Saving Seafood

MAINE: Maine’s scallop industry is offering fishermen new opportunities at sea

January 13, 2023 — Maine’s fishermen are facing numerous threats from climate change and changing ecosystems, and aquaculture offers a solution. The state’s wild fisheries have become very focused on the lobster industry, but farming sea scallops gives an opportunity to diversify the seafood harvesting business and increase resiliency for coastal communities built around seafood production.

The scallop aquaculture community is unique to Maine and composed of a variety of people and organisations, including fishermen farmers, marine extension programmes, community development financial institutions and research and outreach foundations.

Read the full article at The Fish Site

MAINE: As Maine’s climate continues to change, so does its growing scallop farming industry

January 10, 2023 — When you work on the water in Maine, the cold months make for hit-or-miss days.

For Andrew Peters and his three-person crew, undocking from Buck’s Harbor Marina in Brooksville to tend to their scallops is a year-round venture.

It takes about 45 minutes by boat to get to the scallop farm. Along the way, Peters’ crew counts and cleans small scallops. The ones he was monitoring in in December were about an inch or so and needed another two years to grow to market size.

“All my life I wanted to work on the water and make a living working on the water, and when I was younger, I wanted to be a lobsterman,” Peters said while steering the boat through islets on Penobscot Bay.

Peters, who grew up in New York, said he lived near Portland and worked as a sternman on a lobster boat. He wanted to be a captain himself.

“I’ve been on a waitlist for eight years, and within the last 10 years I’ve realized there are other ways to make a living on the water and one day is to scallop farm,” Peters said.

But when you eat a scallop from Maine, chances are you are eating a wild caught scallop. The harvest of wild scallops happens normally in winter. Scallops also take a long time to grow, sometimes two to three years to reach a marketable size.

Read the full article at News Center Maine

MAINE: And now the work begins

January 9, 2023 — President Joe Biden on December 29 signed into law the $1.7 trillion spending bill that delays new whale rules for six years and allocates about $55 million to develop ropeless fishing gear. That money will also pay for research to figure out where, when and if the endangered Atlantic right whale is in the Gulf of Maine.

The delay comes as a big relief to Maine fishermen. They had been anticipating new rules aimed at reducing the risk to the right whale by 98 percent. Many predicted the end of lobster fishing in Maine, the loss of businesses that depend on the fishery, and the transformation of coastal Maine into a touristy collection of condos and marinas. Some Maine lobstermen have already left fishing.

Once the bill became law, the clock started ticking for lobster fishing groups, Maine’s Department of Marine Resources and congressional delegation staff. They have 180 days to come up with a plan to use real-time whale sightings to trigger temporary protections for the animals, also known as dynamic area management, according to Ginny Olsen, political liaison for the Maine Lobstering Union.

“If there’s a sighting of a whale, [the fishery] will be closed,” Olsen said.

Read the full article at Penobscot Bay Press

MAINE: DMR scientist to address climate change challenges in nearshore waters

January 5, 2022 — The Maine Department of Marine Resources’ (DMR) Public Health Bureau has hired Meredith White, Ph.D., to lead a department program that supports coastal municipalities and harvesters as they confront climate change in Maine’s nearshore waters.

White’s hiring coincides with a recent name change that more accurately reflects the work of what was previously called the Shellfish Management Program and is now called the Nearshore Marine Resources Program.

“This program has evolved over time to include far more than just the management of softshell clams,” said DMR Public Health Bureau Director Kohl Kanwit. “Scientists in this program manage all species of clams, oysters, and mussels as well as other important species including seaweed, marine worms, periwinkles, and whelks. The change in name better encompasses all the existing responsibilities of this program.”

“This new senior scientist position and two supporting scientist positions were created by the administration and legislature to address new and dynamic challenges confronting municipalities and harvesters caused by climate change,” said Kanwit.

Read the full article at Boothbay Register

MAINE: State hires new leader to support communities, shellfish harvesters as they confront climate change

January 5, 2022 — The Maine Department of Marine Resources has hired Meredith White to lead the Nearshore Marine Resources Program, which was formally known as the Shellfish Management Program. The program will support communities and shellfish harvesters as they confront climate change in Maine waters.

White says her first priority will be working with municipalities to help manage soft-shell clams, which are not doing well in many areas.

Read the full article at Maine Public

U of Maine Lobster Study Aims to Protect State’s Vital Fishing Industry

December 28, 2022 — Researchers at the University of Maine are studying how warming Arctic waters flowing into the Gulf of Maine are affecting the region’s lobster population, in an effort to protect both the famous shellfish and the communities that depend on it.

Already, scientists say warming ecosystems have caused a decline in the survival rates of larval lobster and forced some lobster populations to move to colder areas further north.

Richard Wahle, director of the University of Maine Lobster Institute, said what happens in the Arctic unfortunately doesn’t stay there.

“Lobsters are now the elephant in the room,” Wahle emphasized. “And if things turn down for lobster, it’s going to have some really important consequences.”

Read the full article at Public News Service

 

How Maine lobstermen turned a ‘slap in the face’ from the White House into a policy victory

December 23, 2022 — Maine lobstermen who are fighting a federal regulation that threatens to eliminate their state’s lobstering heritage scored a policy victory in the $1.7 trillion spending bill after a White House state dinner put the controversy in the spotlight.

After a push from Maine lawmakers, Congress inserted a provision into the 2023 omnibus spending bill that will temporarily pause a federal rule aimed at protecting the endangered North Atlantic right whale, but that lobstermen said threatened to put family-owned lobster fisheries out of business.

The regulatory battle had been hard fought for several months, but with little national attention. But when President Biden served 200 Maine lobsters at a White House state dinner with French President Emmanuel Macron, that put a spotlight on the controversy that opened the door for Biden’s crippling policy to be curbed, at least for now.

“As a commercial fisherman, I’m glad to see lobster on the menu at the White House,” Dustin Delano, vice president of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association (MLA) told Fox News Digital in an exclusive interview after the White House dinner.

“But as a commercial fisherman, I’m also a bit set back,” Delano said. “It almost seems like a slap in the face like… our industry is not worth saving.”

Just a few weeks after Biden and his VIP guests dined on the New England delicacy, a delegation of Maine lawmakers successfully added a rider into next year’s spending bill that Congress was rushing to pass this week. That language will pause the regulation for six years, giving Congress time to work up a new solution that doesn’t put the lobstermen out of business.

Read the full article at Fox News

Lobster legislation a ‘Christmas miracle’ for Maine’s industry – if it passes

December 22, 2022 — Maine’s congressional delegation has perhaps never been so united as it was in adding a provision to the massive government spending bill that they believe could save the lobster industry from economic ruin.

Lawmakers in Washington are working feverishly this week to pass the omnibus appropriations bill that would fund federal agencies through the next fiscal year. The current stopgap spending measure expires Friday. Maine’s delegation succeeded in adding a rider to the bill that would protect Maine lobstermen for six years from federal regulations they claim could decimate the state’s iconic industry and coastal economy. Environmental groups, however, contend the provision announced Tuesday could wipe out the endangered North Atlantic right whales.

The rider would essentially reverse a federal court decision this summer on new lobstering regulations by preventing them from taking effect until Dec. 31, 2028.

This would not only bring the fishery back into compliance with environmental laws but would also give fishery officials and researchers time to study potential new types of lobster gear less likely to entangle the whales, and to learn more about them and how much they frequent Maine waters.

Read the full article at the Press Herald