Saving Seafood

Lobstermen win right to fish in coral protection zones

July 5, 2017 — Last month, the New England Fishery Management Council voted to prohibit most fishing in two prime areas off the Downeast coast, but the ban aimed at protecting deep sea corals won’t affect Maine lobstermen.

Meeting in Portland, the council approved two coral protection zones in the Gulf of Maine as part of a wider Omnibus Deep-Sea Coral Amendment.

The Outer Schoodic Ridge zone comprises a roughly rectangular area 12.8 miles long in a northeast to southwest direction and about 2.4 miles wide comprising 30.5 square miles located some 25 southeast of Mount Desert Island with water depths ranging from roughly 350 to more than 800 feet.

The five-sided Mount Desert Rock zone includes an area of 8.2 square miles with a perimeter of 13.7 miles extending southwest of the tiny islet, which lies about 20 miles south of MDI. Water depths in the coral protection zone range from 330 to 650 feet.

As part of a wider action aimed at protecting fragile deep sea corals along the Northeast Atlantic coast, the council banned the use of all bottom-tending mobile gear in the two protection zones. The prohibition includes gear such as trawls used to harvest groundfish and dredges used to harvest shellfish such as ocean quahogs and scallops.

“I’m very pleased the council struck a balance that provides protection for corals and will enable additional research on fishing gear impacts to corals, while ensuring millions of dollars of continued economic opportunity for Maine’s Downeast communities,” DMR Commissioner Patrick Keliher said in an email last week. “I’m also grateful that industry stepped up to provide the detailed information on potential impacts that helped the council make a fully informed decision.”

Read the full story in the The Ellsworth American

Selling for as high as $2,600 a pound, baby eels have changed fortunes for Maine’s fishermen — and brought trouble

July 5, 2017 — On tidal rivers and streams that course through coastal Maine, where salt- and freshwater collide, people wearing headlamps are flocking to the water’s edge in the middle of the night like 19th-century miners sifting the earth for specks of gold. They’re searching for baby eels, better known as elvers, pound for pound one of the most expensive live fish in the world.

The first time Julie Keene caught $33,000 worth of baby eels in a single night, she started crying because she thought she’d done something wrong. She hauled her bucket of eels up the riverbank in the darkness and handed it off to a buyer, who tried to give her a thick wad of cash in exchange for the squirming pile of translucent sea creatures, which look like long, skinny tadpoles. At first, though, she was too frightened to take the money.

“We’re really poor and stuff. We dig clams,” she explains. “You see something like that and you go — I mean, you can’t fathom it. It’s like they told you you just won the Powerball or something. You think, Oh my god, you know, I’m gonna be able to make some money.”

Keene is smoking a cigarette and pacing the muddy banks of the Penobscot River, where everybody says the eels are running so thick at night they look like a blue oil slick in the light of the moon. It’s early evening at the end of May, and the river is a dull gray, tipped with white where the current churns up through the middle. Across the water, up on a hill, is the red-brick silhouette of downtown Bangor, Maine.

Keene, who is 58 years old, has a weathered, weary face and reddish-blond hair tucked under a baseball cap. She’s spent her entire life on the water, working as a harbormaster, clam warden, shrimper, scallop dragger, and fish cutter, among other jobs. She paces anxiously in her muddy rubber waders, stealing glances at the river, fretting that we haven’t seen any eels yet. Earlier this afternoon, she told me to drive down a private dead-end road that led to this secluded fishing spot and warned that I could not, under any circumstances, put the specific location in writing. Elver fishermen are notoriously secretive about where they fish, for reasons both competitive (why give up the map in a treasure hunt?) and cautious (you never know who might creep up behind you in the dark).

Read the full story at the Boston Globe

Changes to cod, haddock, flounder quotas eyed in New England

July 3, 2017 — Federal fishing regulators are planning a host of changes to the quota limits of several important New England fish, including cod.

New England fishermen search for cod in two key fishing areas, Georges Bank and the Gulf of Maine. Regulators have enacted a series of cutbacks to the cod quota in those areas in recent years as cod stocks have dwindled.

This year, regulators want to trim the Georges Bank cod quota by 13 percent and keep Gulf of Maine’s quota the same. They also want to keep the Georges Bank haddock quota about the same and enact a 25 percent increase for the Gulf of Maine haddock quota. Changes are also planned for some flounder species.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the New Jersey Herald

MAINE: Lobster marketing campaign draws criticism, converts

July 1, 2017 — San Francisco chefs Stuart Brioza and Nicole Krasinski were among the attendees at an after-hours Maine lobster tasting party in Portland, where new-shell lobster was the only item on the menu. They and other far-flung chefs spent a day on a lobster boat, mingled with lobstermen, talked to local chefs experienced with different ways to prepare it and ate buckets of it, be it on toast, in a chowder or on a bun.

“I’ve always liked lobster, but I fell in love with the story” of how it’s caught and by whom, Krasinski said. “We’ve had it before as a special, but it’s definitely going on our menu.”

That’s exactly the response the Maine Lobster Marketing Collaborative, a group organized four years ago to promote Maine lobster, wanted to hear. It validates the collaborative’s two-year campaign to familiarize chefs with new-shell lobsters – also called soft-shells or shedders because they have just molted – through a series of tasting parties and marketing events in foodie cities across the nation.

Building that kind of demand is good for Maine’s $533 million lobster fishery, said collaborative director Matt Jacobson, especially in the summer, when almost all of the 6,500 licensed lobstermen are fishing, and much of the coastline is rolling in product. The new-shell campaign focuses on building demand in nontraditional lobster markets when supply is at its highest.

But some Maine lobstermen, especially those who fish Down East, say the collaborative’s focus on selling new-shell lobster in the summer is not helping them. They don’t start catching a lot of new shells until fall, when restaurants that focus on seasonal fare trade in lobster for mussels or duck and the biggest buyers left are Canadian processors eager to finally have the new-shell lobster market to themselves.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

MAINE: ‘Shark Week’ episode to feature Maine professor

June 28, 2017 — During more than 25 years studying a variety of fish, including sharks, James Sulikowski has had to solve all kinds of problems. Among the trickiest and most important: How do you gather data about pregnant sharks without first killing them?

“The catch-22 is that you need the information to better manage them, but in order to get the information [you used to have to] kill them. You’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t,” Sulikowski, a professor at the University of New England in Biddeford, said. “So that’s where my sort of science came in. We treated sharks basically like pregnant females, like human beings. How are humans studied? Well, you take blood and you can look at that blood for circulating levels of hormones [to determine if the female is pregnant].”

That idea morphed into taking special waterproof, veterinary-grade ultrasound equipment onto boats and examining sharks that later would be released alive.

That kind of newly available data on shark reproduction made Sulikowski and his colleagues rock stars in the shark world and drew the interest of the Discovery Channel.

When Discovery Channel’s popular “Shark Week” franchise returns for another wall-to-wall dose of toothy adventure in July, Sulikowski and his colleagues will be prominently featured. That episode, titled “Shark Vortex,” will air at 8 p.m. on July 24.

Sulikowski was tight-lipped about what viewers will see during the episode, which marks the second straight year his work will have been featured during “Shark Week.” In 2016, “Tiger Beach” kicked off Shark Week and drew between 6 million and 7 million viewers during three airings, according to Sulikowski.

“[‘Shark Vortex’] is top secret. I signed my life away for that,” Sulikowski said. “But I can tell you it’s a great story. It’s basically sharks of New England, in a sense. It’s gonna have white sharks, it’s gonna have makos, it’s gonna have porbeagles. The ones that really separate us from other places.”

Read the full story at Bangor Daily News

Portland seafood company fined over $550,000 for illegally importing urchins

June 29, 2017 — A Portland seafood company has been fined more than $550,000 for violating import laws.

ISF Trading Company, located on Hobsons Wharf at 390 Commercial St., was also ordered to forfeit nearly $300,000 and was put on probation for a year by federal District Court Judge John A. Woodcock Jr. for violating the Lacey Act, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Portland said.

The Lacey Act prohibits trading in wildlife that has been illegally caught, owned, transported or sold.

According to federal prosecutors, ISF bought sea urchins from a supplier in Canada that wasn’t allowed, under Canadian law, to export seafood. ISF then brought the urchins into the U.S., using labels from another Canadian supplier which, at times, was allowed to export the urchins, prosecutors say.

ISF was charged with illegally importing about 48,000 pounds of sea urchins between Dec. 31, 2010, and Feb. 1, 2011. Prosecutors said the processed roe from the urchins was worth at least $172,800.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Maine Marine Patrol to Focus on Boating Under the Influence

June 29, 2017 — The following was released by the Maine Department of Marine Resources:

The Maine Marine Patrol will be on heightened alert for those violating Maine’s boating under the influence laws during the national Operation Drywater weekend, June 30-July 2.

Operation Dry Water is a national awareness and enforcement campaign coordinated by the National Association of State Boating Law Administrators (NASBLA) that focuses on deterring boaters from boating under the influence (BUI) of drugs or alcohol.

“Marine Patrol Officers will be conducting patrols on Maine’s coastal waters from Kittery to the Canadian border focused on boaters who may be under the influence of alcohol or drugs,” said Maine Marine Patrol Major Rene Cloutier.

“They will also be taking every opportunity possible to provide information on safe boating practices and the importance of wearing life jackets.” According to US Coast Guard statistics, 83 percent of drowning victims in 2016 were not wearing a life jacket.

Nationally, alcohol use is the leading contributing factor in fatal boating accidents. According to the US Coast Guard, in 2016, where the primary cause was known, alcohol use was the leading factor in 15 percent of boater deaths.

“Boating under the influence is a 100 percent preventable crime,” said Major Cloutier. “The Maine Marine Patrol strongly encourages boaters to stay safe by staying sober while boating.”

“Environmental stressors such as wind, noise, and the movement of the boat while on the water intensify the effects of alcohol or drug use on an individual while boating. Boaters can become impaired more quickly on the water than on land.”

Operating a boat with a blood alcohol content (BAC) of .08 or higher is against the law in Maine. BUI laws pertain to all vessels, from canoes and rowboats to the largest ships.

In 2016, 538 local, state, and federal agencies participated in Operation Drywater. Over the three days law enforcement officers contacted 131,054 boaters, made 367 BUI arrests, and issued 18,659 citations and warnings for safety violations.

In 2016 the Maine Marine Patrol participated in Operation Drywater details in the Saco River, Portland Harbor, the Sheepscot, Kennebec, St. George, and Penobscot Rivers, Southwest Harbor, Northeast Harbor, Swan’s Island, Frenchboro, and Bass Harbor.  A total of 115 boats were checked with 305 people on board.

“Fortunately we didn’t have to remove anyone from the water for BUI,” said Major Cloutier. “But it provided us with an opportunity to communicate with a lot of people about the importance of boating sober and safely.”

For more information on Operation Dry Water, please visit operationdrywater.org.

This year, a welcome switch on bait supply for Maine lobstermen

June 29, 2017 — Maine lobstermen are hitting the water late this year because of cold weather, but without the cloud of a looming bait crisis hanging over them.

Bait freezers along the coast are full of herring and pogies, and even alewives, which means that bait is not only available, it is also much less expensive than last year when herring cost as much as 60 cents a pound, said Pat Keliher, commissioner of the state Department of Marine Resources. This year the lobstermen’s go-to bait costs about half as much.

That’s still not a great price, Keliher said. Herring fetched about 18 cents a pound at the start of the 2015 lobstering season.

“I won’t say we’re in great shape, but we are in a heck of a lot better shape than we were last year,” Keliher said.

He attributed the strong start to basic supply-and-demand economics. When the supply of bait fish is high and demand is low, lobstermen do well.

Fishermen caught herring in the deep waters off Georges Bank earlier this year than they did in 2016, Keliher said. Although they’ve landed a little more than last year – about 19.9 percent of their quota, compared with 19.1 percent at the same time last year, according to this week’s federal landing reports – this year’s catch came early enough in the season to keep prices low.

The inshore herring fishery in the Gulf of Maine opened this month. The state is applying the same restrictions it implemented last year to stretch out this local supply of fresh herring deep into the summer, when the lobster season starts to peak. These measures include weekly landing limits, a limit on how many days a week herring can be landed, and a prohibition on the use of carrier-only fishing vessels.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

No unprovoked shark attacks in Maine. “Not one.”

June 28, 2017 — Days after there was a reported shark sighting on Wells Beach, a University of New England shark expert tells beachgoers the chances of being attacked by a shark, particularly in Maine, are astronomically low.

Police cleared Wells Beach of swimmers Sunday afternoon, after a reported sighting of a shark. Wells Police Sgt. Adam Shaw said it was a precautionary measure, taken when someone reported seeing a 12-foot shark in the water between Wells Beach and North Beach. He said the harbormaster searched the area and found no signs of a shark.

The initial report came from a paddleboarder who said the shark was as long or longer than his 12-foot board. A second report came from an individual who thought it was a harmless basking shark.

Dr. James Sulikowski, professor of marine science at University of New England in Biddeford, said beachgoers globally are concerned about sharks – but that needs to be put in some perspective.

“One of the biggest concerns people have when they go to the beach is being attacked and eaten by a shark,” Sulikowski said. “But if you look at it globally, there are 100 to 150 shark attacks per year – that’s across the world. And if you put it in perspective with how many billions of people there are, the chances are astronomically low. And then to bring it into further perspective, there’s never been an unprovoked shark attack in Maine. Not one.”

Sulikowski, a global expert in the study of sharks, said basking sharks are more common in Maine waters, and are often confused with great white sharks. He said they often come much close to shore and they can be 25 to 30 feet long. They have big wide mouths and no teeth, and they feed on plankton and small fish, he said.

Read the full story at the Portsmouth Herald

Atlantic Herring Area 1A Trimester 2 Effort Controls and Meeting Notice

June 28, 2017 — The following was released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission:

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s (Commission) Atlantic Herring Section members from Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts revised the effort control measures for the 2017 Area 1A Trimester 2 (June 1 – September 30) fishery as follows. The revised measures are underlined. Please note the time and passcode for the next Days Out Meeting on July 12th have changed. The meeting will begin at 1:30 PM and the new passcode is 222918.

Days Out of the Fishery

  • Vessels with a herring Category A permit that have declared into the Trimester 2 Area 1A fishery may land herring four (4) consecutive days a week. One landing per 24 hour period. Vessels are prohibited from landing or possessing herring caught from Area 1A during a day out of the fishery.
    • Landing days in New Hampshire and Massachusetts begin on Monday of each week at 12:01 a.m.
    • Landings days in Maine begin on Sunday of each week at 6:00 p.m.
  • Small mesh bottom trawl vessels with a herring Category C or D permit that have declared into the Trimester 2 fishery may land herring seven (7) consecutive days a week.

Weekly Landing Limit

  • Vessels with a herring Category A permit may harvest up to 600,000 lbs (15 trucks) per harvester vessel, per week.
  • 80,000 lbs out of the 600,000 lb weekly limit can be transferred to a carrier vessel (see below).

At-Sea Transfer and Carrier Restrictions (no changes were made)

The following applies to harvester vessels with a herring Category A permit and carrier vessels landing herring caught in Area 1A to a Maine, New Hampshire or Massachusetts port.

  • A harvester vessel cannot transfer herring at-sea to another catcher vessel.
  • A harvester vessel is limited to making at-sea transfers to only one carrier vessel per week.
  • Carrier vessels are limited to receiving at-sea transfers from one catcher vessel per week and can land once per 24 hour period. A carrier vessel may land up to 80,000 lbs
  • (2 trucks) per week.  The carrier limit of 2 trucks is not in addition to the harvester weekly landing limit. Carrier vessel: a vessel with no gear on board capable of catching or processing fish. Harvester vessel: a vessel that is required to report the catch it has aboard as the harvesting vessel on the Federal Vessel Trip Report.

The initial Area 1A sub-annual catch limit (ACL) is 31,115 metric tons (mt) after adjusting for a carryover from 2015 and the research set-aside. The Section allocated 72.8% of the sub-ACL to Trimester 2 and 27.2% to Trimester 3. After incorporating the 295 mt fixed gear set-aside and the 8% buffer (Area 1A closes at 92% of the sub-ACL) the seasonal quotas are 20,625 mt for Trimester 2 and 7,706 mt for Trimester 3.

These effort controls are projected to extend the Trimester 2 fishery through mid-September. Landings will be monitored closely and the fishery will be adjusted to zero landing days when the trimester’s quota is projected to be reached.

The Atlantic Herring Section members from Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts are scheduled to reconvene via conference call to review fishing effort the following days:

  • Wednesday, July 12 at 1:30 PM
  • Wednesday, July 26 at 10:00 AM
  • Wednesday, August 9 at 10:00 AM

To join the calls, please dial 888.394.8197 and enter passcode 222918 as prompted.

Fishermen are prohibited from landing more than 2,000 pounds of Atlantic herring per trip from Area 1A until June 4 or 5, 2017, depending on the state.  Please contact Ashton Harp, Atlantic Herring Fishery Management Plan Coordinator, at aharp@asmfc.org or 703.842.0740 for more information.