilience Grant Program funding stems from $60 million in recovery funds from the Maine Legislature following the December and January storms. The funding was approved on April 18, allocating direct funds to working waterfront communities, underlining their importance in the state.
“Working waterfronts are a cornerstone of our coastal communities and our economy, and last winter’s devastating storm demonstrated just how vulnerable they are to extreme weather and climate change,” said Governor Mills. “These grants will help rebuild working waterfronts, so they are able to better withstand future storms, protecting access to the water now and for generations to come.”
The recovery funds are the single largest investment in storm recovery by any administration in Maine’s history. The 68 working waterfront projects set to receive grant funds represent a range of needs. According to the release from Gov. Mills’ office, the needs include reconstructing and improving damaged wharves and piers, rebuilding and restoring key support buildings such as bait sheds, and repairing and upgrading fuel and electrical systems. A list of the preliminarily approved applicants and funding can be found here.
Read the full story at National Fisherman
July 31, 2024 — Heidi Nydan revved a jagged, bloody reciprocating saw blade to life on Tuesday morning behind a building on Commercial Street, then sent it slashing down the length of a giant bluefin tuna’s decapitated head.
One lifeless, golf ball-sized fish eye stared up at the gray sky as Nydan, an intern at the University of Maine Pelagic Fisheries Lab, finished her whirring cut. Half the tuna’s head then hit the pavement with a wet thud.
“This is so fun,” Nydan said, her face splattered with flecks of fish spray. “I still can’t believe this is what I do when I come to work.”
Nydan, and a small team of other workers from the Portland-based lab, spent the morning cutting open 30 donated fish heads, then extracting tiny, fingernail-sized bones from within them. The small bits can reveal a lot about each fish and will eventually inform federal and international policymakers who set quotas and other regulations in the future.
But it takes a lot of itty bitty fish bones to do that. Lab interns and scientists sometimes process up to 2,000 bluefin tuna heads in a single fishing season.
July 26, 2024 — The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is advising restaurants and food retailers not to serve or sell, and consumers not to eat, recalled oysters from Recompense Cove in Freeport, Maine, U.S.A., because they may be contaminated with Campylobacter bacteria.
“These oysters have been associated with a Campylobacter illness outbreak in Maine,” the FDA said in a press release.
July 18, 2024 — Just off the shore in Casco Bay, Maine, marine scientist Scott Lindell descends into an underwater kelp forest, his ears filling with frigid water as he swims down to the seafloor. Lindell’s mission: to find sugar kelp, a golden-brown, frilly-edged seaweed—and, more specifically, sugar kelp in its reproductive phase. Peering through his mask in the swirling, murky water, Lindell can only see a few feet, so it’s not an easy task.
What he’s looking for: kelp blades streaked with sorus tissue, a dark band teeming with millions of spores. A wiry man in his 60s, Lindell has developed relationships with homeowners and researchers across hundreds of miles of New England’s coast so he can access the kelp integral to his work—and, potentially, to the future of seaweed farming in the United States.
After several dives, Lindell has filled his mesh collection bag with cuttings and swims to shore. He stores the prized tissue in a cooler to keep it damp and cool for the five-hour drive, and then sets off for his laboratory at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. Here, over the next 45 days, the spores will be carefully cultivated into seed for farmers and scientists to outplant in the ocean.
July 16, 2024 — Federal plans to open up the Gulf of Maine for offshore wind production — including in ocean areas directly east of the outermost Cape towns — will be the topic of discussion at a public information session in Eastham on Wednesday.
The Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management and the state Division of Marine Fisheries are hosting the session with the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management at the Four Points by Sheraton, 3800 State Highway, Eastham, 6-8 p.m.
A Bureau of Ocean Energy Management spokesperson said the event will be in-person only, but noted there are recordings of recent virtual meetings with the same information at tinyurl.com/gulfofmainewindinfo for those unable to attend.
July 15, 2024 — Several commercial fishermen in New England have been sentenced in a fraud scheme that centered on a critically important species of bait fish and that prosecutors described as complex and wide-ranging
The fishermen were sentenced for “knowingly subverting commercial fishing reporting requirements” in a scheme involving Atlantic herring, prosecutors said in a statement. The defendants included owners, captains and crew members of the Western Sea, a ship that operates out of Maine.
Western Sea owner Glenn Robbins pleaded guilty in March to submitting false information to the federal government regarding the catch and sale of Atlantic herring and a failure to pay taxes, prosecutors said. Members of the ship’s crew conspired to submit false trip reports to the federal government from 2016 to 2019, court records state. The charges are misdemeanors.
July 9, 2024 — A U.S. Supreme Court decision is weakening the power of federal agencies to approve new regulations, and some Maine fishermen are celebrating.
By a vote of 6-3, the Supreme Court overturned the Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council ruling from 1984.
Governor Janet Mills shared concerns that this decision could impact how federal agencies protect the health and safety of Americans. Maine House Minority Leader Billy Bob Faulkingham, also a lobster fisherman, says this could help in their fight against federal fishing regulations.
July 8, 2024 — Scientists say many more alewives and blueback herring have made their way into Maine’s waterways this year — a recovery they attribute to dam removals and habitat restoration.
Sean Ledwin, the director of the Bureau of Sea-Run Fisheries and Habitat at the the Maine Department of Marine Resources, said several rivers are seeing strong runs again this year, after record counts in 2023.