April 20, 2016 — PORTLAND, Maine — Federal regulators and scallop fishermen are meeting to discuss how to regulate the industry in the northern Gulf of Maine.
Scallop fishing rules have caused tension in recent months as fishing boats have moved into the waters off the northern Massachusetts coast to seek scallops.
Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Seattle Times
April 19, 2016 — The following was released by NOAA:
Aging Infrastructure and Vulnerable Habitat
The Penobscot River Bridge in Howland and Enfield, Maine was built in 1946 and now needs to be replaced. The Penobscot River supports many types of sea-run fish including alewife, American shad, Atlantic salmon, and blueback herring. However, in the past, the river supported much higher numbers of these fish. The Penobscot River watershed is one of two Habitat Focus Areas in the Greater Atlantic Region. Through NOAA’s Habitat Blueprint Initiative, efforts are underway to improve fish passage and restore important fish habitats in the Penobscot River watershed. Bridge replacement can damage fish habitat or get in the way of fish trying to move past the bridge. The construction could threaten efforts to restore fish populations.
What do we do to protect habitat?
Bridge replacements can impact fish habitats both during and after construction. To protect important fish habitats including spawning and feeding areas, the Habitat Conservation Division reviews bridge plans and provides recommendations. We make sure that the construction and design of the bridge is done in a way that has the least amount of impact on fish habitats. During review of the Penobscot River Bridge replacement, we raised concerns about impacts to fish passing through the area. Due to our involvement, the amount of fill in the river was reduced, allowing more space for the fish to pass through during construction. Having enough space to swim through is important so that fish can travel to areas beyond the bridge where they spawn.
We work hard to make sure road and bridge projects avoid and reduce negative impacts to important fish habitats- both during and after construction. We recognize the need to balance the importance of maintaining our roads with the need to protect important aquatic habitats.
How will we address these types of projects in the future?
Besides reviewing bridge replacements like the Penobscot River project, we are working on techniques to improve the review process. Together with the Federal Highway Administration, we will improve coordination, increase our mutual understanding of issues and concerns, and reduce review and construction timeframes, while minimizing impacts to the environment.
We are creating guidance which describes each other’s roles and responsibilities during transportation project review. It includes a list of project information that transportation agencies need to provide to us and describes the steps taken during the review process. We are also working on a manual of best management practices for transportation agencies to use during their project planning. The manual explains the negative effects of certain actions on fish and their habitats and recommends ways to lessen those effects. The guidance and manual will benefit the transportation agencies and us, as well as the fish and the habitats we care about.
April 19, 2016 — Jean Lavallée said he once watched a Canadian lobsterman overstuff a crate with lobsters, put the wooden lid on top and then smash it down with his foot.
The resulting crunch of limbs and shells “sounded like a bowl of Rice Krispies,” he told a group of Maine lobstermen in Bath on Monday. Not only did the carelessness cause needless death and injury, Lavallée said, it also undoubtedly cost the lobsterman some money.
“I couldn’t believe it,” he said.
Lavallée, a veterinarian from Prince Edward Island who has specialized in lobsters for more than 20 years, is traveling along the Maine coast this week to lead a series of workshops on proper care and handling of the lucrative crustaceans. The workshops are sponsored by the Maine Lobstermen’s Association and the Maine Lobstermen’s Community Alliance with funding from the Island Institute.
Lavallée said as many as 10 percent of the lobsters harvested in the U.S. die on their way to market. Given Maine’s $616.5 million harvest in 2015, that’s up to $61.7 million in lost revenue for the state’s top fishery.
“We kill more lobsters (prematurely) than most other countries are fishing for their entire year,” he said of the U.S. lobster industry. “That’s a lot of lobsters.”
Lavallée argues that more careful handling of lobsters, based on a better understanding of their anatomy and biology, will reduce losses and save the industry millions of dollars.
April 19, 2016 — PORTLAND, Maine — Scallop fishing has increased dramatically off some parts of New England recently, and fishermen and regulators will soon meet to discuss how to avoid overexploiting the valuable shellfish.
The concern over scallop fishing centers on the northern Gulf of Maine, a management area that stretches roughly from the waters off of Boston to the Canadian border. Scallop grounds off of northern Massachusetts have been especially fertile, prompting increased fishing in that area.
The New England Fishery Management Council, a regulatory arm of the federal government, will hold a public meeting about the issue Wednesday and decide how to proceed.
Part of the concern arises from the fact that different classes of fishing boats harvest scallops in the area, and not all of them are restricted by a quota system. Alex Todd, a Maine-based fisherman who fishes off of Gloucester, Massachusetts, said he and others feel the rules are not equal.
“We’re playing by two different sets of rules,” Todd said, adding that fishermen who follow the quota system could reach quota as soon as next month.
But Drew Minkiewicz, an attorney for Fisheries Survival Fund who represents many fishermen who don’t have to abide by the quota system, said he thinks the boats can coexist.
April 18, 2016 – In an April 15 story, the New York Times described in detail the challenges faced at sea by members of the limited access scallop fleet. The story covered the rescue of the Carolina Queen III, which ran aground off the Rockaways Feb. 25, during a storm with waves cresting as high as 14 feet. The following is an excerpt from the story:
Scallop fishing may not conjure up the derring-do of those catching crabs in the icy waters of the Bering Strait or the exploits of long-line tuna fisherman chronicled on shows like “The Deadliest Catch.” But the most dangerous fishing grounds in America remain those off the Northeast Coast — more dangerous than the Bering Sea, according to data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
From 2000 to 2009, the years covered by the agency’s data, 504 people died while fishing at sea and 124 of them were in the Northeast.
The scallop industry had the second-highest rate of fatalities: 425 deaths per 100,000 workers. Among all workers in the United States over the same period, according to the C.D.C., there were four deaths per 100,000 workers. The size of the crew and the time at sea contribute to the dangers.
Drew Minkiewicz, a lawyer who represents the Fisheries Survival Fund, said that since 2010, the number of vessels permitted to fish for scallops has been limited, and with fewer unregistered ships at sea, there have been fewer accidents.
The Atlantic sea scallop — Placopecten magellanicus — has been popular since the 1950s, when Norwegian immigrants first scoured the seas south of New Bedford, Mass. The supply could swing between scarcity and plenty, but in the 1980s huge algae blooms known as brown tides appeared several years in a row and threatened to destroy the scallops’ ecosystem on the East Coast. Even after those tides passed, the industry almost did itself in by overfishing. Only after regulations were passed in the 1990s and the industry banded together with the scientific community to improve fishing techniques did the fisheries rebound.
Now, scalloping along the Atlantic Coast from Maine to North Carolina is among the most lucrative fishing in the world. In 2014, the catch was estimated to be worth more than $424 million.
The industry operates under strict guidelines, many aimed at ensuring sustainability of the fisheries. To fish some areas with known scallop beds, a permit is needed, and the haul is capped. Open-sea fishing, on the other hand, is restricted only by the annual 32-days-at-sea limit.
The clock is always ticking.
“We get so few days to go out, we have to find every efficiency to maximize our days at sea,” said Joe Gilbert, who owns Empire Fisheries and, as captain of a boat called the Rigulus, is part of the tight-knit scalloping community.
In preparation for the Carolina Queen’s voyage, the crew would have spent days getting ready, buying $3,000 in groceries, loading more than 20,000 pounds of ice and prepping the equipment on the twin-dredge vessel.
The vessel steamed north from the Chesapeake Bay, traveling 15 hours to reach the coast off New Jersey, where the crew would probably have started fishing. Then the work would begin.
It is pretty standard for a crew to work eight hours on and take four hours off, but in reality it often is more like nine hours on and three off. If you are a good sleeper, you are lucky to get two hours’ shut-eye before heading back on deck.
The huge tows scouring the ocean bed for scallops dredge for about 50 minutes and are then hauled up, their catch dumped on deck before the tows are reset and plunged back into the water, a process that can be done in as little as 10 minutes.
While the dredge did its work, the crew on duty on the Carolina Queen sorted through the muddy mix of rocks and sand and other flotsam on the ship’s deck, looking for the wavy round shells of the scallops.
“The biggest danger is handling the gear on deck,” Mr. Gilbert said. “It is very heavy gear on a pitching deck, and you get a lot of injured feet, injured hands.”
Once the scallops are sorted, according to industry regulations, they must be shucked by hand.
The crew spends hours opening the shells and slicing out the abductor muscle of the mollusks — the fat, tasty morsel that winds up on plates at a restaurants like Oceana in Midtown Manhattan, where a plate of sea scallops à la plancha costs as much as $33.
A single boat can haul 4,000 pounds in a day.
April 18, 2016 — Let the spawn begin!
Late April through the first two weeks of May in the southern areas of Maine and New Hampshire means the largemouth and smallmouth bass will begin to spawn.
Mother Nature will alert them to start pre-spawn as the water temperatures rise. For largemouth, that perfect temperature is between 62-65 degrees, and 60-70 degrees for smallmouth.
The largemouth males sense this warming trend and start to make a bed for the females. The males clean out a nest of about 20 inches in diameter and six inches deep. While this is happening, the females feed heavily.
When the nests are completed, the male bass entices the female to spawn. The females will lay hundreds of eggs, which are fertilized by the males. These eggs are adhesive and stick to the bottom of the nest. If not, the small predator fish would eat all the eggs.
Meanwhile the perch and crappie do show up for a free meal of the eggs. All this time the male has his fins full trying to fend off all of the perch and crappie who gang up and use a decoy to invade the nest. When this happens, the bass chases the decoy away while the other predators race to the bed to eat the eggs.
April 18, 2016 — The U.S. State Department is adding its muscle to help resolve an impending trade dispute between exporters of live Maine lobsters and the European Union.
Responding to a letter from Maine’s congressional delegation, officials in the Obama administration have committed the State Department to address the trade threat. In March, Sweden announced it was attempting to ban live North American lobsters from the 28-country EU, citing concerns that some of them have been found in European waters and are an “invasive species” that threatens Europe’s native lobster species.
“The State Department is on our side,” Sen. Angus King said Friday evening, “and I think they’re going to be aggressive.”
King said the response from the State Department was strong and suggested a concerted effort with other U.S. agencies to offset the risk of a ban. According to a letter from the State Department, the EU would have to consider the economic impact of a ban, along with the science, before blocking imports of U.S. lobsters.
King said the government “needs to press on all levels” to try to keep the EU from banning imports of live North American lobster, also known as Maine lobster.
April 12, 2016 — The Gulf of Maine brand can also be used to introduce consumers to underused species, such as dogfish, that are numerous in the region, and will likely become more so as sea temperatures continue to rise.
There are traceability programs for lobster, too, such as Trace My Lobster, a Whole Foods initiative launched in Maine that uses coded tags to allow consumers to find out when and where a lobster was caught, and even who caught it.
It’s important for the industry to be able to tell the story behind the lobster – that’s part of the reason people seek out the Maine product. It is also crucial that what is being sold as fresh, Maine lobster lives up to its billing.
But not everyone is playing by the rules.
See the full editorial at the Portland Press Herald
Learn more about sustainability and traceability efforts in the US seafood industry here.
April 12, 2016 — PORTLAND, Maine — Organizations in five states will receive more than $15 million for marine science research projects funded by the sale of sea scallops.
One of the projects seeks to understand the impacts of sea scallop fishing on loggerhead sea turtles through the use of satellite tagging. Coonamessett Farm Foundation Inc. of Falmouth, Massachusetts, is the lead investigating organization on that effort.
Recipients of the grants are located in Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Virginia. They range from universities and educational organizations to commercial fishing businesses.
Read the full story from the Associated Press at The Virginian-Pilot
April 11, 2016 — Maine fishing regulators says a change in state law will make it easier for students who want to become lobster fishermen to get into business.
The state has extended the age by which Maine residents must fulfill apprenticeship requirements to get a lobster fishing license without first going on a waiting list.
The old rules state that students had to finish the apprenticeship by age 18.
See the full story from the Associated Press at the Portland Press Herald