September 19, 2022 — Jed Miller can be found selling lobsters out of his old red pickup truck on Main Street in Thomaston most weekdays.
He told NEWS CENTER Maine business is booming later in the summer, and he normally has people calling ahead to buy lobsters from his truck.
“I cut out the middle man,” he said. “I am able to give the consumer a better price, and I’m able to get more at the docks because I go directly from my boat and sell them.”
September 19, 2022 — Every few months, news outlets around the country pick up stories about Maine fishermen hauling in extremely rare blue, yellow, white or even bi-colored lobster.
Just as rare here is the anti-lobster politician, although recent campaign rhetoric would have you believe they’re in our midst and working to undercut a signature industry facing regulatory and political threats. And that’s led politicians running for reelection this year to redouble their stated loyalty to lobster.
“Like everyone in the state of Maine, like all four members of the congressional delegation, I am livid at this unwise decision,” Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat, said last week in denouncing the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s “red listing” of Maine lobster on its influential Seafood Watch list.
Echoing Sen. Angus King’s dismissal of the aquarium as a “fish zoo,” Mills said the designation wouldn’t protect endangered North Atlantic right whales but would merely “insult thousands of hardworking lobstermen who risk their lives to put food on the table and practice responsible stewardship.”
Like coal in West Virginia or corn in Iowa, the lobster industry is an economic and political powerhouse in Maine.
Although there are only about 6,000 licensed commercial lobstermen in Maine, the $725 million worth of crustaceans they pulled in last year make theirs the most valuable single fishery in the nation. Factor in the estimated $1 billion spent on bait and gear, plus the countless lobster rolls and dinners served up by the state’s $3 billion restaurant industry, and the industry’s economic impact quickly adds up.
So it’s not surprising that Maine’s elected leaders would rush to the defense of the industry while blaming ship strikes and lesser-regulated Canadian fisheries for the recent spate of whale deaths. Biologists and whale advocates have, in response, often felt ignored in Maine. They point out that only a fraction of the rope and gear found wrapped around or embedded in whales can be traced back to any specific fishery.
But the industry is bracing for additional restrictions. And Republicans, sensing a political liability across the aisle, have been accusing Mills and other Democrats of undermining lobstermen.
“Maine Democrats, including Janet Mills, took dirty anti-lobster campaign contributions and support — and now they’re crying crocodile tears,” Jason Savage, executive director of the Maine GOP, said in a statement last week. “The Democrats’ lefty environmental groups are the only reason our iconic lobster industry is in this mess. The anti-lobster crowd spent more than $1 million getting Janet Mills elected in 2018, and she has never disavowed their support or returned any money.”
A little context could be useful here.
Those “lefty environmental groups” include Maine Conservation Voters and the national League of Conservation Voters that helps fund the state affiliate. MCV endorsed Mills in 2018 and helped raise money for her campaign.
But it’s a major stretch to describe those groups, and particularly Maine Conservation Voters, as “anti-lobster” given their focus on a broad range of environmental issues. MCV, for instance, has not supported the additional restrictions on lobstermen and has not included votes on any lobster-related bills in their annual legislative “scorecards” of state lawmakers during the past decade. In fact, the group is a vocal advocate for funding the Land for Maine’s Future program, which has protected more than two dozen commercial working waterfront sites used by the fishing industry.
September 19, 2022 — Maine’s Department of Marine Resources Patrick Keliher issued the following summary of the state’s lobster industry, and the various factors bearing down on it this year.
As I have promised before, I want to make sure you are as informed as possible as the situation around right whales evolves. There have been several developments in the last week, many of which speak to the seriousness of the situation. My goal is to keep you informed and to ensure that you have the information necessary to engage in important upcoming conversations.
Maine Lobstermen’s Association V. National Marine Fisheries Service
As you know, DMR is a participant in the lawsuit filed by MLA which asserts that the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) erred by failing to rely on the best scientific information in the Biological Opinion (Bi-Op) released in May 2021 and failed to account for the positive impact from conservation measures previously adopted by the Maine lobster fishery.
Unfortunately, on September 8, Judge Boasberg sided with NMFS and ruled that NMFS reasonably explained how it estimated right whale populations, NMFS appropriately assessed what was the best available information, and NMFS met the requirements under the Administrative Procedures Act. While this does not preclude NMFS from considering the arguments made by the MLA, DMR and others in the future and choosing to take a less conservative approach to a revised BiOp and rule, the judge will not force NMFS to do so.
I am extremely disappointed by this decision, and I continue to believe that the assumptions NMFS made in the Bi-Op overstate the risk in the Maine lobster fishery. We are evaluating our options at this time, but I can confirm that after consulting with Governor Mills, to leave all our options open, we have directed our legal team to file a Notice of Intent to appeal.
September 19, 2022 — Togue Brawn sits on cobblestones between two piers, preparing a makeshift picnic on top of a block of granite as dozens of seagulls watch unblinkingly from surrounding rooftops. She unpacks jars of salt and achar and olive oil and, finally, the meal’s centerpiece: a plastic to-go container full of raw scallops, hauled out of the ocean only yesterday.
Brawn slices each plump, ivory-colored cylinder into thinner disks she lays on a platter. “The texture is what you should really notice, and the flavor is good and not fishy,” she says, then a confession: “I am obsessed with scallops.” She wants everyone else to be obsessed with scallops, too. And since the pandemic caused a swell of enthusiasm for mail-ordered foodstuffs — including Brawn’s scallops — that time may well be nigh.
Twelve years ago, Brawn started her company, Downeast Dayboat, to introduce dayboat-harvested Maine scallops to the masses. Brawn buys from small boats that often drag the bottoms of inshore crags along the Gulf of Maine and land their bounty a few hours later — as opposed to the bulk of sea scallops eaten in the U.S., which are often sourced from large trip boats that work federally managed offshore waters three or more miles off the Atlantic coast from Massachusetts to Virginia, staying at sea for a week or more (overall, Maine lands less than 2 percent of U.S. sea scallops). Because of the challenges and expense of quickly shipping out her fresh dayboat scallops, comparatively few people outside of Maine have gotten to sample Brawn’s.
September 16, 2022 — Earlier this month, Seafood Watch, an influential seafood sustainability list published by the Monterey Bay Aquarium, changed the designation of lobster from Atlantic communities to avoid. The organization indicated that fishery management isn’t going far enough to protect the endangered right whale. Maine’s lobstermen, seafood dealers and politicians have been up in arms about the recommendation ever since.
Read on to see what the “red-list” rating really means, and how lobster ended up on the avoid list.
The Seafood Watch list reviews fisheries and aquaculture operations to determine environmental sustainability. After those reviews, the organization divides fisheries into three different categories: best choice, good alternative and avoid. The list is used by some restaurants, seafood buyers and other companies as a guide for what seafood they should be stocking.
“Best choice” fisheries are ones that Seafood Watch has determined are well managed and caught responsibly. “Good alternative,” a category the U.S. and Canadian lobster fisheries were previously under, are good buys, but there are some lingering concerns.
The “avoid” category is a designation that Seafood Watch uses to advise customers to “take a pass” on, either because they are overfished, lack strong management practices or are caught in ways that harm other marine life.
Lobster has been downgraded to “avoid,” according to Seafood Watch, because the fishery has not dealt with its risks to the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale. In July, a federal court judge, for the second time in recent years, deemed that the federal management of the U.S. lobster fishery is not in compliance with the Endangered Species Act, forcing regulators to come up with new ways to reduce the chances the fishing lines have in hurting whales.
Seafood Watch is a program created and run by the Monterey Bay Aquarium that has been around for 20 years.
September 15, 2022 — Maine Gov. Janet Mills is seeking to delay new federal whale protection rules, citing fears the state’s commercial lobstermen won’t be able to comply.
In a letter to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, Mills urges federal fisheries regulators to extend the period for collecting public comment on the new regulations, which are aimed at protecting critically endangered north Atlantic right whales by setting a seasonal closure and requiring modifications to gear.
Mills said she believes it is “unconscionable” that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration only plans to hold one remote public hearing on the new regulations, which call for reducing by 90% the number of Atlantic Coast fixed gear fisheries, including lobster industry.
September 15, 2022 — A fishing vessel that sank in New England, resulting in the loss of all four fishermen, likely capsized because of poor drainage of seawater from the rear deck and hatches that weren’t watertight, investigators said.
The National Transportation Safety Board called Tuesday for stepped up inspections and renewed its call for personal locator beacons for each crew member. The agency first made that recommendation after the loss of the cargo vessel El Faro and 33 sailors in 2015.
NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy urged fishing boat operators to purchase the individual radio beacons for crew members.
The tragedy unfolded as the Portland-based Emmy Rose was headed to Gloucester, Massachusetts, to offload an estimated 45,000 pounds of fish in November 2020.
A crew member told his girlfriend in a phone call that it was the 82-foot vessel’s biggest catch, and she told investigators that she heard ebullient crewmembers laughing and enjoying themselves in the background.
September 15, 2022 — Maine fishermen say they need a bigger piece of the East Coast menhaden fishery because the fish have become the primary source of lobster bait.
More than 75 people attended a hearing in Augusta on Tuesday night about proposed changes to state quotas for the fish, also known as pogies.
Attendees at the meeting said they wanted a larger quota because the fish have become plentiful in Maine over recent years. The menhaden population rises and falls in roughly 20-year cycles, and landings data show the number of fish has been on an upswing since 2016. Menhaden are often seen breaking the surface as they flip and jostle in thick schools, even close to shore.
Maine fishermen are currently allotted 0.52 percent of the total catch allowed across all Atlantic states. About 78 percent of the catch goes to Virginia, home to the Eastern seaboard’s only plant for producing fish oil from menhaden. The next-highest allocation goes to New Jersey, at 10 percent.
The Virginia plant makes fish oil used in animal feed, as well as omega-3 supplements for human consumption, and is operated by Omega Protein, a subsidiary of Cooke Aquaculture of New Brunswick, Canada. Cooke also owns salmon aquaculture farms, including in Maine. Omega Protein uses an average of 309 million pounds of menhaden per year, almost three times the amount that is used for bait.
In Maine, the fish have been widely used as bait in lobster traps, replacing herring after that fishery collapsed and catches were drastically limited.
“The New England lobster fishery relies solely on menhaden now, basically,” said lobster fisherman Dustin Delano, of Friendship. “Herring’s gone. We need to be able to catch everything we can. We need as much quota as we can get. You’ve got 15 or 16 states that are fighting for crumbs here while two states are taking it all.”
September 14, 2022 — Many tourists visiting coastal Maine may at some point purchase a lobster roll, with big chunks of lobster meat, a dash of mayo and a bag of potato chips on the side. But as summers become hotter and sea temperatures rise in the Gulf of Maine, there’s concern that warmer waters will cause the cold water crustacean to move elsewhere, making it harder to satisfy lobster cravings for the region’s tourists.
The Gulf of Maine has been a hotspot for ocean warming, increasing at a rate of 0.8 degrees Fahrenheit each decade in the last 40 years — about three times the global average. At higher water temperatures, lobsters hit what is known as a “stress threshold,” where they become more vulnerable to disease and less likely to reproduce.
But at least in recent years, it seems, the lobster — and some locals who depend on them for their livelihoods — have found success even as their future in warming ocean waters is more uncertain.
September 14, 2022 — Gov. Janet Mills and members of Maine’s congressional delegation are raising concerns about the pace of federal efforts to prevent whale entanglements and whether Maine’s lobster industry will have a chance to provide input on potential changes.
In a letter sent Tuesday to U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, Mills accused the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of moving at a “breakneck pace” as it develops new plans to reduce the risks of whale entanglements in fishing gear. Mills also strongly criticized the agency for scheduling only a single webinar to gather feedback from the fishing community and other stakeholders as well as for suggesting that state officials hold additional scoping sessions on the potential federal changes.
“It is unconscionable for NOAA to only hold a single public hearing and a virtual meeting at that,” Mills wrote. “As NOAA well knows, effectively reaching an audience of fishermen with challenging schedules absolutely requires in-person meetings and opportunities for comment.” Instead, Mills is calling on the agency to hold multiple meetings in Maine so that NOAA staff can meet in-person with fishermen.