Saving Seafood

MAINE: Maine’s lobster fishermen struggle with efforts to save right whales

February 28, 2024 — Willis Spear stands in the backyard of his Yarmouth, Maine home. Behind him are dozens of yellow and green lobster traps. Spear, 67, spends most of the winter preparing these traps to be deployed in the Gulf of Maine come April. It’s a task this lifelong lobster fisherman has carried out each year since he was a child.

“The water gives us life,” Spear said on an unusually warm winter day in late February.

Over the last decade, lobster fishermen in Maine have faced increasingly stronger financial headwinds — from the price of fuel to the revenue they are receiving for the lobster themselves. The lobster-fishing industry generates hundreds of millions of dollars for Maine’s economy each year.

“It’s been a difficult last couple of years. Some of my friends have dropped out altogether. Prices are going up but lobster prices are stuck at 1970s prices,” Spear said.

Read the full article at AOL

MAINE: Maine Shaken by High-Stakes Offshore Wind Port Choice

February 27, 2024 — Maine Governor Janet Mills announced that the state selected a section of state-owned Sears Island reserved for port development to support the floating offshore wind industry. The site selection followed an extensive public stakeholder process led by the Maine Department of Transportation and Maine Port Authority to consider the State’s primary port development options.

However, in former documentation, locals in the community and commercial fishing groups oppose the development of the port and offshore wind altogether.

Sears Island is a 941-acre island off the coast of Searsport. In 2009, Sears Island was, by agreement, divided into two parcels: approximately 601 acres, or two-thirds of the island, was placed in a permanent conservation easement held by the Maine Coast Heritage Trust, while the remaining one-third, or approximately 330 acres, was reserved by MaineDOT for future development.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

MAINE: Data show fewer baby lobsters but fishermen say ‘eggers’ abound

February 27, 2024 — Lobstermen and the agency that oversees them — the Maine Department of Marine Resources (DMR) — sparred a little over state data on lobster populations that lobstermen said does not reflect what they see when fishing, when the Zone B Lobster Council met Feb. 21 at the Mount Desert Island High School library.

The DMR estimates the number of baby lobsters, called “year of young,” through trawl and ventless trap surveys to project future adult populations and manage the fishery — and to adhere to interstate fishery rules from the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC), an interstate board managing fisheries for 15 states, including Maine.

Last May, the ASMFC’s American Lobster Board approved a “trigger” measure that would raise the minimum size of legally caught lobsters and, eventually, the size of trap vents when the annual lobster year of young abundance, also called “recruit,” declined by 35 percent.

Larger trap vents allow larger lobsters to escape traps, and a higher minimum size means smaller, previously legal lobsters are thrown back. Both measures are used to help maintain a healthy population.

At the time, it looked like it would take a couple of years to reach that trigger, but instead the trigger came quick, in late 2023, when data showed a 37 percent decline in settlement, DMR Commissioner Patrick Keliher said. He was able to leverage a seven-month delay to implement the trigger until Jan. 1, 2025.

Read the full article at The Ellsworth American

MAINE: A day on the ocean with Maine’s tough winter scallopers

February 26, 2024 — An orange sun exploded behind a tangle of blue clouds on Monday morning, silhouetting the stone beacon tower on Little Mark Island that once held supplies for shipwrecked sailors.

Lying roughly between Eagle and Bailey islands, the 197-year-old navigational aid is one of the final outposts guiding fishermen at the far reaches of Casco Bay.

But Kenny Blanchard and Josh Todd didn’t have time to admire the gorgeous sunrise, or contemplate the history of the 50-foot tower.

They were busy, on their hands and knees, picking scallops from a pile of seaweed and rocks on the heaving stern of a Chebeague Island fishing boat. A constant breeze made the 26-degree air feel even colder, and the rising winter sun radiated no extra warmth.

“This really isn’t too bad,” said 37-year-old Blanchard, steam following his voice into the air. “Sometimes it’s cold enough to get the deck all iced up — and it snows, too.”

Though often romanticized for tourists and marketing, there’s little glamor in the work of a Maine fisherman — especially in the dead of winter, when the state’s scalloping season takes place.

Worth about $9 million to Maine’s economy every year, it can be an important financial bridge for fishermen waiting out the slowest part of the lobstering season. Their fresh catch, known as “day boat scallops,” are prized and often sold directly to hungry locals. Those buyers are smart, knowing that scallops purchased at other times of the year have likely been soaked in preserving chemicals, which dilute the taste.

Read the full article at Bangor Daily News

MAINE: Offshore wind is coming to Maine. Here’s what we know.

February 21, 2024 — Labor unions, environmental advocates and many lawmakers are looking to Maine’s budding offshore wind industry to help transition the state into the future, as a climate-friendly driver of investment and jobs.

On Tuesday. Gov. Janet Mills announced that Sears Island on the northern tip of Penobscot Bay would be the location of a new port from which floating turbines would be assembled and launched into the Gulf of Maine.

This isn’t the first time Maine has tried to procure the alternative energy source.

Back in 2010, the state began working with international oil and gas company Statoil on a $120 million offshore wind pilot project that never came to fruition. Then-Gov. Paul LePage was opposed to the project, arguing it didn’t provide enough benefits to the state, as reported by Bangor Daily News in 2013.

“We had the chance to do this 15 years ago, and we blew it,” said Kathleen Meil, senior director of policy and partnerships for Maine Conservation Voters, referring to the failed wind project.

But last legislative session, Mills signed a law that not only brought offshore wind back to life, but did so with high labor and environmental standards, which she says will help build quality jobs while achieving the goal of having infrastructure to create three gigawatts — enough to power between 675,000 and 900,000 homes — installed by the end of 2040.

Read the full article at the Maine Morning Star

MAINE: State selects Sears Island as preferred site for Maine’s new offshore wind port

February 21, 2024 — The state has selected Sears Island in Penobscot Bay as its preferred site for the new hub for Maine’s floating offshore wind power industry, where turbines and other components will be assembled and shipped to the Gulf of Maine, Gov. Janet Mills announced Tuesday.

The 100-acre site in Searsport was one of several considered in a more than two-year review by Maine officials. The location is on a one-third portion of Sears Island that the state Department of Transportation has reserved for development. The other two-thirds are in a permanent conservation easement held by the Maine Coast Heritage Trust.

Mills touted the need to generate wind power to fight climate change while boosting skilled manufacturing jobs in a region that a local official said has not recovered from the 2014 shutdown of the Bucksport paper mill.

Read the full article at the Sun Journal

MAINE: Maine Lobster Community Alliance helps coastal communities rebuild

February 20, 2024 — The Maine Lobster Community Alliance (MLCA), a non-profit based in Kennebunk whose mission is to foster thriving coastal communities and preserve Maine’s lobstering heritage, announced today that it is donating $10,000 to the Working Waterfront Support Fund.

The fund was established following January’s devastating storms and historic flooding that caused widespread destruction and millions of dollars of damage in communities up and down the Maine coast.

Read the full article at National Fisherman

MAINE: Regulators keeping Maine elver fishery quota flat

February 16, 2024 — The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASFMC) is planning to maintain the same quota in the Maine elver fishery for at least the next few years, even as preliminary data indicates an abundance of the eels.

Maine’s elver, or glass eel, fishery has grown to be the state’s second-most valuable fishery, earning USD 20.1 million (EUR 18.7 million) in 2022 and USD 19.3 million (EUR 18.1 million) in 2023, with an average price per pound of USD 2,031 (EUR 1,894). Each year, the fishery has a quota of 9,688 pounds.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Rope removed from dead right whale from Maine lobster gear, NOAA says

February 15, 2024 — Federal fisheries officials said Wednesday that the rope found on a dead right whale that washed ashore on Martha’s Vineyard last month is from Maine.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found purple markings on the gear recovered from the young female, known as right whale #5120. NOAA officials said the rope and its markings are consistent with those that Maine lobstermen and pot and trap fishermen use.

Maine Department of Marine Resources Commissioner Patrick Kehiler said he also reviewed the gear in person and confirmed the purple markings.

“This is very unfortunate — our goal is zero entanglements,” Keliher said Wednesday in a message to the lobster industry. “Certainly, this is a rare event, in fact it is the first right whale entanglement with known Maine gear since 2004. It is also the first right whale mortality with known Maine gear that DMR is aware of since the establishment of the Take Reduction Plan.”

But scientists caution that the vast majority of right whale entanglements are undetected and the gear historically has not been recovered or identified.

The Maine lobster fishery began consistently marking its gear a few years ago. And as Maine Public reported last year, the most common color that NOAA officials have recovered from other types of entangled whales, such as minkes and humpbacks, has been purple, the Maine mark.

Read the full article at Maine Public

Rope removed from right whale found washed up on Martha’s Vineyard may be from Maine buoy line, officials say

February 15, 2024 — The rope found embedded in a juvenile North Atlantic right whale that washed up on Martha’s Vineyard on Jan. 28 was consistent with water traps and buoy lines from Maine, federal officials said Wednesday.

NOAA Fisheries said that its analysis of the fishing gear, “including the purple markings on the rope,” found it was consistent with lines used in Maine waters.

The endangered whale, a female, was found near Joseph Sylvia State Beach on the Vineyard, officials said. NOAA Fisheries worked with the International Fund for Animal Welfare and other partners to recover the carcass and conduct a necrop

Read the full article at the Boston Globe