Saving Seafood

Maine’s lucrative baby eel fishing season ending for year

June 7, 2016 — PORTLAND, Maine — Maine’s lucrative fishing season for baby eels is wrapping up for 2016.

The season for baby eels, also called elvers, officially ends on Tuesday. The season for fishermen who have hit their quota for the year has already ended.

The eels are sold to Asian aquaculture companies who raise them to maturity for use as food.

Fishermen in the state were allowed to catch a little less than 10,000 pounds of elvers this year. State officials said fishermen were within 400 pounds of the quota by the end of May.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Boston Globe

Maine Names New Fisheries Division Director

June 7, 2016 — AUGUSTA, Maine — Francis Brautigam, the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife head fisheries biologist in the southern Maine/Sebago region, was named IFW’s Fisheries and Hatcheries Division Director today.

“As commissioner and an avid angler, I am very pleased to have Francis as our director. He brings a combination of experience, passion and innovation to the position that will serve him and the state well,” said IFW Commissioner Chandler Woodcock.

For the past 13 years, Brautigam was the lead biologist in the southern Maine/Sebago region where he oversaw the management of Sebago Lake and other waters in York and Cumberland counties. During that time, Brautigam has overseen a change to the Sebago salmon fishery to a primarily native salmon fishery driven by natural reproduction in the Crooked River, from a hatchery-based salmon fishery.

Innovative fisheries management programs are a hallmark of Brautigam’s career as he has been instrumental in either creating or enhancing year-round fishing opportunities in southern Maine, creating sea-run trout fisheries through the stocking and management of coastal streams and rivers, and implementation and expansion of the state’s rainbow trout program.

Read the full story at The Fishing Wire

MAINE: Proposal to restore alewife habitat worries Vassalboro residents

June 6, 2016 — VASSALBORO, Maine — Larisa Batchelder and her family can fish, kayak or swim in their backyard, thanks to Outlet Stream, a tributary of the Sebasticook River that runs behind their home on Main Street.

But Batchelder and others are worried that could change this summer, when a proposed alewife restoration effort would remove the nearby Masse Dam, which has held the water in a pond for years and stabilized the water level in her backyard and those of her neighbors.

She and her neighbors are worried the change – the result of a state order regulating water release from China Lake – will reduce water levels, lower their property value and affect wildlife.

“We’ve waited all winter for this,” said Batchelder, 37. “We finally get to use the stream, and now someone is going to take it away.”

Officials associated with the project agree that the loss of the dam probably will mean the loss of Mill Pond, which it has been holding in place for years, but say it also will restore the health of the ecosystem.

The Alewife Restoration Initiative, a partnership of six environmental and government agencies, is aimed at allowing alewives, small migratory fish commonly used as lobster bait, to return to China Lake to spawn. Those involved with the project say the benefits are vast and that while water levels may change, there is no need for residents to be overly concerned.

Removing three dams and modifying the other three that stand between the lake and the Sebasticook will cause the stream to revert to a more natural state while still keeping with state regulations for minimum water flow, officials with the project say.

And while Mill Pond probably will disappear, the plan is expected to boost the health of the stream and of China Lake – which is damaged by phosphorus levels that the little fish are expected to help alleviate – as well as help restore alewives to their natural habitat, which now is blocked by dams that were put in place to power mills along the stream.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Maine must address the threat of ocean acidification

June 6, 2016 — Mainers have strong cultural, historic and economic ties to the ocean. The health of the ocean is critical to our way of life. Ocean acidification is a growing problem that could damage the health of the ocean and have drastic consequences for Maine’s coastal economy.

Ocean acidification results when there is increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. As the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere goes up, a large proportion of it – up to 40 percent – gets dissolved in rainwater. From here it ends up in lakes, ponds, rivers and ultimately the ocean.

In addition to the increased atmospheric carbon dioxide, nutrients in the runoff from the land, like fertilizer, also increase the amount of carbon dioxide entering the ocean. The increased carbon dioxide reacts with the water to form carbonic acid, making it more acidic.

The increased acidity of sea water impacts marine life. One of the most important effects is how the acid changes the way organisms use calcium. Calcium is critical to the entire food chain in the Gulf of Maine. The planktons, which make up the base of the food chain, decrease in number as the acidity of the ocean rises, and this in turn has an impact on finned fish.

For shellfish, the impact is even more dramatic. The acid interferes with the way shellfish such as clams, mussels, scallops and even the iconic Maine lobster build their shells. It also can corrode shells. If we don’t find and adopt solutions, ocean acidification could cause major problems for most, if not all, of Maine’s commercial fisheries.

Read the full story at the Portsmouth Herald

NEWSDAY: New York fishers deserve fresh assessment of black sea bass

June 3, 2016 — Regulating fisheries isn’t easy. Commercial fishers need to make a living, but species must be protected from overfishing or everyone loses. Quotas and seasons are needed, but regulators must be flexible enough to adjust to unforeseen circumstances.

Those principles are in play now with black sea bass. Cold weather delayed their migration from Maine, so New York’s commercial fishers, most of them Long Islanders, caught only part of their quota in the period ending May 31. June is off-limits, part of a plan fishers helped craft to give equal access to those who fish in different seasons. The state Department of Environmental Conservation wisely agreed to reopen the season this month if final May data show unused quotas. The DEC also was smart to take the unusual step of letting pairs of fishers catch their daily allotment from the same boat, reducing costs of fuel.

Read the full editorial at Newsday

Fishermen from Maine to Cape start monitoring landings by camera

June 3, 2016 — A program to get New England fishermen using video technology instead of human monitors to track their adherence to catch limits and document fish discarded from boats is getting mixed reviews in South Shore fishing ports.

Longtime commercial fishermen from Marshfield and Scituate said the project to equip some groundfishing boats with digital cameras comes with numerous pitfalls, including cost burdens and concerns about how video footage would be used.

Beginning this week, up to 20 groundfishermen from the Maine and Cape Cod will use three to four cameras to document fish handling on their vessels. At the end of each fishing trip, boat captains send hard drives to third party reviewers who view the footage and count the amount of fish that was discarded.

The Nature Conservancy is overseeing the project and hailed it Tuesday as a ‘‘new era in fisheries monitoring” that would be less costly than the current federal mandate that requires a percentage of fishing trips to carry at-sea monitors on their vessels at a cost of more than $700 a day.

Last December South Shore fishermen threw their support behind a lawsuit filed by the non-profit Cause of Action on behalf of Northeast Fishery Sector 13, which represents fishermen from Massachusetts and New Hampshire down to North Carolina. The federal lawsuit challenges the legality of the federal mandate and came in the aftermath of news that government funding to cover the cost of monitors was running out.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

BILL GERENCER: Fishermen needlessly on the hook for uncertainties of stock estimates

June 2, 2016 — BOWDOIN, Maine — Proper stock assessments are the key to sound fisheries management here in New England. The current and now primarily survey-based assessments are heavy with uncertainty and always assumed to be overstated. Given the changes in the available stock assessment data created by 20 years of regulations, the uncertainty only seems to be increasing.

The fact that the R/V Bigelow, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s primary fishery research vessel, delayed the survey this year is a significant threat to fishermen: We have been told that there are very few codfish in the Gulf of Maine, but this spring, fishermen have found it impossible to set a net in the water without catching codfish. This does not correlate well with the assessment advice.

Many boats have simply tied up to avoid codfish. The late start taken by the survey cruise has most likely missed significant codfish “data” as the research vessel remained at the dock.

Even with an on-time start, the survey method employed by the R/V Bigelow covers only a tiny sliver of the available fishing bottom and puts the survey gear on the bottom for a very short time during trips made in the spring and fall. The R/V Bigelow has also become famous in the fishing community for its demonstrated inability to catch cod and flatfish alongside commercial vessels catching those species and in areas fishing boats declared off limits to themselves because of the presence of codfish.

The low annual catch limit for codfish is tied directly to the low numbers provided by the most recent stock assessments. The low limit has resulted in small codfish allocations to each commercial fishing boat. Once a boat harvests its cod allocation, it will be prohibited from fishing for the duration of the fishing year even if it has significant allocation of other species.

Read the full opinion piece at the Portland Press Herald

Maine scientist seeks keys to how sea urchins avoid aging process

June 1, 2016 — Sea urchins don’t appear to age, and researchers from Maine and Bermuda are trying to find out why.

The answer might help unlock the secrets of how to slow the aging process in humans, scientists say.

“We don’t really know how (long) sea urchins can live,” James Coffman, a scientist at the MDI Biological Laboratory in Bar Harbor, said of the spiky ocean floor dwellers. “They may be living hundreds of years.”

But when they do die, it’s not of old age, according to Coffman’s research.

That’s because sea urchin cells do not degrade, like the cells in humans or most other creatures.

“A lot of things can kill you. Old age is just one of them,” Coffman said.

He and Andrea Bodnar, a scientist from the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Studies, recently published an article on their research, “Maintenance of Somatic Tissue Regeneration with Age in Short- and Long-lived Species of Sea Urchins,” in Aging Cell, a scholarly journal. The research was funded by a two-year, $275,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health.

Coffman and Bodnar studied the differences between red sea urchins, which can live to be more than 100 years old; the purple sea urchin, with a lifespan of about 50 years; and the green sea urchin, which dies after four to five years of life. Bodnar said the sea urchin lifespans are based on observations by fishermen.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

MASSACHUSETTS: South Shore ground fishermen skeptical of plan to use digital cameras for monitoring mandate

June 1, 2016 — A program to get New England fishermen using video technology instead of human monitors to track their adherence to catch limits and document fish discarded from boats is getting mixed reviews in South Shore fishing ports.

Longtime commercial fishermen from Marshfield and Scituate said the project to equip some groundfishing boats with digital cameras comes with numerous pitfalls, including cost burdens and concerns about how video footage would be used.

Beginning this week, up to 20 groundfishermen from the Maine and Cape Cod will use three to four cameras to document fish handling on their vessels. At the end of each fishing trip, boat captains will send hard drives to third-party reviewers, who will view the footage and determine how much fish was discarded.

The Nature Conservancy is overseeing the project and hailed it Tuesday as a “new era in fisheries monitoring” that would be less costly than the current federal mandate, which requires having human monitors aboard boats on a percentage of fishing trips – at a cost to the fishermen of more than $700 a day.

Last December, South Shore fishermen threw their support behind a lawsuit filed by the nonprofit Cause of Action on behalf of Northeast Fishery Sector 13, which represents fishermen from Massachusetts and New Hampshire down to North Carolina. The federal lawsuit challenges the legality of the federal mandate and came in the aftermath of news that government funding to cover the cost of monitors was running out.

Read the full story at Wicked Local

Maine Coast Co. delivers lobsters around the world

May 31, 2016 — YORK, Maine – Every day is a “crazy juggling game” for Tom Adams, owner of the wildly successful lobster wholesaler Maine Coast Company. His product is live and perishable. His customers are in Seoul, South Korea, Madrid, Spain, or San Francisco. He has to worry about Homeland Security regulations, endless paperwork for China exports, planes that don’t take off on time.

“There’s a lot of risk when your product is controlled by Mother Nature,” said Adams. “We have to get it where it’s going in 48 to 60 hours. Any delay means it doesn’t get there alive. My strong point, I think, is that I have the gut instinct to most of the time play the market correctly. It’s no different than oil futures or some other commodity. It’s just that I’m dealing in lobsters.”

Located in a nondescript warehouse on Hannaford Drive in York, Maine Coast Company has had the kind of meteoric success other businesses would envy. Founded by Adams in 2011 with a $1.5 million loan, sales in 2015 were $43 million – a growth rate of 20 to 30 percent a year.

The company has expanded its space to accommodate tanks that can hold 155,000 pounds of lobster. At the end of June, it will open a $500,000, 5,000-square-foot facility on the Boston Fish Pier that will hold another 25,000 pounds — all the quicker for getting those lobsters on airplanes.

This growth is to accommodate an exploding global demand for Maine’s premier crustacean. According to the U.S. Census foreign trade division, lobster is the No. 1 commodity exported from Maine, and its growth has increased substantially from $231 million in 2012 to $331 million in 2015.

Read the full story at Seacoast Online