October 18, 2023 — They’re a crustacean famous for their abundance in Maine, but now new data is showing there’s been a change in lobster numbers in the state.
According to Maine Public, the population of young lobster has dropped almost 40-percent over a three-year period.
October 17, 2023 — Laura Crane winds her way around a maze of shallow pools at the Webhannet Marsh near Wells. She stops at one pool with a small blue flag poking through the tall grass at the water’s edge, grabs the rope lying nearby, and pulls.
“OK, first trap we already have two blue crabs, said Crane, as she hauls up a small, wire mesh trap from the muck.
And with metal kitchen tongs in hand, Crane attempts to pry away one of the crabs that’s clutching one side. It’s small, with a greenish gray shell and bright blue claws. She measures its size and determines that it’s a male.
Crabs that have been caught before have a small notch clipped from their swimmer paddle. And after a lengthy battle with the kitchen tongs, Crane confirms that this crab has not been tagged.
October 3, 2023 — When Bob Steneck came to the University of Maine in 1982, there were few marine ecologists in the state, and none interacted with fishermen. He was among the first in Maine to work with lobstermen on research, traveling with them on their boats, diving to the seafloor to study lobsters and sharing his findings with them.
At that time, there was a scientific consensus that the lobster population in the Gulf of Maine was declining. By working with lobstermen and diving down to the depths of the gulf, Steneck showed that the population was actually on the rise.
Steneck’s work and that of his students and colleagues helped propel an expansion of and change in how lobster fisheries research is conducted in Maine. Over the proceeding decades, Steneck’s students continue collaborating with lobstermen and other fishermen on their studies. They focused more on work that benefitted these industries, the management of Maine fisheries and the coastal communities that relied on them.
“We were able to take a different perspective by studying lobsters in their natural habitat. My hope was to do research to help the people of Maine,” Steneck says. “What came out of this work was research that was collaborative and directed toward improved management of the lobster fishery.”
After a 41-year career at UMaine filled with numerous studies, scientific publications, outreach and teaching the next generation of marine scientists, conservation biologists and leaders, Steneck, professor emeritus of oceanography, marine biology and marine policy has retired.
Steneck’s research helped understand and manage Maine’s most lucrative fishery, now worth almost $400 million. He and his students learned how baby lobsters grow up on the seafloor, what lobsters eat, who eats them and how they sustain their populations. This basic research was also useful for lobstermen, as well as fishery managers and policymakers who must determine the status and trends of lobster stocks.
September 19, 2023 — Fisherman David Goethel is looking at the prospect of large scale wind production in the Gulf of Maine and what changes that may mean to fish behavior, marine environment and life as it has been known on the ocean for centuries.
He told an online seminar for the New Hampshire Network for Environmental, Energy and Climate Monday night that “Europe built first and studied later,” the impacts to turbines in their waters.
He said people should also think of food security versus energy security when they look at impacts.
“It’s just as vital and yet, I don’t think it’s getting enough discussion,” he told about 60 people listening to the presentation entitled “Planning for Offshore Wind AND Sustainable Fisheries in New England.”
The central question discussed was can both fishing and renewable wind harvesting coexist and what would the impacts be?
Panelists said it depends on what is built, where and who provides input in the planning.
September 17, 2023 — The U.S. has allocated its first floating wind leases and aims to install 15 GW by 2035 but participants warn the first large-scale arrays may still be a decade away.
Development activity is growing on East and West coasts but transmission grids, ports and supply chains must be expanded to achieve commercially viable projects.
California and the East coast state of Maine have set out floating wind targets but different strategies towards the scaling up of floating wind could see their trajectories diverge.
In the U.S.’ first floating wind auction, the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) allocated five floating wind projects in California for a total 4.6 GW capacity.
The state of California aims to install 2 to 5 GW of floating wind capacity by 2030 and 25 GW by 2045 but market observers do not expect the first projects to come online before 2035.
The deep waters of the Pacific Coast mean that, unlike on the East Coast, developers will not benefit from infrastructure built earlier for conventional fixed-bottom offshore projects. Ports must be expanded and adapted to assemble huge components and regional supply chains must be built out to achieve economies of scale.
Read the full article at Reuters
September 11, 2023 — Federal regulators have increased the amount of haddock Maine fishermen are allowed to catch this season.
The industry had been facing about a 70% cut in the allowable haddock catch as compared to last season. But the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has raised those limits by about 30%, a level that regulators say should avoid a potential shutdown of Maine’s groundfish fishery but still prevent over-harvesting.
Ben Martens, executive director of the Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association, says despite initial stock assessments that suggested otherwise, the Gulf of Maine haddock population appears healthy.
September 10, 2023 — North Atlantic right whales are notoriously difficult to track, but a new method for tagging them could hold promise for federal efforts to monitor the critically endangered species.
Researchers have traditionally approached right whales in a small boat and applied suction cup tags using a long pole. The method is often risky for both researchers applying the tags and for the whales themselves. And with a population of fewer than 340 right whales, poor weather conditions make it difficult to consistently tag and monitor them.
August 30, 2023 — The Kingfish Company’s effort to build a recirculating aquaculture system farm to grow yellowtail kingfish in the U.S. state of Maine got a boost 29 August with the dismissal of an appeal of the approval of one its permits.
The appeal from the Roque Island Gardner Homestead Corporation and Eastern Maine Conservation Initiative sought to overturn the Maine Board of Environmental Protection’s granting of a Site Location of Development Act (SLODA) and Natural Resources Protection Act (NRPA) joint permit, which was issued in 2021 and finalized after an appeal in 2022.
August 18, 2023 — Maine’s wild scallop harvest is still a few months away, but a group of fishermen in Penobscot Bay can fish scallops year-round thanks to Maine’s growing aquaculture industry.
“This just puts another tool in the toolbox to allow them to adapt. We’re not looking to be replaced. We just want the opportunity to adapt,” said scallop farmer, Marsden Brewer.
Marsden has been fishing off of Stonington for decades.
He and his son, Robert, have been learning more about scallop farming, setting their nets in Penobscot Bay.
August 17, 2023 — The reports have come from up and down the coast of Maine: Blue crabs have been spotted around dock pilings, pulled up in lobster traps and found washed up on beaches.
The crabs, usually associated with coastal Maryland and the Chesapeake Bay, have been showing up more often and in larger numbers in the Gulf of Maine over the past few years. To better understand the shifting population, scientists are now asking fishermen and members of the public to report their sightings through an online survey.
Jessie Batchelder, a fisheries project manager with Manomet, a Massachusetts-based nonprofit focused on conservation and science education that has been studying blue crabs in Maine, said the information submitted by lobstermen, clam harvesters and others who are frequently on the water is key to getting a better picture of the blue crab population.
“They have a vast knowledge of what’s going on and what they’re seeing,” she said.
In the past, researchers would occasionally hear about stray blue crabs being found in lobster traps or by clam harvesters, but the reports started to become more frequent in 2021. That got researchers thinking about studying how blue crabs are moving into the Gulf of Maine as waters warm because of climate change, Batchelder said.
Last year was the second warmest on record in the Gulf of Maine, with an average surface water temperature of 53.66 degrees Fahrenheit. While that temperature fell just short of the 2021 record, it continued the Gulf’s historic trend as one of the fastest-warming ocean areas on the planet.
The Gulf of Maine, 36,000 sprawling square miles stretching from Cape Cod to Nova Scotia, is home to rare whales and seabirds, valuable fish such as cod and haddock, and the $1.5 billion U.S. lobster industry, all of which are affected by warming waters.