Saving Seafood

Right whales aren’t having a good year. The pressure is on to save this hard-to-track species

April 16, 2023 — It’s a chilly morning in early March. And New England Aquarium scientist Orla O’Brien and her team are preparing a small, twin propeller plane at the New Bedford Regional Airport for takeoff.

It’s perfectly clear, ideal for flying and, hopefully, for spotting North Atlantic right whales from about 1,000 feet in the air.

It hasn’t been a particularly good year for critically endangered North Atlantic right whales. Scientists have documented four right whale entanglements so far in 2023, which they say is a relatively high number for the first three months of the year. And with a population of fewer than 350 — scientists estimate the number is likely closer to 340 — the pressure is on to learn more about how and where the whales are becoming entangled.

But despite decades of research, biologists say tracking the species — and developing definitive answers about their encounters with fishing gear — are challenging tasks. And the answers that scientists have developed are often frustrating for New England fishing industries, which say the information has been used to unfairly regulate them.

For the New England Aquarium, the process starts with these monthly aerial surveys south of Martha’s Vineyard.

O’Brien points to one of two seats behind the pilot and co-pilot. “We sit there and then we’ll pop open that little square,” she explains.

Read the full article at Maine Public

MAINE: Nordic Aquafarms asks Maine to suspend permits as it faces an onslaught of legal challenges By Chris Chase April 14, 2023

April 16, 2023 — Nordic Aquafarms has requested the Maine Department of Environmental Protection pause permit deadlines for its planned salmon recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) facility in Belfast, Maine, U.S.A., as it continues to face several legal challenges.

In a release on 7 April, the company announced it is asking the DEP to suspend its permits to let multiple court decisions on property issues raised by project opponents play out. The company, which announced the large aquaculture project in January 2018 and originally said it hoped to have production start in 2020, has faced a barrage of legal challenges to its development.

Read the full article SeafoodSource

A new program to research American Lobster fishery’s sustainability

April 11, 2023 — Sea Grant is accepting applications for the American Lobster Research Program 2023. Applications must be submitted to Grants.gov until May 10, 2023.

Sea Grant announced the launch of the American Lobster Research Program 2023, which will support collaborative projects that address priority research needs to enhance the understanding of and address impacts to the American lobster fishery.

According to Sea Grant “applications are sought from research teams and encourage partnerships between industry, state agencies, and/or academia that address population dynamics, including but not limited to distribution and abundance in regards to ecosystem changes; life history parameters, including but not limited to temperature effects, ocean acidification, and other changing climate conditions; species interactions and behavior; and/or social, behavioral, or economic research including but not limited to impact studies, assessments, and policy analyses regarding measures under consideration for inclusion in the Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Plan.”

The institution says the program aims to address impacts to the American lobster fishery in the Gulf of Maine, Georges Bank, and southern New England, and applications must be submitted to Grants.gov by 11:59 p.m. Eastern time May 10, 2023. Eligible applicants are any individual; any public or private corporation, partnership, or other association or entity (including any Sea Grant College, Sea Grant Institute or other institution); or any State, political subdivision of a State, Tribal government or agency.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

MAINE: Maine’s seafood harvest fell by more than a third in past decade

April 10, 2023 — Many of Maine’s commercial marine fisheries have experienced notable highs in the past decade with lobsters, softshell clams and baby eels all hitting record annual harvest values.

But when it comes to 2022, the statewide fisheries harvest total stands out for a different reason: a record low.

At 197 million pounds for all commercially harvested marine species, 2022 was the first time since 1975 that Maine’s reported annual seafood harvest has fallen short of 200 million pounds. In fact, the cumulative volume of Maine’s commercial fisheries dropped by more than 120 million pounds between 2012 and 2022, state data show.

Patrick Keliher, head of the state’s Department of Marine Resources, said there are myriad reasons why fishery landings have declined — some regulatory, others environmental.

Some fisheries are well below their former harvest totals. Northern shrimp have migrated north out of the Gulf of Maine because of climate change, urchins were significantly overfished in the 1990s and the harvest of baby eels has been restricted to offset habitat loss. Softshell clams, which reached a record high harvest value in 2021, had their lowest-ever documented total harvest by volume in 2022.

Read the full article at Bangor Daily News

MAINE: New bill would expand state waters in attempt to protect Maine lobstermen from federal regulations

April 8, 2023 — Maine lawmakers are considering a new bill that would claim state control over a larger swath of coastal waters.

State Sen. Eric Brakey, the bill’s sponsor, said the proposal is intended to protect Maine lobstermen from what he says are overly burdensome federal regulations, particularly those aimed at protecting endangered right whales.

“LD 563 would throw the yolk of these federal regulators off our Maine lobstermen by extending Maine’s claim to the sovereignty of our oceans from three miles to 12 miles, subjecting our lobstermen to the rules of Maine regulators, accountable to Maine people, rather than Washington, DC regulators who seem accountable to no one,” he told the Legislature’s marine resources committee Thursday.

Read the full article at Maine Public

MAINE: Legislators hear about Mills administration offshore wind plans

April 6, 2023 — Representatives of the Governor’s Energy Office took questions from a legislative committee Wednesday about the scale of offshore wind projects that might be sited in the Gulf of Maine, and their potential impacts on whales, fisheries, and aesthetics.

Celina Cunningham of the Governor’s Energy Office says a network of floating wind turbines 20 miles offshore would require miles of cable buried 6 feet under the ocean floor. Cunningham expects that wind projects would eventually be interconnected with those elsewhere in New England.

Read the full article at Maine Public

MAINE: As the Gulf of Maine warms, a hardier clam could offer business opportunities

April 5, 2023 — It was the first official evening of spring and Mike Gaffney was ankle-deep in the mud of the tidal flats of his Georgetown oyster farm with two researchers.

The trio weren’t there for oysters – a delicacy at the center of an aquaculture boom in Maine – but were, instead, checking on an experiment that some hope could help usher in industry in the state. Half-buried in the mud were about a dozen mesh bags and crates containing thousands of tiny hard-shell clams, also known as quahogs.

“I have to say I am really glad to see them all here because we did have a period of really cold weather,” said Marissa McMahan, director of fisheries at Manomet, a scientific nonprofit studying how climate change is affecting species in the Gulf of Maine. “There’s a bridge down there that you can see. I would drive by and look into the cove and see ice everywhere. And it was like, ‘Oh no, I hope those bags are still here.’ So this is great!”

Read the full article at Maine Public

Defamation suit marks shift in fight over lobstering

April 3, 2023 — A University of Maine Law School professor says it’s unlikely a judge or jury will actually settle the science around lobstering’s impact on North Atlantic right whale mortality in a recently filed defamation lawsuit against Seafood Watch and the Monterey Bay Aquarium Foundation.

Instead, Dmitry Bam explained, the case—if it ever reaches trial—will probably turn on whether the aquarium’s seafood sustainability program was negligent or reckless about the evidence it actually used to claim that scientific data demonstrate that lobstering harms the endangered whale species.

Last fall, Seafood Watch put American lobsters on its red list of foods to avoid because it “is caught or farmed in ways that have a high risk of causing harm to wildlife or the environment.” Among the findings in a summary of its decision-making, the organization noted that nearly nine out of every 10 right whales bears scars from entanglement with fishing gear. Furthermore, “90% of entanglements cannot be linked to a specific gear type, and only 12% of entanglements can be linked to a specific location.”

It concluded that, given recent declines in an already low right whale population, lobstering in the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank poses an unacceptable risk to the species.

The Maine Lobstermen’s Association fired back in its March 13 lawsuit that the aquarium’s claims “are in fact not supported by science, and that the aquarium’s false statements have caused substantial economic harm to plaintiffs, as well as to the Maine lobster brand and to Maine’s long-standing reputation for a pristine coastal environment protected by a multi-generational tradition of preserving resources for the future.”

Read the full article at Penobscot Bay Pilot

MAINE: More than a job: Can sea scallop help preserve the working waterfront?

March 30, 2023 — At the beginning of Andrew Peters’ first Econ 101 class at elite Middlebury College in 2005, the professor asked students to introduce themselves and share their career interests. “Law,” “technology,” and “investment banking” echoed among the 80 or so in the lecture hall, with one stand-out. “Lobsterman,” Peters stated.

It was a goal the Albany native had fixed on as a 12-year-old during a family sailing trip and, although he eventually worked for several years as a sternman, the profession proved out of reach because of the limited number of commercial lobstering licenses in Maine.  A job at Google would have been easier to nab. 

But now Andrew Peters is making his way on the water in a role that defines entrepreneurship. He is one of just a handful of ocean farmers growing sea scallops in Maine. If his econ professor were to illustrate his vocation as a Venn diagram, it would lie at the intersection of passion, hard work, and innovation.

Peters’ foray into sea scallop aquaculture comes as the future of Maine’s $730 million lobster industry faces serious challenges, including northward lobster migrations due to warming waters and federal regulations of gear related to right whale entanglements. But at the same time, fisheries are diversifying with bivalve and kelp farming, and the economy has been invigorated with an influx of Millennials, including remote workers who permanently fled cities to Maine’s great outdoors and more affordable real estate during the pandemic. Despite wariness about the lobster fishery, there’s a sparkle in Maine’s Blue Economy.

Read the full article at Aquaculture North America

MAINE: Maine lobster industry threatened by loss of eelgrass

March 29, 2023 — A critical marine habitat is rapidly declining off the Maine coast.

It’s happening so fast that experts said it’s been cut in half in only about four years.

Mike Doan, a staff scientist at Friends of Casco Bay, is concerned about the recent loss of eelgrass in Casco Bay.

“Eelgrass is a true flowering perennial, a true plant, not a seaweed,” Doan said. “It’s found just offshore, just below low tide out to about 20 feet of water.”

A 2022 report conducted by the Maine Department of Environmental Protection shows staggering results.

Read the full article at Bangor Daily News