MAINE: Portland to host international forum on scallops
April 24, 2017 — The International Pectinid Workshop is a biennial event dedicated entirely to scallops. It is taking place in Portland and runs until Tuesday.
The organizers say the conference is designed to bring together researchers, industry professionals and students to share research and information about management practices. Saturday’s events include a session about the role of diseases in the scallop fishery.
Scallops are a worldwide food resource. The U.S. sea scallop fishery was worth more than $400 million in 2015.
Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Connecticut Post
Boats may be hitting whales in Gulf of Maine more often, study suggests
April 24, 2017 — A group of marine scientists says collisions of whales and boats off the New England coast may be more common than previously thought.
The scientists focused on the humpback whale population in the southern Gulf of Maine, a body of water off Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine. They found that almost 15 percent of the whales, which come to New England to feed every spring, had injuries or scarring consistent with at least one vessel strike.
The researchers, who published their findings in the March issue of the journal Marine Mammal Science, said the work shows that the occurrence of such strikes is most likely underestimated. They also said their own figure is likely low because it does not account for whales that are killed in ship strikes.
“Vessel strikes are a significant risk to both whales and to boaters,” said Alex Hill, the lead author of the study, who is a scientist with the conservation group Whale and Dolphin Conservation in Plymouth, Massachusetts. “Long-term studies can help us figure out if our outreach programs to boaters are effective, what kind of management actions are needed and help to assess the health of the population.”
Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Portland Press Herald
MAINE: Marine Patrol Officer Matthew Wyman Honored for Professional Excellence
April 21, 2017 — The following was released by the Maine Department of Marine Resources:
Maine Marine Patrol Officer Matthew Wyman has received the 2017 Northeast Conservation Law Enforcement Chief’s Award. The award, presented April 10, 2017 at the Northeast Fish and Wildlife Conference, honors a law enforcement official for professional excellence. The Conference brings together regional natural resources professionals in many fields including law enforcement.
Officer Wyman was recognized by Marine Patrol Sergeant Matthew Talbot, who nominated him for the award, for his depth of skill and knowledge and for his painstaking investigation of violations that threaten Maine’s valuable marine resources.
“As a Marine Patrol Officer working Mid-Coast Maine, Officer Wyman spends much of his time working activity associated with Maine’s lucrative lobster fishery,” said Sergeant Talbot. “Officer Wyman is dedicated and involved in the conservation of Maine’s lobster fishery. He is fair minded and he conducts thorough investigations. His efforts, experience, teamwork, and commitment greatly contributed to multiple lobster fishery violations being identified and addressed.”
Sergeant Talbot highlighted several cases in which Officer Wyman demonstrated exceptional effort and ability. “During 2016 Officer Wyman was instrumental in a lengthy investigation involving a lobster harvester who was found to be illegally fishing unmarked, untagged, sunken lobster traps in offshore waters,” said Sergeant Talbot. “In addition to spending a great deal of time underway, Officer Wyman exhibited skill in drafting search warrants and managing the technological portion of the investigation.”
Sergeant Talbot also applauded Officer Wyman protecting the future of Maine’s lobster resource. “Officer Wyman also participated in an investigation into a lobster harvester who was found to be scrubbing egg bearing lobsters. This is an egregious resource violation and he worked smartly and efficiently alongside his fellow officers to help build a solid case,” said Sergeant Talbot.
“Officer Wyman consistently demonstrates a high level of professionalism,” said Maine Department of Marine Resources Commissioner Patrick Keliher. “He has the respect of his peers and of the fishing community.”
The Northeast Conservation Law Enforcement Chiefs Association is a professional organization comprised of the chiefs and senior command staff from the 13 northeastern states, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, NOAA Officer for Law Enforcement and the Canadian provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.
The Maine Marine Patrol enforces Maine’s marine resources laws for commercial and recreational activity. Officers are involved in investigative and protective services work, including the enforcement of marine resource conservation law, rules and regulations. Officers patrol an assigned coastal area by land and air and aboard patrol vessels, protecting marine resources, coastal property and the public.
Fishery management council OKs lobstering in deep coral
April 20, 2017 — ELLSWORTH, Maine — The New England Fishery Management Council has given preliminary approval to a plan to protect corals in the Gulf of Maine and on the Continental Slope south of Georges Bank from the ravages of commercial fishing but exempted the Maine lobster fishery from a proposed ban on the use of fishing gear that would affect the sea floor.
On Tuesday, April 18, by a reported vote of 14-1, the council adopted a preferred alternative plan under its proposed Omnibus Coral Protection Amendment for the inshore Gulf of Maine that would prohibit both trawls and dredges, but not lobster traps and pots, within both the Schoodic Ridge and Mount Desert Rock areas.
According to a statement released Wednesday afternoon, council members recognized the potentially devastating economic impact of preventing the lobster fishery from working within those inshore areas and acknowledged that shifts in effort to other locations could be problematic.
No shrimp today: Maine’s waters are warming and it’s costing fishermen money
April 20, 2017 — David Goethel wishes he could retire.
At 63, he’s been fishing off the Gulf of Maine for over 34 years. Shrimp used to be plentiful there. Back in 2000, Goethel remembers seeing 100 commercial boats out in the harbor. Now, he’s just one of a handful of local fisherman struggling to make a living.
“There was life on the docks, there were people working,” lifelong fisherman Arnold Gamage, 64, agrees. “Now, it looks like a ghost town.”
Maine’s fishing industry has been declining for years due to factors like overfishing and increased regulation, but there’s another culprit eating away at profits: Maine’s ocean waters are warming — and it’s killing northern shrimp.
Goethel, Gamage and other fishermen used to look forward to shrimping as a way to augment their income in the cold New England winters.
“Now, I see a lot of those same people, they’ve got 4-wheel trucks and they’re trying to plow snow to take in some kind of income,” Goethel says.
Regulators at the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission banned commercial shrimping in 2014. The goal was to give northern shrimp a chance to repopulate. While the ban has helped, regulators are still worried about the species’ survival.
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.
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.”
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.
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.”
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