Saving Seafood

Regulators to allow lobster fishing in Gulf of Maine coral canyons

April 19, 2017 — New England regulators have voted to allow lobster fishing in proposed deep-sea coral protection zones, including two heavily fished areas in Down East Maine.

The New England Fisheries Management Council voted 14-1 to ban most fishing in the canyons and plateaus where slow-growing, cold-water coral gardens flourish in the dark waters of the Gulf of Maine.

But pleas from Maine lobster fishermen who say a trap ban in fertile fishing grounds off Mount Desert Rock and Outer Schoodic Ridge would cost them millions helped sway an initially resistant council to grant a lobstering exemption.

Fishermen also said closing these areas would have led to more traps, and fishing lines, being dropped in nearby waters traveled by endangered right whales, which can suffer injuries or die if they become entangled in lobster fishing lines.

Opponents, including environmentalists and some who fish for other species that would not get an exemption in the coral zones, have argued it is not fair to give lobstermen “a pass” because their traps damage coral, too, even if not as bad as trawl nets.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

MAINE: ‘It’s a part of life here’: Down East smelt fry a celebration of spring, local foods

April 19, 2017 — If he peeked around the corner from where his fish-frying station was set up, Evan Emerson could see the place where he and others caught the fish in the first place.

The smelts — small, silvery fish that can be caught in great abundance each winter and early spring in the Pleasant River in Washington County — are the star of the show at the yearly Columbia Falls Smelt Fry, held by the Downeast Salmon Federation for the past 17 years.

Emerson, 28, has been frying up smelts at the event since he was 15 years old. He has always at the end of an assembly line of volunteer cooks who line up outside the Columbia Falls Community Center to shake the pre-cleaned, whole fish in a light cornmeal breading, drop them with a satisfying crackle of hot fat into their specially made fryer and, after six to seven minutes, pull them out, hot and ready to eat.

Emerson makes the call as to when the smelts are done. It’s his watchful eye that judges when they’ve gone from merely cooked to a perfectly crispy golden brown. By the end of the day, more than 300 pounds of smelt caught and quickly frozen in the weeks leading up to the event are cooked.

“We add just a little bit of olive oil. That’s what gives it the golden brown color,” said Emerson, whose smelt camp lies just a few hundred feet from the town center. “Some people remove the bones, some people don’t. Everybody’s got their way of eating it. … I’ve been cooking them for years, but I’ve been fishing for them for as long as I can remember.”

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

Elver landings rising slowly, but price stays low

April 18, 2017 — A little more than three weeks into the 10-week fishing season, Maine elver dealers have reported buying about 30 percent of the total annual 9,616-pound landings quota allocated to the state’s fishery.

As of 6 p.m. on Sunday, according to figures the Department of Marine Resources described as “extremely preliminary,” dealers had purchased a total of 2,828.908 pounds of elvers and reportedly paid harvesters a total of $4,057,115 — an average price of $1,434 per pound.

That price may be misleading, though. On Patriots Day morning, an elver dealer in Ellsworth was paying $1,150 per pound and advising the fishermen who sell to him to hold on to their eels for a few days in hopes the price would rise.

At this time last year, dealers in the Ellsworth area were offering harvesters $1,300 per pound, with the low price reportedly a reflection of a weak market in Asia.

For the past two seasons, Maine harvesters have landed fewer elvers than allowed under their quota: 5,259 pounds in 2015 and 9,400 pounds last year. In 2015, the average price of elvers was just under $2,172 per pound and, at times, the price has soared above $2,400 per pound.

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American

Auction of historic lobster wharf could change life on this Maine island

April 13, 2017 — The first true sign of spring arrived Tuesday on Bailey Island, as temperatures hovered around 60 degrees and lobstermen painted buoys and repaired traps near Cook’s Lobster & Ale House, just over the historic Cribstone Bridge at the tip of Harpswell.

Nick and Jennifer Charboneau were busy at the 62-year-old restaurant, readying for the second weekend of the new season following an “amazing” 2016, their first full season at the helm of the waterfront restaurant that has been featured on national television advertising campaigns and multiple travel magazines.

Although the adjacent commercial wharf was still, with lobster boats not yet active for the season, it was the focus of much discussion in the area. Following a preview Wednesday and another next week, the wharf and associated docks and outbuildings will be auctioned “as is” to the highest bidder on April 25.

The outcome of that auction could mean big changes for the fishing community on the island.

For the dozen or so fishermen who moor their boats in tiny Garrison’s Cove and fish off the wharf, maintaining a commercial operation is critical, as it is for the Charboneaus and the Casco Bay Ferry cruise boat that arrives once each day during the summer,

Danny Coffin, whose lobster boat, the Twisted Halo, is moored in Garrison’s Cove, said Tuesday that while the wharf has fallen into disrepair in recent years, “we need it.”

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

Sushi stress: Fishermen not catching many baby eels

April 11, 2017 — The chilly rivers of Maine are causing trouble in the world of sushi.

The state’s brief, annual season for baby eels is off to a slow start because of a cold spring that has prevented the fish from running in rivers.

The baby eels, called elvers, are an important piece of the worldwide sushi supply chain. They’re sold to Asian aquaculture companies — sometimes for more than $2,000 per pound — that raise them to maturity and use them as food.

“Everything is slow,” said state Rep. Henry Bear, who represents members of the Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians who fish for elvers. “But we’re hopeful.”

Maine has the only significant fishery for elvers in the country, and fishermen are limited to a quota of a little less than 10,000 pounds (4,500 kilograms) per year.

The season started March 22, and state records say fishermen have only caught about 1,050 pounds (475 kilograms), so far. They have until June 7 to try to catch the entire allotment, which means they are well behind pace.

The average temperature for March in the Portland area this year was 28.8 degrees. The normal average is 33.5 degrees.

Fishermen said they are confident the season will pick up, as some warm weather is forecast for Monday and the rest of the week in southern Maine. Fishermen catch the elvers in rivers and streams with nets, and sell them to dealers. So far, they’re selling for $1,487 per pound at docks, state records say.

Elvers are a major fishery in Maine, and fishermen’s ability to reach quota fluctuates year to year. They reached quota in 2014, fell far short in 2015, and just about reached it last year. Early spring weather, which can be hard to predict in Maine, has emerged as a deciding factor in whether fishermen will reach quota.

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

Future lobstermen are staying in school thanks to unique Maine program

April 10, 2017 — Were it not for the fisherman’s academy at Oceanside High School, 16-year-old boat captain Payten Simmons said she would have little incentive to go to class.

“I don’t know if I [would have] dropped out, I don’t know what I’d be doing … [but] it makes me want to go to school,” she said. “I like to come to school now.”

Simmons, who lives in Friendship and is the only girl out of six 11th-graders in the program, bought her own lobster boat, Fear Knot, and has been operating it for the last three years. She is the only member of the program who hauls traps in the winter and the summer, which means most of her weekends during the school year are spent hauling, sometimes with the help of her dad, who also is a lobsterman.

Simmons, who has an apprentice lobster license, is limited to fishing 150 traps, which tend to yield around 1,000 pounds of lobster each time she goes out to haul her traps. With Maine fishermen being paid on average $4 per pound the past couple of years, she makes good money.

When the option of making that kind of money is on the table for a student, “part of me doesn’t blame them for not [wanting] to come to school,” said Ian Carey, a social studies teacher at Oceanside who also teaches academy students. “I can definitely see how the value of an education is definitely clouded.”

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

Proposed closure of coral grounds in Gulf of Maine has lobster industry on edge

April 10, 2017 — Over the past 10 years, the issue of how to protect endangered whales from getting tangled in fishing gear has been a driving factor in how lobstermen configure their gear and how much money they have to spend to comply with regulations.

Now federal officials have cited the need to protect deep-sea corals in a proposal to close some areas to fishing — a proposal that, according to lobstermen, could pose a serious threat to how they ply their trade.

“The [potential] financial impact is huge,” Jim Dow, a Bass Harbor lobsterman and board member with Maine Lobstermen’s Association, said Wednesday. “You’re talking a lot of the coast that is going to be affected by it.”

The discovery in 2014 of deep-sea corals in the gulf, near Mount Desert Rock and along the Outer Schoodic Ridges, has prompted the New England Fisheries Management Council to consider making those area off-limits to fishing vessels in order to protect the coral from damage. According to Maine Department of Marine Resources, fishermen from at least 15 harbors in Hancock and Washington counties could be affected by the proposed closure.

 But what has fishermen on edge the most about the concept is that regulators don’t know how much more coral has yet to be discovered in the gulf. They fear the proposed closure could set a precedent that would result in even more areas becoming off-limits to Maine’s $500 million lobster fishery, which is the biggest fishery in Maine and one of the most lucrative in the country.

“They could probably find coral along the entire coast of Maine, outside of 3 miles [in federal waters], if they start hunting for it,” David Cousens, a South Thomaston fishermen and president of Maine Lobstermen’s Association, told more than 100 fishermen last month at a meeting on the topic at the annual Maine Fishermen’s Forum in Rockport.

Terry Stockwell, a senior DMR official who represents Maine on the council and other fishing regulatory entities, said the state has been lobbying the council to consider making an exception for the lobster trap fishery at the proposed closure sites in the gulf but so far without success. Traps are lowered and then raised from the bottom and so should cause less damage to coral than other types of gear such as scallop dredges, which are dragged along the bottom, according to Stockwell and others who support making lobster traps exempt.

“Twice I’ve gone down in flames,” Stockwell said of his efforts to date to get the council to agree to an exemption for lobster trap gear.

Further offshore in the Gulf of Maine, beyond the reach of the small boats that make up Maine’s lobster fishing fleet, the council also is proposing coral-related fishing closures in parts of the Jordan and Georges basins.

Outside the Gulf of Maine, roughly 100 to 200 nautical miles southeast of Cape Cod, are 20 underwater canyons at the edge of the continental shelf, where coral closures also could be enacted. Five of those canyons, along with four seamounts off the continental shelf, are part of the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, which former President Obama created last September and which is being challenged in federal court by the Pacific Legal Foundation.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

Molly Payne Wynne: Maine’s coastal communities depend on agencies Trump plans to gut

April 5, 2017 — Let me be open from the start — I’m a scientist, and I’m from away.

I spent my first summer in Maine navigating backroads along the coast, collecting fish, and water samples in ponds, rivers and estuaries for a study I was conducting. I’d get up with the sun and travel to various fishways for this work. I’d meet and talk with alewife harvesters, who would often treat me to a cooler full of alewife and blueback herring. I used these fish samples — and the harvesters’ anecdotes — in my research to shed light on where river herring live and grow, and how best to manage populations for the benefit of the fish and the people who depend on this valuable resource. Meeting these fishermen and studying the nearby fish habitats made the mutual dependence coastal communities have with the resources of Maine’s coastal rivers very clear.

As media reports continue to unveil the Trump administration’s proposals, it is also clear that our nation’s environment and natural resources programs are increasingly at risk. Coastal states such as Maine need to pay attention to proposed cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The White House is proposing to slice its budget by 17 percent. Cuts to programs such as the National Marine Fisheries Service and National Weather Service would have far-reaching consequences for programs created to ensure healthy coastal environments and economies. In Maine, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is a significant contributor in the effort to save endangered Atlantic salmon in the last remaining rivers in the country in which they still spawn.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

Maine lobsterman denied bail in federal manslaughter case

April 4, 2017 — A lobsterman from Cushing will remain jailed until his manslaughter trial despite an impassioned plea to have him released to the custody and supervision of his parents.

U.S. Magistrate Judge John Rich ruled Monday that Christopher Hutchinson, 28, should not be allowed bail since he already violated conditions when he used drugs and overdosed last month.

His parents, who sat in the courtroom during the hearing in Portland, cried as the judge read his decision. As Hutchinson left the courthouse in handcuffs, he turned to them and said, “I’ll be all right.”

Hutchinson is charged with seaman’s manslaughter in connection with the Nov. 1, 2014, deaths of Tom Hammond, 27, of Rockland and Tyler Sawyer, 15, of St. George. Investigators believe Hutchinson was under the influence of alcohol and opioids when he sailed his lobster boat, No Limits, into a storm, sinking it. Hutchinson was rescued by Coast Guard officials, but his crewmen, Hammond and Sawyer, did not survive.

Hutchinson was arrested in December after a lengthy investigation and posted $10,000 bail three days later with conditions that he not use substances. He violated those conditions on March 14, when he overdosed on heroin and needed to be revived with the drug Narcan.

His attorney, Michael Turndorf, said Monday that his client should be released to his parents, who would monitor him constantly and ensure that he be treated for his addiction. His mother had even taken a leave of absence from her job as a nurse.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Halsey Frank, however, argued that he didn’t think Hutchinson would be able to abide by any bail condition and the judge agreed, although he commended the parents’ commitment to their son.

“The court has no doubt they will do everything in their power,” he said.

The Hutchinsons declined to speak with a reporter after the hearing.

Frank, in addition to his belief that Hutchinson could not abide by conditions that he not use drugs, told the judge he had concerns that the defendant was still operating a boat, potentially putting other crew members at risk.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

“Sacred Cod” Tells of Fishery and Way of Life in Peril

April 3, 2017 — New England’s iconic cod fishery has hit an all-time low. Scientists point the finger at a combination of fishing and climate change. Many fishermen reject that assessment and blame their woes on regulators. A new documentary film, Sacred Cod, tells the story of two populations in crisis – the cod, and the fishermen who’ve built a way of life around them.

Cod fishing is what brought the first Europeans to New England, and the commercial fishery is the oldest in the nation. Hundreds of years of fishing pressure has brought cod populations in southern New England and the Gulf of Maine to record low levels. Federal fishery biologists have estimated that the reproductively active population is just 3-4 percent of what would be needed for a healthy, sustainable fishery.

That hasn’t improved in the past few years, despite fishing restrictions that amount to a virtual closure of the fishery. Scientists say climate change is a likely culprit. Rising water temperatures affect reproductive success, reducing the number of eggs a female produces and also reducing survival of young codfish. Scientists are also seeing changes in the base of the food chain that may be linked to climate change.

Many fishermen reject this assessment, though, and say fishing restrictions are unnecessary. They contend that there are plenty of cod to be caught, if you just know where to look.

Read the full story at WCAI