Saving Seafood

Marine scientists use drifters to explore regional currents

June 27, 2017 — We know Clint Eastwood was the High Plains Drifter. And we’ve heard Bob Dylan’s tale of the Drifter’s Escape. But now the Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole is employing drifters not on the plains but on the waves around Cape Cod and the Gulf of Maine.

“I’m excited about our latest drifter project,” proclaimed NMFS Oceanographer Jim Manning. “It’s one of many we’ve had and it seems like a real application for drifters. We’ve used them for a lot of fun educational purposes but our recent project in the Bay of Fundy has real purpose.”

They’ve been used with purpose in Cape Cod Bay as well. But, you might ask, what exactly is a drifter? It’s not a shiftless character begging at the kitchen door for scraps.

“It looks like an underwater kite, like a box kite,” Manning explained. “It’s a meter by a meter of cloth sails and they only thing that sticks out is a satellite transmitter. It provides us an estimate of the surface current.”

Its function is similar to that of a glass bottle with a note in it. You toss it in the ocean, it drifts somewhere, and you find out where it went.

With the old bottle you had to wait months or years until someone wrote back but a transmitter can tell you where it is today. It reveals where the surface currents are headed and can tell you where anything drifting along, like a cold-stunned sea turtle in Cape Cod Bay, or a swath of toxic algae in Maine, might wind up.

The current project Manning is excited about focuses on Alexandrium fundyense, the plankton that causes paralytic shellfish poisoning in anyone that eats a shellfish, usually a clam, that has filter fed on it. It’s the same algae that lives in the Nauset Marsh between Orleans and Eastham, and causes annual shutdowns of shellfishing harvests.

The plankton has a resting stage where it sits as cysts in the mud. When conditions are right and the water warms the cysts germinate, it swims up towards the surface and the currents carry it away. In Nauset Marsh it doesn’t go far and stays in the marsh but in the Bay of Fundy it’s carried down the coast.

“The main objective is to help numerical modelers try to simulate the ocean,” Manning said. “A couple of universities have big computer models. These models are used for a variety of things. We’ve deployed the drifters north of Grand Manan Island up in the Bay of Fundy to demonstrate how complicated the currents are. Every time we put one out it goes in a different direction.”

Read the full story at Wicked Local

Maine boat captain gets jail, fine for shooting seal off Acadia National Park

June 27, 2017 — A Knox County man will serve time in jail and be required to pay a fine after pleading guilty to shooting a seal off the coast of Acadia National Park. The seal apparently died.

Joseph A. Martin, 54, of Warren pleaded guilty Monday in U.S. District Court in Bangor to the misdemeanor charge of taking a federally protected marine mammal.

Magistrate Judge John C. Nivison sentenced Martin to serve three days in jail and to pay a $1,000 fine.

Acting United States Attorney Richard W. Murphy issued a statement Monday describing the circumstances behind the killing of the seal.

Murphy said Martin was acting as a captain of a fishing vessel on Oct. 10, 2016, when “multiple protected seals began to approach” the vessel, which was off the coast of Acadia National Park at the time. Court records do not specify the exact location.

“The defendant retrieved his rifle and began to shoot at the seals in the ocean,” Murphy said in the statement. “After the shooting took place, one seal could be seen floating in the water with a dark liquid surrounding its body.”

Court records indicate that the seal that Martin fired his rifle at was either a harbor seal or a gray seal.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

MAINE: Fishermen, regulators disagree over cause of Brunswick fish kill

June 26, 2017 — As a massive vacuum truck from Clean Harbors traveled along the shoreline near Simpsons Point midweek to clean up rotting pogies, local fishermen were battling what they say was a raft of misinformation put forth by the state about how and why those pogies were dumped from a local fishing vessel on June 6.

On Tuesday, a day after residents of the Simpsons Point area asked town councilors to help pay for a professional cleanup of the fish, local lobsterman Steve Anderson posted a 10-minute video on YouTube, taking local media to task for only reporting part of the story and excoriating the Maine Department of Marine Resources for a quota system Anderson said simply doesn’t work.

Anderson declined requests to speak to the Bangor Daily News this week.

But Jeff Nichols, spokesman for the DMR, said Friday that Anderson “got a lot of things wrong,” including that DMR imposes the quota system. According to Nichols, while fishermen are still held to a quota,they can transfer their catch to another vessel, to act as a carrier vessel.

Quotas for Atlantic Menhaden, or pogies, are imposed by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission and implemented by state marine resources regulators. This year’s quota allowed Maine fishermen to catch 161,000 pounds per year, then to reapply to catch more if there is still stock, as there is this year but not every year.

“We hit that [quota] at the end of May, and then we could apply for an ‘episodic event fishery’ quota triggered when there are still fish in the water,” Nichols said.

This year, fishermen were granted additional quotas of 120,000 pounds per day per boat, Nichols said.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

Maine lobstermen win concession to fish in coral protection zone

June 22, 2017 — A deep-sea coral protection plan adopted Thursday won’t keep Maine fishermen out of their traditional Gulf of Maine fishing spots.

The New England Fisheries Management Council voted to ban all but lobstermen from fishing about 39 square miles of coral-rich area in two protection zones near Mt. Desert Rock and Outer Schoodic Ridge. About 50 Maine lobster boats from more than a dozen ports harvest more than $8 million worth of lobster from those areas, according to state estimates.

Marine Resources Commissioner Pat Keliher called the coral protection plan a good compromise.

“The Gulf of Maine coral motion is one I helped perfect,” Keliher said. “It gives adequate protection to the corals in certain areas of the Gulf of Maine and it exempts lobster gear, which has a lot of landed value and really a very low impact to the corals. We think it’s a good balance. … I would rather take a bite of the apple here one bite at a time instead of trying to do it all.”

Keliher noted that most fishermen avoid corals “like the plague” because it destroys their gear and costs them money.

Lobstermen turned out in big numbers at some of the public hearings on these proposed coral zones, but their anxiety faded once the council decided to choose a proposal that would allow lobster fishing in these areas as the preferred option. The council could have reversed course, but such a turnaround is rare for a board that works so closely with the fishing industry.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Maine Marine Patrol Searching Penobscot River after Report of Abandoned Vehicle on Bridge

June 22, 2017 — The following was released by the Maine Department of Marine Resources:

The Maine Marine Patrol this morning is searching the waters beneath the Penobscot Narrows Bridge after a report of an abandoned vehicle on the bridge.

The Marine Patrol received the report at approximately 6:00 am this morning and began searching shortly after 7:00 am. The report indicated that the vehicle was discovered at approximately 3:30 am.

The State Police is investigating this incident.

Maine man pleads guilty to illegal trafficking in baby eels valued at $375K

June 20, 2017 — A 38-year-old Woolwich man pleaded guilty on Friday to illegally trafficking in poached elvers — juvenile American eels — in 2012.

Michael Squillace pleaded guilty to violating the federal Lacey Act, which prohibits interstate transport or transactions of any species of fish or wildlife illegally harvested or handled in any state. He was released on personal recognizance, according to court documents. A sentencing date was not available on Monday. He faces up to five years in prison with a maximum of 3 years supervised release.

Prosecutors from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Environment and Natural Resources Division and Environmental Crimes Section said Squillace illegally sold 183 pounds of elvers, valued at about $375,000, to an unnamed Maine elver dealer.

Since 2011, elvers on average have fetched around $1,500 per pound for fishermen, and netted more than $4 million total for the 12 convicted poachers who have pleaded guilty to federal charges in South Carolina, Virginia and Maine.

Squillace is the sixth midcoast Maine man to be charged with selling poached elvers in recent years, most as part of a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service investigation dubbed “Operation Broken Glass,” which has spanned across 11 states on the East Coast. Eleven people so far have pleaded guilty to federal charges filed in Maine, South Carolina and Virginia, and have admitted to trafficking in more than $2.75 million worth of illegally harvested elvers, according to federal prosecutors.

In March, William Sheldon, 71, of Woolwich, a longtime commercial elver dealer operating as Kennebec Glass Eels pleaded not guilty to trafficking in elvers between 2011 and 2014.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

Maine congressional delegation asks forfeited groundfish permits be redistributed through Northeast

June 19, 2017 — Sens. Susan Collins and Angus King and Reps. Chellie Pingree and Bruce Poliquin sent a letter Monday to U.S. Department of Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross asking that the 13 groundfish permits forfeited by Carlos Rafael — a New Bedford fisherman who has pleaded guilty to 28 federal counts of tax evasion, falsifying fishing quotas and conspiracy — be redistributed to fishermen throughout the Northeast, not only New Bedford.

In their letter, the Maine congressional delegation said that groundfish permits embody a shared resource and, as such, should be returned to groundfish fishermen in “a fair and uniform manner.”

“Mr. Rafael’s grave and extensive disregard for both the law and sustainable fishing practices is a setback to the recovery of the beleaguered Northeast multispecies (groundfish) fishery, and has done, and will continue to do, financial harm to fishermen from Maine to New York,” the delegation wrote.

“These fishermen, who have complied with federal quotas and regulations, were forced to compete with this illegal activity and now must endure its repercussions on future stock assessments,” they wrote. “For these reasons, we believe the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) should cancel each of the groundfish permits that Mr. Rafael currently holds and reallocate the fishing privileges associated with such permits to all eligible permit holders in the fleet.

“We are specifically troubled that the City of New Bedford (where Mr. Rafael’s enterprise is based) is seeking to acquire control of his permits. We believe, instead, that all members of the fleet, including those in New Bedford, who have been disadvantaged by Mr. Rafael’s illegal activity, deserve a share of the rights to access these permits once remanded back to NMFS,” the delegation wrote.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

MAINE: Thousands of dead bait fish wash ashore in Brunswick

June 18, 2017 — Over the last several days, thousands of dead bait fish have washed up on the shores of Middle and Maquoit bays in Brunswick.

The pogies, a type of bait fish, appeared to have died after a single vessel which caught them was ill equipped to handle a large catch, not low oxygen content in the water or predation by a larger fish, according to the Brunswick Police Department.

Since then, the Brunswick Police Department’s Marine Resources and Harbor Management Division has received numerous complaints about dead fish being found on the shore.

“It’s stinky,” Dan Devereaux, Brunswick’s harbor master and marine resource officer, said Sunday, adding that he has received at least 50 complaints from people complaining about the smell of rotting fish. Pogies are particularly pungent because their flesh is so oily, he said.

Devereaux said that on Sunday, a group of recent high school graduate and college students collected 21 totes full of fish within about a 70-yard stretch of the five-mile span of affected coastline.

In an effort to rid the town of rotting pogies, the town is inviting the local fishing community to come collect the excess fish for use as crab and lobster bait.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

Hundreds of dead fish prompt call for changes at Ellsworth dam

June 16, 2017 — River herring are dying in droves this month in Ellsworth after passing through Leonard Lake Dam, according to a Maine conservation group calling for safer passage for the fish.

“Community members have reported seeing hundreds of dead fish floating down stream below the dam and the Route 1 bridge on multiple occasions over the past 12 days,” said Brett Ciccotelli of the Downeast Salmon Federation. “Dead fish have been seen as far downstream as the city’s Harbor Park.”

Some of those fish appeared to have parts chopped off, while others suffered slashes across their sides or were missing eyes, indicating they struck turbines in the dam, according to the group.

The federation says “thousands” of adult river herring have been killed since early this month while returning from their spawning grounds farther upriver. The group made similar claims following another large-scale fish kill back in October.

“Their life history — needing fresh water to lay their eggs and returning to the same rivers year after year — makes dams without safe downstream passage particularly dangerous to river herring,” Ciccotelli said.

Brookfield Renewables, the parent company that owns the Ellsworth dam, is in the midst of a five-year process for renewing its federal license for the dam for another 30 years.

Ciccotelli argued that one requirement of that renewal should be an upgrade to the fish passage through the dam to reduce the number of fish kills.

Brookfield did not immediately return messages Friday requesting comment.

In October, Brookfield said in a news release that it was “constantly working to minimize the potential environmental impacts associated with our operations and activities.”

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

Climate Change, and Cod, Are Causing One Heck of a Lobster Boom in Maine

June 15, 2017 — Maine has had a commercial lobster industry since the 1700s, and the lobster’s place in food has changed a lot during that time.

Today, Maine is faced with an unprecedented glut of lobsters–so many that the price of lobster is on the way down. But it wasn’t always so. And it may be different tomorrow.

In the 1600s and 1700s, writes Daniel Luzer for Pacific Standard, there were so many lobsters around Massachusetts Bay Colony, for instance, that they washed up on the beach in piles two feet high. “People thought of them as trash food,” Luzer writes. The ocean bugs were regarded as food for lower-class people and convicts, and used as fertilizer at times.

That began changing in the 1800s. Lobster prices–and interest in eating lobster–began to go up and down according to price, culinary innovations (like cooking lobster alive rather than dead) and availability. A century and a half later, he writes, “lobster was firmly established as a delicacy; lobster was something movie stars ate when they went out to dinner.”

On the coast of Maine, lobster culture became a way of life. But all was not well. .In the early twentieth century, once-abundant lobster had become rare, writes the University of Maine’s Lobster Institute, and “there were plenty of rumors about lobstermen turning to rum-running along the Maine coast during Prohibition days.”

According to Gwynn Guilford for Quartz, lobster stocks dwindled and the number of boats fishing lobster went up–a pattern, she writes, that looked like that of “other fisheries on the eve of collapse.” But today, Maine is in the midst of a lobster boom.

Maine now produces 80 percent of American-caught lobster, writes Justin Fox for Bloomberg View, and more than seven times the average take in a pre-2000 year.

Read the full story at Smithsonian.com