May 4, 2022 — Beginning Sunday, new laws are in place requiring Maine’s lobster fishermen to use new fishing gear to protect the endangered right whale.
The new laws include thinner rope and an insert link in their fishing lines, but getting these new links has been a challenge.
A supply chain shortage is keeping fishermen from being able to use it.
Read the full story at WFVX Bangor
May 3, 2022 — American Aquafarms has purchased a former sardine cannery in Gouldsboro, indicating the company will likely continue to pursue a salmon farm in Frenchman Bay after being dealt a major permitting setback last month.
The sale of the Maine Fair Trade Lobster plant from East Coast Seafood to American Aquafarms closed Friday, according to East Coast Seafood CEO Bob Blais. American Aquafarms has said that it plans to use the 11-acre property in the village of Prospect Harbor for a hatchery and processing facility.
Thomas Brennan, American Aquafarms director of project development, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday. On Friday, he said knew the company was heading in the direction of a sale, but didn’t have a firm closing date.
“It’s going to happen,” Brennan said. “It’s just a question of when.”
May 3, 2022 — The owner of hydroelectric dams in Maine said Monday it’s going to make changes to some of its operations to try to help save the final remaining wild Atlantic salmon in the United States.
The country’s last wild populations of the fish are found in a few Maine rivers. Salmon counters found fewer of the fish on one of those rivers, the Penobscot, last year than in any year since 2016.
Brookfield Renewable U.S. said Monday that it has begun shutdown procedures for dams on the lower Kennebec River to help the salmon migrate. The company is a subsidiary of a larger Canadian company that owns many dams in Maine.
May 3, 2022 — Maine’s commercial fishing industry set a new record last year, with a historic haul valued at more than $980 million, according to newly released data.
Figures from the state Department of Marine Resources show the value of fish landings jumped by more than $350 million between 2020 and 2021, breaking a previous record.
By far, lobster landings were the most valuable commercial fishery in Maine last year, with more than $730 million in landed value at an average wholesale price of $6.71 per-pound, according to the state agency. Lobsters were followed by soft shell clams, which were the second-most valuable species, with harvesters reporting more than $25 million in sales.
Elver fishermen reported more than $16 million in landings, making it the third most valuable fishery last year, the agency said. The elver fishery grew from $525 to $1,831 per pound between 2020 and 2021, according to the landings data.
May 2, 2022 — Doug McLennan looks out his window in South Thomaston every morning at the traps and boats in his yard and worries about the future of lobster fishing in Maine.
McLennan’s wife, Laura, is his sternman. His two sons, who have homes on either side of his driveway, are lobster fishermen, too. His great-grandfather was the legendary “Tall Barney Beal” of Jonesport, a Grand Banks fisherman and the 6-foot-6 descendent of the original settler of Beals Island, known for his incredible strength.
McLennan isn’t worried about the state of the fishery. Despite a dip in landings last year, more than 100 million pounds of lobster were hauled and their value broke records. Also, Maine’s lobstermen have a reputation for sustainable practices that preserve the stock for future generations, he said.
What worries McLennan and thousands of other Maine lobstermen is the latest round of federal regulations designed to protect the endangered North Atlantic right whale, and additional measures being planned for the next decade. The newest regulations took effect Sunday, though their enforcement has been delayed until supply chain issues for some of the required gear are resolved.
This is just the latest in gear regulation change required by the Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Plan, which was put in place in 1997 and has been amended several times since. The current changes comprise the first phase of a 10-year conservation plan to reduce the risk of right whale entanglements in fishing gear by 98 percent.
Many lobstermen have raised concerns about safety and the potential for gear failure and loss of expensive traps under the new rules, and they worry about what is coming next.
May 2, 2022 — Officials who oversee fishing in the Gulf of Maine and the entire East Coast are taking a hard look at how fishery regulations will need to evolve in order to keep up with the accelerated and unpredictable changes wrought by climate change.
Fishery managers from organizations across the eastern seaboard are brainstorming scenarios they could face in the coming decades as water temperatures rise, fish stocks fluctuate and species push into new areas.
Several fishery experts said they’ll likely have to reimagine how management has worked in the past.
“I think people are recognizing that small little tweaks and band aids might not be what we need here,” said Deirdre Boelke, a fishery analyst at the New England Fishery Management Council and one of the leaders working on the scenario planning effort.
Even before the effects of climate change were more widely known, fisheries management had a reputation for being complex and cumbersome. There are various layers of governance, with councils and managers making decisions at the state, regional, coastwide and national levels.
“To say that it’s a glacial process is putting it kindly,” said Gib Brogan, a fisheries analyst at Oceana, an international conservation group.
Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News
April 28, 2022 — American Aquafarms’ plan to raise 66 million Atlantic salmon in Frenchman Bay seems to be dead in the water. But the broad citizens’ coalition, which swelled to include all seven Frenchman Bay towns, the Downeast lobster fishery, Acadia National Park, MDI Biological Laboratory and several land trusts, has kept a steady spotlight trained on the issue for a year and is very much alive.
In fact, Frenchman Bay United is prepared to challenge industrial-scale fish farming in Maine coastal waters in light of the departments of Marine Resources and Environmental Protection’s decisions late last week to terminate the Norwegian-backed company’s project that would have involved discharging 4.1 billion gallons of diluted wastewater into the 14-mile bay.
For over a year Frenchman Bay United, a coast-wide coalition of four groups, has led an aggressive public campaign to oppose American Aquafarms’ proposed operation to farm salmon at 15-pen sites off Bald Rock Ledge and Long Porcupine Island. Its members offered scientific data suggesting the farm’s discharged wastewater would largely remain rather than exit Frenchman Bay and potentially harm fragile marine plants, ecosystems and the lobster, shrimp and scallop fisheries. They staged a 125-boat flotilla of lobster-fishing boats, kayakers and sailors last August in Frenchman Bay as a form of protest and other events to draw attention to the controversial project first proposed in mid-fall of 2020.
April 26, 2022 — The summit of Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park in the northeastern U.S. state of Maine offers sweeping, unobstructed views of Frenchman Bay. Surrounded by islands and rocky shorelines, the bay is known throughout Maine for recreation and resources. But new projects may lie over the horizon. American Aquafarms, backed by Norwegian investors, planned to build the largest salmon farm in North America here, just on the edge of Acadia National Park. And lobstermen, like Jerry Potter, say they feared that if the project went through, the pristine waters of Frenchman Bay would never be the same.
“It’s going to ruin the ecosystem of the bay and ruin all the resources … mussels, shrimp, lobsters, crabs, everything,” said Potter, 76, from the nearby town of Gouldsboro.
American Aquafarms first proposed the salmon farm in 2020, in hopes that they would produce 30 million metric tons of salmon each year. The farm would also curb the U.S. reliance on imported seafood, according to Tom Brennan, the director of project management at American Aquafarms. The US currently imports 70-85% of its seafood, about half of which is produced through aquaculture.
But the massive project is now indefinitely delayed. On April 19, 2022, state officials terminated American Aquafarm’s application, citing that American Aquafarms failed to provide documentation that the egg source proposed to stock the pens would meet state requirements. In Maine, genetically modified fish cannot be used to stock salmon pens, however American Aquafarms proposed to work with the company that created the first genetically modified Atlantic salmon.
Brennan is shocked by the decision, stating that the company also included eggs from the USDA as a backup plan in the proposal. That facility was established to provide eggs to salmon growers in Maine, he adds.
April 26, 2022 — The season for baby eels known as elvers is close to winding down, with dealers buying more than 9,200 pounds valued at an average price per pound of $2,161.
The Maine Department of Marine Resources, which released the harvest numbers, said the price per-pound was a 20% increase over last year, when elvers sold for $1,800 a pound.
The average per pound value this year has also exceeded $2,000 per pound for only the fourth time in the history of the fishery, the Department of Marine Resources said.
Most of the elvers are sold to Asian aquaculture companies, which use them as seed stock so they can raise the eels to maturity. They’ll eventually be used in Japanese dishes and some will return to the United States for use in sushi restaurants.
Read the full story at Mainebiz
April 25, 2022 — Local researchers are studying why North Atlantic right whales are migrating out of our area into more northern waters in Canada.
Some believe rapidly warming waters in the Gulf of Maine could be playing a role, but they’re just not sure how.
The North Atlantic right whale is one of the most critically endangered animals on the planet.
Researchers from the New England Aquarium are studying these majestic creatures and they think some of the answers might lie in their poop.
Dr. Elizabeth Burgess is a research scientist with the aquarium that studies hormone changes in right whales. Unfortunately, the easiest way to collect hormones is through their feces.
“So nutritional stress is of really great concern for this species, as is the reproductive viability as well. So all of these things we can, we’re using hormones to better understand what’s happening,” said Burgess.