Saving Seafood

Wiscasset, Maine debates using drones to catch clam poachers

September 17, 2015 — Wiscasset selectmen heard a second proposal involving drones at their Tuesday, Sept. 15 meeting, this time from a representative of the shellfish committee. The committee is investigating the use of drones to enforce the shellfish ordinance and prevent poachers from depleting a hard-fought-for resource in Wiscasset, Richard Forrest said to selectmen.

The issue was brought to the attention of selectmen because the committee did not want to investigate the matter further unless the town supported the initiative, Forrest said. Selectmen advised the shellfish committee to bring the proposal in front of the selectmen and the budget committee during the next budget season, in part because the estimated $2,000 expense for drone use was not incorporated into the committee’s 2015-2016 budget.

The approximate price of a bushel of clams three weeks ago was $200, Forrest said, a price which has attracted poachers to Wiscasset’s mudflats. “This really bothers me,” Forrest said. “We put in so much to get this resource to the point where harvesters can make a living.”

While not a dire situation, there have been scattered instances of poachers digging clams in Cushman’s Cove and Polly Clark Cove, Forrest said. The poachers are sophisticated, oftentimes travel by water, and are difficult for Shellfish Warden Jon Hentz, who serves three municipalities, to catch.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

 

Maine holding hearings about scalloping cutback, sea urchins

September 15, 2015 — ELLSWORTH, Maine — Maine fishery regulators are preparing to hold a series of public hearings about a plan to cut back the number of scallop fishing days in the coming season a hearing on a plan to close an area to sea urchin fishing so they can gauge a project that would transplant the creatures..

The scallop proposal would cut back the number of fishing days in the southern scalloping zone from 70 to 60 days. The scallop hearings will be held on Tuesday in Augusta, on Wednesday in Ellsworth and on Thursday in Machias.

The Midcoast and eastern Maine zone would have 70 days, the same as last year. The far eastern zone, which includes scallop-rich Cobscook Bay, would remain at 50 days.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

 

 

Battle on Lobster Fishery Entry Brewing in Maine Legislature

September 9, 2015 — There’s another battle brewing in Maine’s lobster industry, but this is one that likely will be fought in the Legislature rather than on the water.

Out to about 12 miles offshore, Maine waters are divided from east to west, into seven Lobster Management Zones. Lobstermen are required to declare which of the zones they will fish in based, generally, on where they live.

Six of those zones have waiting lists established under the state’s “limited entry” law, of people who have completed a state-mandated apprenticeship program and want a license to fish for lobster in the zone. The number of new licenses available each year depends, in eastern Maine, on the number of licenses surrendered each year. In western Maine, new issues are based on the number of trap tags surrendered. Every licensed commercial lobsterman is entitled to fish up to 800 traps, each of which must be marked with a plastic tag purchased each year from the Department of Marine Resources.

In some of those zones, the waiting list, and the waiting times for a new license, are extremely long.

In Zone D — around western Penobscot Bay — there are 59 on the list, which stretches back to November 2005. In Zone B, around Mount Desert Island including Frenchman Bay over to Schoodic Point, the waiting list includes 55 names and stretches back to May 2005.

With decade-long waits for a new license (the shortest list contains 28 names and dates to 2007,) fishermen on the list have been pressing Governor Paul LePage and their state legislators, and the Governor and the legislators have been pressuring the Department of Marine Resources to develop a new limited entry system with what DMR Commissioner Patrick Keliher described last Monday as “a predictable time frame” for people waiting for licenses.

Read the full story at the Ellsworth American

 

Maine DMR plans meetings to set scallop, urchin seasons

September 8, 2015 — The Department of Marine Resources is proposing new rules to set the regulations and harvest season for the 2015-2016 scallop season and set rules and establish a closed area for the coming sea urchin fishery. Three public hearings are scheduled on the scallop regulations and one hearing is scheduled for the sea urchin rules.

For the 2015-2016 scallop fishing season, as in the past 2014-2015 season, there would be a statewide 15-gallon daily possession limit for scallop meats except in Cobscook Bay, where the limit would remain at 10 gallons for Zone 3.

In western Maine waters, known as Zone 1, draggers would have a 60-day season starting Dec. 15 and ending April 11, 2016. For divers, the 60-day season would start Dec. 1 and end April 15.

In Zone 2, essentially from Penobscot Bay east to Cobscook Bay, draggers would have a 70-day season starting Dec. 1 and ending April 13. For Zone 2 divers, the 70-day season would start Dec. 1 and end April 15.

Last winter, the season was 70 days in both zones, but the concerns for the scarcity of scallops throughout Zone 1 led the department and the Scallop Advisory Council to recommend a shorter season this year.

Read the full story from The Ellsworth American

There are no national monuments in Maine. Would Obama defy LePage to create one?

September 1, 2015 — Maine Gov. Paul LePage sent letters to President Barack Obama and members of the state’s congressional delegation to express his opposition to any efforts to designate certain Gulf of Maine and forest areas as national monuments.

In question are an undersea mountain range named Cashes Ledge and its environs, which conservationists consider a crucial refuge for the dwindling Atlantic cod population, as well as Millinocket-area land eyed by some as a potential spot for a national park.

While supporters of the designations argue they would advance important natural preservation efforts and — in the case of the national park — boost tourism and jobs, the governor and other opponents worry the moves would too greatly restrict the state’s commercial fishing and forest products industries.

But was a national monument designation ever likely for either location?

There are no national monuments currently in the state of Maine. Would Obama create one?

We’ll review some basics about national monuments and their history to help flesh out that discussion.

Read the full story at Bangor Daily News

Read the letter from Gov. LePage to President Obama

 

Americold wins bid to build cold-storage warehouse on Portland, Maine waterfront

September 1, 2015 — The world’s largest cold-storage company has been chosen to build a modern refrigerated warehouse on the Portland waterfront, providing the port with a critical missing element to compete with larger, more congested ports on the Eastern Seaboard.

The state will lease a 6.3-acre site to Americold, which will design the warehouse, fund its construction and operate it. The project is part of a state-led effort to make the port more competitive with other ports and to boost Maine’s seafood, agriculture, and food and beverage industries.

The Maine Port Authority announced Monday that Americold Logistics LLC won the bid to develop the site, located adjacent to the expanded International Marine Terminal on West Commercial Street. The proposed cost of the project, which is scheduled to be completed in 2017, was not disclosed.

Americold already operates a 63-year-old cold-storage warehouse on Read Street in Portland. Company officials say they’re evaluating whether to close that outmoded facility or keep it open for overflow and long-term storage. Americold is partnering on the project with Eimskip, the Icelandic shipping company that made Portland its North American headquarters in 2013. Eimskip will be both an investor and an anchor tenant.

There is currently a shortage of cold-storage warehouse space in Maine, prompting many of the state’s food producers and processors to ship their products out of state for storage.

Eimskip primarily ships frozen fish from Europe to the United States through Portland. While Eimskip now stores some of its imported seafood at the Americold facility on Read Street, the company trucks most of its fish to cold-storage warehouses in the Boston area.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

 

Maine’s Governor LePage Writes Obama Opposing New England Marine Monument

September 1, 2015 — Gov. Paul LePage has written to President Obama opposing a move to protect Cashes Ledge, an area in the Gulf of Maine about 75 miles off the coast of Wells, which the governor says will hurt business.

According to the letter released by the governor’s office, LePage has heard that the White House is “actively exploring” new areas including Cashes Ledge and other underseas canyons in the Gulf of Maine for national monument status, and he says he wanted to voice his opposition to both the project itself and the process of selecting national monuments.

“These National Monuments serve only one purpose – excluding commercial fishing activity from certain segments of the ocean,” Gov. LePage wrote in his letter, saying that the regulations would hurt offshore lobstermen. “These types of designa- tions harm working Mainers the most.”

Cashes Ledge is a submarine mountain range located in the center of the Gulf of Maine that peaks near the surface of the water, making it dangerous for fisherman according to the Smithsonian. In April 24, The Associated Press reported that fishing regulators from the New England Fishery Management Council, or NEFMC, voted to keep a 2002 ban in the area on commercial fishing in place in the near future.

Gov. LePage wrote that he saw that the national monument process as a last ditch effort by environmentalists to close additional areas after the NEFMC ended its policy revision in April.

Read the full story at the Journal Sentinel

 

Fishermen rescued from burning boat off Maine coast

August 27, 2015 — PORTLAND, Maine —Two Maine fishermen were safely rescued Wednesday evening from their burning boat about six miles from Jeffreys Ledge off the coast of Maine.

The Coast Guard said a crew member of the Gretchen Marie, a 40-foot fishing boat based out of Portland, contacted the Coast Guard around 7:40 p.m. to say there was a fire on board and heavy smoke was coming from the boat’s pilothouse.

Station South Portland sent a motor boat to the area and removed the fishermen from the boat. The fishermen used their own equipment to put out a fire in the boat’s engine before the Coast Guard arrived, according to Petty Officer 1st Class Kurt Hein.

Read the full story at WMTW

Where have Maine’s mussels gone?

CASCO BAY, Maine  — August 30, 2015 — The survey map in Ann Thayer’s hand showed fat red splotches that wrapped around two-thirds of Bangs Island’s shoreline, meaning that the intertidal zone – the zone between the high and low water marks – was supposed to be densely packed with mussel beds. The tide was nearly three hours past high, leaving plenty of rockweed exposed.

Thayer began systematically flipping over the weed, looking for mussels, aka Mytilus edulis, attached to the rock below.

“Nothing,” she said. She said this over and over.

By the time she got back into her dinghy to row back to her Boston Whaler, she’d found only two mussels. Two where surveys from the 1970s and 1990s indicated there should be thousands, mollusks wedged into almost every nook and cranny in the rocks, the blue-hued shellfish nearly as commonplace as the barnacles living on their shells.

Thayer, who serves on the board of directors of Friends of Casco Bay, was not surprised by her findings.

Read the full story from the Portland Press Herald

Fishermen rescued from burning boat off Maine coast

August 27, 2015 — PORTLAND, MA —Two Maine fishermen were safely rescued Wednesday evening from their burning boat about six miles from Jeffreys Ledge off the coast of Maine.

The Coast Guard said a crew member of the Gretchen Marie, a 40-foot fishing boat based out of Portland, contacted the Coast Guard around 7:40 p.m. to say there was a fire on board and heavy smoke was coming from the boat’s pilothouse.

Station South Portland sent a motor boat to the area and removed the fishermen from the boat. The fishermen used their own equipment to put out a fire in the boat’s engine before the Coast Guard arrived, according to Petty Officer 1st Class Kurt Hein.

Read the full story at WMTW News