Saving Seafood

Lobster industry fears lost sales from ramped-up Canadian exports

March 20, 2017 — A new trade deal looming between Canada and the European Union is setting off alarm bells in the Maine lobster industry.

The deal between Canada and the EU – the largest seafood consumer market in the world – would eliminate tariffs on Canadian lobster exports into Europe and give the Maritimes a competitive advantage over their American counterparts, who would be stuck selling lobsters with tariffs ranging from 8 percent for a live lobster to 20 percent on processed or cooked lobster.

A weak Canadian dollar, which is now valued at about 75 percent of a U.S. dollar, will only make Canadian lobster that much more attractive to importers in the 28 member nations of the European Union, which is the second biggest importer of American lobsters, second only to Canada, according to trade data. In 2016, the EU imported $152 million worth of lobsters from the U.S., most of it from Maine.

“This is a big deal,” said Annie Tselikis, director of the Maine Lobster Dealers’ Association. “Canada recognizes that it is an export nation. They are putting their money where their mouth is and adopting a very aggressive trade policy. They are also developing a very aggressive, smart marketing campaign abroad. It is going to be very difficult to compete with that because we sell the same product.”

The Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, or CETA, has been under negotiation for years. The United States was negotiating one, too, called the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, or TTIP, but it has stalled. The Canadian-EU deal appears likely to get its final OK in May, and the first phase of the deal, including the trade tariffs, would go into effect in June.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Trump wants to end grants that support Maine fishing jobs

March 20, 2017 — The national $73 million Sea Grant program, which includes about a dozen researchers affiliated with the University of Maine, could be eliminated if Congress approves drastic budget cuts proposed for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration by President Trump.

Funding for the state’s Department of Marine Resources and for collecting weather and climate data in the Gulf of Maine also could be put at risk by the president’s proposal.

Paul Anderson, director of the Sea Grant program at University of Maine, said Tuesday that the money NOAA has funded for the program has been “money well spent” because it has helped draw additional funding to Maine and has helped spur economic development.

“I think [Trump] has just got a fundamentally different attitude about government,” Anderson said Tuesday, without going into further detail. “What [people can do to try to protect the program] is write to our congressmen and senators.”

Trump’s administration already is considering slashing funding for the U.S. Coast Guard, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, and for the Environmental Protection Agency, which provides about 20 percent of Maine’s Department of Environmental Protection annual funding. Now, according to the Washington Post, the federal Office of Management and Budget is looking to cut funding for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration by 17 percent.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

How Luke’s Lobster is Upending the World of Lobstering through a New Kind of Co-Op

March 15, 2017 — While many things can be said about the success of Luke Holden and his multi-million-dollar company, Luke’s Lobster, two things, in particular, stand out. Going into finance post-graduation isn’t the only key to making it big, and nothing is so good that it can’t be made better.

As is the case for many in the industry, Holden comes from a long line of fisherman and began his foray into the lobstering world as a kid. Following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather, Holden spent his summers lobstering in the waters off Cape Elizabeth in Maine. During a stint as an investment banker in Manhattan in 2007, he realized that high-quality, affordable lobster rolls weren’t a thing in the city.

From that moment on, he made it his mission to change the lobster roll scene, and in 2009, the first Luke’s Lobster officially opened its doors in the East Village. With little-to-no business experience and a $15,000 loan from his father, Holden and his Craigslist-found business partner made Luke’s profitable within three weeks of being in business.

Read the full story at Paste Magazine

Feds accuse Maine man of trafficking in poached baby eels

March 15, 2017 — A 70-year-old Woolwich man has been indicted by a federal grand jury alleging that he trafficked in poached elvers — juvenile American eels — between 2011 and 2014.

William Sheldon, a longtime commercial elver dealer operating as Kennebec Glass Eels, is charged with conspiracy and 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.

Each of the seven counts carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Sheldon will plead not guilty to the charges, his attorney, Walter McKee, said Tuesday. He is scheduled for arraignment on March 30 in U.S. District Court in Portland.

Prosecutors say that from 2011 to 2014, while Sheldon was licensed in Maine and South Carolina to commercially harvest elvers, he violated the Lacey Act by buying or selling eels illegally poached in Massachusetts, North Carolina, New Jersey, Delaware, Virginia and North Carolina.

Managers consider catch quotas for still-closed shrimp fishery

March 15 — Regulators are set to finalize the draft amendment for managing northern shrimp and it appears limiting entry will not be part of the new management strategy for the beleaguered Gulf of Maine fishery.

“Limited access has been used in a number of fisheries along the Atlantic coast to control effort while maintaining access by harvesters who have demonstrated a history in the fishery,” states the draft of management Amendment 3 regulators will consider when they convene Thursday in Portland, Maine. “However, during the scoping process for Amendment 3, the (northern shrimp) section decided not to pursue limited entry as a means of controlling effort and stabilizing the fishery.”

Instead, the northern shrimp section, which manages the the Gulf of Maine shrimp fishery under the mandate of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, will consider management options such as restricting fishing effort with hard state-specific total allowable catch quotas, as well as instituting mandatory gear and more-timely reporting requirements.

Of course, none of that really matters until regulators can re-open the fishery. It is dominated by Maine shrimpers but also populated by fishermen from Massachusetts and New Hampshire — many of them groundfishermen and lobstermen using the northern shrimp as a secondary fishery.

The Gulf of Maine, already home to a cod fishery in crisis, recently entered its fourth consecutive season closed to northern shrimp fishing.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

Drop in herring a mystery in Maine as bait price booms

March 13, 2017 — ROCKLAND, Maine — Maine’s booming lobster industry has a big problem involving a little fish.

The state’s iconic lobster fishery is healthy, having set records for volume and value in 2016. But the fishery for herring, a small schooling fish that lobsters love to eat, is another story.

Herring is suddenly the second-most valuable fishery in the state, and Maine’s most valuable species of fish, bringing in $19 million at the docks in 2016. It’s also the most popular bait used in lobster traps, and the climb in value corresponds with demand from the hungry lobster fishery and a drop in catch of herring off of New England.

Scientists and fishermen are trying to figure out why Maine’s Atlantic herring catch — the largest in the nation — has fallen from 103.5 million pounds in 2014 to 77.2 million last year. The per-pound price of the fish at the dock has gone up 56 percent since 2014, and that price is eventually borne by people who buy lobsters.

“The whole dynamic of the fishery has changed,” said Jeff Kaelin, who works in government relations for Lund’s Fisheries, which lands herring in Maine.

Kaelin, and others who work in and study the fishery, thinks climate and the way the government manages herring may have played a role in the decline of catch. Atlantic herring are managed via a quota system, and regulators have slashed the quota by more than 40 percent since the early 2000s.

Read the full story at the Associated Press

Maine’s Most Fertile Scalloping Ground Closed for Season

March 13, 2017 — PERRY, Maine — Fishing regulators are shutting down Maine’s most productive scallop fishing grounds for the season to protect the valuable shellfish.

Cobscook Bay is the most important scalloping area along the Maine cost. Maine marine resources Commissioner Patrick Keliher says it needs to be shut down for the season on Sunday to make sure it stays fertile.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at Maine Public

Bill Mook: Pruitt ignoring science consensus could have dire consequences for Maine

March 13, 2017 — I spent Valentine’s Day making a whirlwind trip to Washington, D.C., on behalf of my company, Mook Sea Farm, an oyster farm on the Damariscotta River. For 32 years we’ve been raising oysters from egg to market size and selling seed oysters to other East Coast farms. I made the trip to oppose Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt’s nomination to be the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

On the trip to Washington, I thought long and hard about what I might say that would make a difference, especially to Sen. Susan Collins, who at that time had not yet announced her position on the Pruitt nomination. It seemed unnecessary, given the widely publicized information about his record, to point out Pruitt’s lack of fitness for the position. So, I decided to focus on my own story.

I talked about almost being forced out of business in 1998 by illegal dumping of septic and chemical waste next to my hatchery, and the personal anguish and stress this caused for an entire year. Mook Sea Farm would likely not have survived had it not been for the Clean Water Act.

I also explained that a decade or so later, the impact of carbon emissions suddenly became very real – no longer an abstract, future problem. Carbon dioxide emissions, dissolving in the ocean and changing precipitation patterns in the Northeast, had slowly degraded the lifeblood of my company: the seawater we pump into the hatchery. Our shellfish larvae were having a tough time growing shells in seawater as it became increasingly acidic. Production became erratic, forcing us to adopt a suite of remedies that include buffering our seawater (think of taking Tums).

Read the full opinion piece at the Portland Press Herald

MAINE: Fishermen’s Forum provides a glimpse into an uncertain future

March 13, 2017 — Last Chance. Outnumbered. Endangered Species. These are the names of some of the lobster boats that were represented at this year’s Fishermen’s Forum in Rockport. They reflect the sense of uncertainty that surrounds the commercial fishing world.

The men and women who fish those boats were out in force to discuss catch, markets, bait, price, the health of the stock and fisheries management. The number of hours on the water represented by the fishermen assembled would be mind-boggling, if it could be calculated.

A unique gathering, the star attraction of the forum is the fishermen themselves. Weathered faces, barrel chests and brawny forearms filled the halls. On a desperately cold day, many fishermen were in T-shirts. And for those still standing after a grueling day of meetings, there was dinner and then story-telling that continued into the night.

The forum is not just for lobstermen. There are representatives from just about every Maine fishery: scallops, clams, worms, groundfish, elvers, halibut, seaweed. Seminars held over three days explored the issues facing each of those fisheries.

These men and women are the deans of fishing, willing to set aside this time to meet, think and talk about how to protect the species they fish, and to provide essential input based on their experience on the water. It is important to their future that some of the younger harvesters are showing up, too.

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American

Portland Press Herald: NOAA budget cuts would have high cost for Maine

March 10, 2017 — Though funding for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration amounts to less than one-half of 1 percent of discretionary federal spending, it pays outsize dividends for Maine. The people at the center of our state’s $700 million commercial fishing industry depend on NOAA’s weather forecasts, research and fisheries management services. A proposal to slash the agency’s budget is a short-sighted move that would save pennies now only to forfeit dollars later.

The White House plan, first reported last week in The Washington Post, would roll back NOAA’s budget by 17 percent. Among the targeted programs are the National Marine Fisheries Service and National Weather Service, which each would see 5 percent cuts; the satellite division, which would face a 22 percent reduction in funding, and the Sea Grant program, which would be abolished.

None of this is good news for Maine’s marine sector. National Weather Service wind and wave height forecasts are essential to fishermen. So is the research conducted by the National Marine Fisheries Service, which guides decisions about where, how and when to fish and enables fishermen to build business plans around their catch. What’s more, the steep reductions in the satellite division’s budget would deprive the weather and fisheries management offices of data that are crucial to their mission, compounding the harm done by the relatively small direct cuts to the programs themselves.

Read the full opinion piece at the Portland Press Herald