Saving Seafood

Lobster price drops add pressure on an already strained industry

July 26, 2022 — After over a year of historically high prices that netted the lobster industry national attention – and articles questioning whether consumers could stomach $34.00 for a lobster roll – the wharf price for the species has reportedly dropped all the way back down to “normal” levels and even beyond.

The price lobstermen were getting at the dock in 2021 was historically high, with fishermen in Maine getting roughly $8.00 per pound and Canadian lobstermen in Newfoundland getting as much as $10.14 per pound, according to the Fish Food and Allied Workers Union.

Now, fishermen in Maine are reporting they are getting as little as half the price of what they received last year – and in some cases even less than that. Despite the precipitous drop, that price is still within the norm: Fishermen in Maine, according to statistics compiled by the Maine Department of Marine Resources, got on average $4.05 per pound for the entire year in 2018, which comes out to around $4.78 when adjusted for inflation.

The pricing pressures are compounded by the ongoing struggle over right whale regulations. New NOAA regulations changed the requirements for fishermen and instituted a ban area, but a new court ruling found that even that hasn’t gone far enough to bring the fishery into compliance with the Endangered Species Act.

In the end, the lobster industry in the U.S. state of Maine is largely decentralized, making each situation different from fisherman to fisherman. The Maine Lobster Marketing Collaborative told SeafoodSource that lobstermen acknowledge the price is largely out of their control.

Read the full article at The National Fisherman

Fisheries groups oppose fast tracking offshore wind development in Gulf of Maine

July 21, 2022 — The health of the ocean is at stake, according to fishing industry advocates who oppose offshore wind development.

A report on the threats posed to commercial fishing was released after an offshore wind conference held in Boston in May.

The Partnership’s Vice President and Executive Director Angela Sanfilippo said her organization is concerned about the health of the ocean, the health of the fish stock, and the health of the industry. She calls plans for fast-tracking wind developments a threat to all three.

Read the full article at Cape Cod Times

MAINE: Volunteers recover nearly 5,000 pounds of trash from Gulf of Maine

July 20, 2022 — A nonprofit conservation group that works to help remove trash and plastic debris from the world’s oceans along with volunteers from Maine’s coastal communities recently recovered nearly 5,000 pounds of what is known as “ghost gear” from the Gulf of Maine.

The group of local volunteers in collaboration with Ocean Conservancy and the Rozalia Project were able to collect a total of 4,723 pounds of discarded gear and other marine debris from remote islands in the Gulf of Maine during an expedition at the end of June.

Read the full article at Bangor Daily News

Council Approves HAPC for Southern New England; Previews Northeast Regional Habitat Assessment Data Explorer

July 18, 2022 — The following was released by the New England Fishery Management Council:

The New England Fishery Management Council voted in late June to establish a new Habitat Area of Particular Concern (HAPC) that overlaps offshore wind-energy lease sites in Southern New England and includes a 10-kilometer buffer on all sides of the sites (see map below).

The Council selected this area to highlight its concerns over potential adverse impacts from offshore wind development on: (1) sensitive hard-bottom habitats; and (2) cod spawning activity. If approved by NOAA Fisheries, the HAPC designation would be applied during the essential fish habitat (EFH) consultation process for offshore wind projects in the area. Some projects are already permitted, while others are currently undergoing environmental review or are within the site assessment phase.

HAPCs are a subset of EFH. The proposed Southern New England HAPC overlaps designated EFH for several Council-managed species that rely on complex habitats. Furthermore, there has been recent evidence of cod spawning activity on Cox Ledge within the proposed HAPC. The boundaries cover the footprint of the wind-energy leases plus a buffer on all sides, recognizing that some aspects of offshore development may have impacts that extend out to at least 10 kilometers, such as acoustic impacts from pile driving.

The Council reviewed four other HAPC alternatives before selecting this fifth option, which combines the conservation objectives of the other alternatives and emphasizes the importance of complex habitat on the egg, juvenile, and adult life stages of species ranging from herring and scallops to monkfish, skates, winter flounder, and red hake in addition to cod. The Council initiated the framework for this HAPC in February 2022, postponed action in April pending further development, and took final action in June. View the latest HAPC presentation and other June meeting materials here.

Read the full release here

Court ruling again highlights need for better data about how lobster fishing impacts right whales

July 15, 2022 — A federal judge ruled last week that federal fisheries regulators are not doing enough to protect North Atlantic right whales, an endangered species, from fishing gear used by New England’s lobster and crab fisheries.

The ruling – and the changes that it might compel – are another blow to Maine’s lobster industry. But, more, it is a condemnation of the National Marine Fisheries Services plans to protect the whales, which are thought to number less than 400. The judge, James Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, blasted the agency for approving a plan last year that allowed for continuing entanglements of whales in lobster and crab gear while gear changes were implemented to reduce these entanglements. For example, the plan allowed 2.6 entanglements in lobster and crab gear that could cause death or serious injury to right whales each year through 2025, although NMFS calculated that only 0.8 entanglements should be allowed in federal waters to preserve the whale population.

At the same time, we’d encourage the lobster industry to move beyond messages that emphasize fighting regulations to highlight some of the many changes they have already made to reduce the threat to right whales. For example, many lobstermen in Maine are in the midst of replacing their trap lines with lines that will break away if hit by a whale. They are also marking their gear to better identify if rope from Maine is entangling right whales.

Judge Boasberg acknowledged this work, but essentially warned that it might not be enough. In his opinion, which is littered with marine metaphors, he also recognized the harm that more stringent restrictions could have on the lobster industry. That, he wrote, is why he asked the parties to work together to come up with more protective solutions.

As years of negotiations, rule changes and lawsuits have shown, this is no easy task. But, it is better than having draconian measures imposed by a court.

Read the full article at Bangor Daily News

Drops in lobster price another pressure on strained industry, symptom of wider trends

July 15, 2022 — After over a year of historically high prices that netted the lobster industry national attention – and articles questioning whether consumers could stomach USD 34.00 (EUR 33.78) for a lobster roll – the wharf price for the species has reportedly dropped all the way back down to “normal” levels and even beyond.

The price lobstermen were getting at the dock in 2021 was historically high, with fishermen in Maine getting roughly USD 8.00 (EUR 7.94) per pound and Canadian lobstermen in Newfoundland getting as much as USD 10.14 (EUR 10.07) per pound, according to the Fish Food and Allied Workers Union.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

These fish are critical to New England, and they’re disappearing

July 14, 2022 — Hutchins, a habitat restoration biologist with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, lives and works on Cape Ann. Along with a small group of volunteers, he monitors the baby eels migrating upstream at Mill Brook between spring and fall. In a year, sometimes they’ll document well over a thousand elvers.

Half a century ago, fishermen harvested millions of pounds of American eels annually up and down the Atlantic Coast. By 2013, however, researchers estimated the population had dropped by half.

Experts suspect overfishing and coastal development have played a role in the decline, along with eutrophication — when nutrients from sewage and fertilizers choke the oxygen from ponds and streams.

Another fish fundamental to fresh and saltwater ecology is the river herring.

Alewives and bluebacks are migratory herring that range along the East Coast from Florida to Maine. Whereas eels are born in the ocean but live in freshwater, river herring live in coastal waters and only venture inland to spawn.

As with eel, river herring populations began to crash in the 1980s, coinciding with advances in commercial fishing techniques and new construction along the coast.

Massachusetts is home to about 3,000 dams, with many built in the 19th century for water power, reservoirs, or flood control.

“A dam in a river is like a blocked artery; it’s like a heart attack,” said Robert Kearns, a climate resiliency specialist at the Charles River Watershed Association. “It degrades the water quality behind it; reduces the dissolved oxygen which fish rely on to breathe and to live … and creates a habitat that’s better for invasive species.”

Beyond commercial fishing, a report by the American Sportfishing Association found saltwater sport fishing generates over $500 million dollars a year in sales, wages, and taxes in Massachusetts.

But amid the reality of human-made climate change, the future of the herring and the eels, on which so much depends, remains very much in question.

Read the full story at WBUR

MAINE: Maine politicians blast ‘unfair’ court decision targeting lobster gear

July 14, 2022 — A federal circuit court has reinstated a ban on lobster fishing gear in a nearly 1,000-square-mile area off New England to try to protect endangered whales.

The National Marine Fisheries Service issued new regulations last year that prohibited lobster fishing with vertical buoy lines in part of the fall and winter in the area, which is in federal waters off Maine’s coast. The ruling was intended to prevent North Atlantic right whales, which number less than 340, from becoming entangled in the lines.

The circuit court sent the case back to the district court level, but noted in its ruling that it does not think the lobster fishing groups that sued to stop the regulations are likely to succeed because Congress has clearly instructed the fisheries service to protect the whales.

Commercial fishing groups have filed lawsuits about new rules designed to protect the whales because of concerns that the regulations will make it impossible to sustain the lobster fishing industry. The industry, based mostly in Maine, is one of the most valuable in the U.S., worth more than $500 million at the docks in 2020, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Conservation groups have called for tighter laws. Tuesday’s ruling is “a lifesaving decision for these beautiful, vulnerable whales,” said Kristen Monsell, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity who argued the case at the circuit court.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

Judge says NMFS right whale plan still not enough

July 11, 2022 — The latest rules to reduce right whale deaths from lobster and crab gear still don’t go far enough in reducing potential mortality, according to a federal judge who has called for a new hearing to decide on remedies.

In an opinion issued Friday in Washington, D.C., U.S. District Court Judge James E. Boasberg ruled in favor of a key complaint from environmental groups who want the National Marine Fisheries Service to do more to reduce whale entanglements with vertical lines used in East Coast trap fisheries.

Now an extremely endangered species – with a population that plunged from around 481 animals in 2011 to an estimated 345 – the north Atlantic right whale is at risk from ship strikes and fishing gear entanglement. The gear issue has been subject to litigation in Boasberg’s court since 2018.

A new complaint brought by the Center for Biological Diversity, Conservation Law Foundation and Defenders of Wildlife alleged that NMFS’ own projections show that the right whale population would still lose animals to gear entanglement at a rate that would continue the path to extinction.

The plaintiff environmental groups, who have long pushed for more dramatic action from the government, praised Boasberg’s latest opinion.

The Maine Lobstermen’s Association – named as a defendant along with the Department of Commerce and NMFS – called the ruling “a mixed bag” and took heart in Boasberg’s intention to seek remedies short of shutting the fishery.

The lobstermen’s association also noted the judge’s acknowledgement that NMFS could find “that projected take [of endangered whales] is in fact lower than originally estimated.”

Read the full story National Fisherman

Weak protection for vanishing whales violates law, judge says

July 11, 2022 — The federal government hasn’t done enough to protect a rare species of whale from lethal entanglement in lobster fishing gear, and new rules are needed to protect the species from extinction, a judge has ruled.

The government has violated both the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act by failing to protect the North Atlantic right whale, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ruled on Friday. The whales number less than 340 in the world and have been declining rapidly in population in recent years.

The ruling came after a group of environmental organizations sued the federal government with a complaint that it wasn’t doing enough to save whales from lobster gear. Boasberg’s ruling validates that claim, said Kristen Monsell, an attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the groups that sued.

The Maine Lobstermen’s Association, the largest fishing trade group on the East Coast, said in a statement that it was still reviewing the ruling. The association also pointed to a section of Boasberg’s ruling that said the National Marine Fisheries Service “may find that other measures exist to reduce lethal take, or that projected take is in fact lower than originally estimated.” That renders the ruling “a mixed bag,” the association said.

The whales were once numerous, but they were decimated during the commercial whaling era. Some scientists have said warming ocean temperatures are causing them to stray from protected areas in search of food, and that has left them more vulnerable to collisions and entanglement.

Read the full story at Associated Press