January 30, 2017 — We here at FishOn love lobsters for so many reasons. They taste great. They generate employment here in the commonwealth’s most lucrative lobster port and they provide the only real use for that gigantic pot in our cupboard.
Value of Maine lobster exports to China on pace to triple for 2016
January 30, 2017 — Live lobster exports to China are on pace to triple in value in 2016, despite the incursion of some new lobster suppliers to the growing Asian market.
Final figures for 2016 won’t be known until February, but through November, the value of live lobster shipments from Maine to China climbed to $27.5 million, nearly tripling from the $10.2 million reported in November 2015. That’s roughly half the total export of live lobsters from Maine to date, excluding Canada, where many Maine lobsters are processed and then imported back into Maine for distribution.
And those figures don’t include the traditional year-end surge leading up the Chinese New Year on Jan. 28, when Chinese celebrants have been serving up lobster from Maine, Massachusetts and Canada in ever-increasing numbers.
Maine man tackles commercial fishing – without a net
January 30, 2017 — Chef Benjamin Hasty, owner of Thistle Pig in South Berwick, was having a beer with a co-worker at 7th Settlement, a brewpub in Dover, New Hampshire, when he saw Tim Rider walk by, carrying fresh fish to the pub’s kitchen.
“We kept seeing someone schlepping these big totes of fish going by us,” Hasty recalled. “I said, ‘I need to introduce myself because I need to get some of that.’ ”
Hasty invited Rider, owner of New England Fishmongers, to join him for a cup of coffee. Rider told him he is one of the few New England commercial fishermen who still catches groundfish the old-fashioned way, with a rod and reel; experts believe he is the only one in Maine, and perhaps all of New England, who is doing so full time.
MAINE: South Portland considers pier improvements to support anticipated aquaculture boom
January 30, 2017 — PORTLAND, Maine — It’s not easy to find the Portland Street Pier, but it’s there, right off Front Street, wedged among the Sunset Marina, the Saltwater Grille restaurant and a couple of massive green fuel tanks owned by the Portland Pipe Line Corp.
There’s no sign trumpeting its location, even though it’s one of South Portland’s prime waterfront assets. The weathered gray structure at the edge of Portland Harbor is empty and icy quiet this time of year, when the docks have been pulled from the water and the nine lobstermen who use the facility from spring through fall keep their fishing boats elsewhere.
City officials are trying to change that. They’re taking steps to improve and expand the long-neglected municipal pier in the hope of turning it into an incubator for aquaculture enterprises in Casco Bay. To prove that they’re heading in the right direction, they point to the ongoing development of about 10 new aquaculture leases in the region, which could double the number of commercial operations growing mussels, oysters, scallops or seaweed in the nutrient-rich waters off Maine’s largest metropolitan center.
‘Couldn’t Get Any Fresher’ — Maine’s Scallop Industry Looks to Grow Market
January 25, 2017 — It’s scallop season in Maine. Fishermen here have hauled in over 450,000 pounds of the tender delicacy in each of the last three years, but the state produces only a tiny fraction of the entire U.S. sea scallop harvest. So to grow a market for its own brand of inshore scallops, the Maine industry is trying to sell one particular quality that sets it apart.
Just offshore from the Cousins Island town dock in Casco Bay, Alex Todd and his crew, Levi Gloden and Edward Lefebvre, are shelling scallops on Todd’s boat, the Jacob and Joshua.
“We get rid of the stomach and the mantle and all that. And just put the abductor muscle in the bucket,” Todd says.
He is one of more than 600 licensed scallop fishermen in Maine, of which about 450 are active. He has been harvesting scallops for almost 30 years, and chairs the Scallop Advisory Council, a panel that makes recommendations about the fishery.
In Maine, a few dozen fishermen dive underwater in scuba gear to harvest scallops by hand, but the majority of scallops in the state are harvested by draggers, like Todd.
“We tow the dredge — we call it drag, the federal government calls it a scallop dredge — across the bottom. There’s chains on it that tickle the top and the bottom and flip the scallops into the link bag, which we tow a couple hundred yards behind the boat depending on the depth of the water. And after say, 15 minutes, we haul it back, see how many scallops are in it. Dump it out, start over,” he says.
On a good day, like today, Todd hits his quota of 135 pounds of meat, or 3 buckets.
“And yesterday we got ‘em a little quicker. But it’s still early. It’s still good — we’re happy,” he says.
MAINE: January 24th Taunton Bay Oyster Co.,Inc. Aquaculture Public Hearing Postponed Until January 25th
January 24, 2017 — The following was released by the Maine Department of Marine Resources:
The DMR public hearing on an application filed by Taunton Bay Oyster Co., Inc. scheduled for Tuesday, January 24, 2017 has been postponed until January 25, 2017 due to weather. The hearing is on an application filed by Taunton Bay Oyster Co., Inc. for a standard aquaculture lease located in Northern Bay, Bagaduce River, Penobscot, for bottom and suspended culture of American/Eastern oysters.
PLEASE NOTE: if the hearing cannot be concluded by a reasonable hour on the 25th, it will be continued to January 31 and, if necessary, February 1, at the same time and location.
The meeting will be held at 6:00 p.m. at the Penobscot Community/Elementary School, 66 North Penobscot Road, Penobscot
SOUTHEASTERN FISHERIES ASSOCIATION: Eat More Sustainable Seafood for Health and Taste Benefits
January 20, 2017 — The following was released by the Southeastern Fisheries Association (SFA):
SFA President Peter Jarvis Says: “Eat More Sustainable Seafood for Health and Taste Benefits”
WASHINGTON — Soon after he’s sworn in as the 45th President of the United States, Donald Trump will dine on Maine lobster, Gulf shrimp, and Seven Hills Angus beef, to name a few dishes.
These foods are all on the menu for the inaugural luncheon, a long-standing tradition in which the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies hosts a meal for the president and vice president at the Capitol following the inaugural address.
The committee organized its first luncheon in 1953, when lawmakers welcomed President Dwight Eisenhower for creamed chicken, baked ham and potato puffs in the Capitol’s Old Senate Chamber.
Dishes, consumed between toasts, gift presentations and speeches, often encompass foods from the home states of the new leaders, though Trump’s menu owes heavily to California, not his home state of New York or Vice President-elect Mike Pence’s state of Indiana.
President Barack Obama’s 2013 luncheon boasted a menu of steamed lobster, grilled bison and apple pie.
Trump’s, which will be held in the Statuary Hall, will feature three courses.
The first, Maine lobster and Gulf shrimp with saffron sauce and peanut crumble, will be accompanied by a J. Lohr 2013 Arroyo Vista Chardonnay.
The Gulf shrimp may be a tribute to Florida, where Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort is located and which the President-elect has called his “second home.”
Warming Signs: Climate Change Means A Sea Change for Fishermen and Scientists
January 23, 2017 — Lobsters used to lurk in the waters of Long Island. But these days, New York fisherman have trouble finding any—while their peers 500 miles away in Maine are seeing bumper crops. Instead, the lobstermen of Long Island now catch more crabs and other shellfish—which, in turn, leaves crabbers further down the East Coast worried about the future of their own livelihoods.
Last week I wrote about how climate change is prompting a fish migration that will directly affect what’s served—or not served—for dinner. But these rapid marine changes won’t just affect our appetites; they also represent a sea change for the fisherman and communities that depend on the sea for jobs and income.
Fishing Regulations Struggle to Catch Up
Of course, catching new fish in your usual fishing haunt is trickier than just changing your bait. Regulations guide what you may catch and how much of it, usually state by state—and they aren’t changing as fast as the environment is. John A. Manderson, a research biologist at the NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), noted that sea creatures are moving north 10 times faster than their land-based animals.
“Our ideas of property rights and laws are purely land-based,” Manderson told The New York Times. “But the ocean is all about flux and turbulence and movement.”
To get around these increasingly obsolete laws, some fishermen are catching fish further north and then traveling to areas where it is legal to bring large quantities to shore. Such slippery adherence to regulations sparked mackerel wars in the North Sea back in 2010, and the dispute wasn’t settled for four years.
Furthermore, such an expensive round-about the law is not an option for everyone, especially those with smaller fishing operations.
Scientists, fishermen can set the stage for a new way to protect the Gulf of Maine
January 23, 2017 — There’s long been an undercurrent of mistrust between fishermen who make their livelihoods from the Gulf of Maine and the scientists whose surveys and calculations determine the amount of fish they can catch.
That, in part, is because it can seem as if fishermen and scientists are talking about two different Gulfs of Maine when they discuss the size of the cod population.
Scientists document a groundfish stock in perpetual decline with an outlook that doesn’t seem to have changed much in response to increasingly restrictive limits on the amount fishermen can catch. They note a species that has struggled to recover after more than a century of overfishing and now faces the added challenge of rebuilding in an area of the ocean that’s warming faster than 99 percent of the rest of the world’s oceans. Indeed, researchers from the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, the University of Maine and elsewhere have found that warming waters reduce the number of new cod produced by spawning females and reduce the likelihood that young fish will survive to adulthood.
Fishermen, meanwhile, report something different.
“This is uncalled for,” Joseph Orlando, a cod fisherman who fishes off the coast of Gloucester, Massachusetts, told NPR in 2014 after regulators cut the Gulf of Maine cod fishing season short that year. “There’s more codfish out there. There’s always been.”
Maine fishermen hooked on Obamacare, but now benefits are threatened
January 19, 2017 — Chris Welch, a Kennebunk lobsterman, had never purchased health insurance before the Affordable Care Act started offering individual marketplace insurance in 2013. He’s maintained the benefits ever since, even though as a healthy 28-year-old he doesn’t need to use his insurance that often.
Welch is among the thousands of people who work in Maine’s iconic lobster and fishing industries who could have their ACA insurance taken away if the law is repealed without a comprehensive replacement. Congress has set the wheels in motion to repeal the ACA, and lawmakers are debating whether to immediately replace it, and if so, with what plan. Lawmakers have yet to coalesce around a replacement plan, and the incoming Trump administration has not yet revealed a proposal.
There’s no exact count of how many fishermen or lobstermen have purchased ACA insurance, but U.S. Census data indicate robust enrollment in the industry.
Coastal communities with large numbers of self-employed workers have some of the highest percentages of residents signed up for ACA insurance, according to a ZIP code analysis of 2016 enrollment data from the federal government and workforce data from the U.S. Census.
For instance, on North Haven and Vinalhaven islands, both on the midcoast and known for the lobster industry, 22 percent and 21 percent of the people on each island, respectively, have ACA insurance, among the highest rates in the state. Forty-seven percent of Vinalhaven households include a person who is self-employed, while on North Haven it’s 38 percent, among the highest levels of self-employment in Maine.
Other coastal fishing communities with high ACA enrollment levels include Pemaquid, Round Pond, Beals and Brooklin.
The ACA’s individual marketplace was designed to be a place where those who can’t obtain insurance through an employer – such as a self-employed fisherman or a part-time worker – can purchase subsidized insurance. About 80,000 Mainers have health benefits through the ACA.
“If a repeal happens, it’s going to be a big hurt for these communities,” said Emily Brostek, executive director of Consumers for Affordable Health Care, an Augusta-based health advocacy nonprofit. “These are industries that we care about in Maine, but that don’t traditionally offer medical benefits.”
Congressional Republicans and President-elect Donald Trump have vowed to repeal President Obama’s signature health care legislation, which could leave more than 20 million Americans without insurance, depending on what a replacement bill looks like.
Welch, who has operated his own lobster boat since he was 16, has had health insurance since 2014, seeing it as a way to protect his health and finances.
“I didn’t have insurance prior to the ACA, and I wouldn’t have got it if it weren’t for the ACA,” said Welch, who estimates he pays about $220 a month for the benefits.
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