May 19, 2025 — As the Trump administration continues to reshape federal policy, a recent executive order targeting the U.S. fishing industry is making waves along Maine’s coast.
The order, which seeks to ease regulations and promote domestic seafood production, is drawing both support and concern from those closely tied to the industry.
May 14, 2025 — If you have ever experienced an alewife migration, you know it is a true Maine experience that you must see to believe. As temperatures warm in Maine, alewives are beginning their remarkable migration into the Gulf of Maine. These small but mighty fish face new challenges as climate patterns shift.
“I love alewives, I think they are the most important fish in the sea and the river and the lake,” says Zach Whitener, Research Associate at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute. “When you see them scurrying up their brooks, they’ll swim on their side through half an inch of water. They are such determined to get where they want to go.”
Alewives join several species including blueback herring, American shad, and Atlantic salmon that migrate from ocean to freshwater. “These are anadromous fish, which means they live in the ocean as adults, but they spawn in freshwater,” Whitener explains. “In freshwater, the fish don’t have much competition as juveniles.”
After feeding in the ocean for three to four years, these fish return to their birthplace to spawn in the same lakes where they were hatched.
The Gulf of Maine serves as a “grocery store for most of the North Atlantic,” but climate change is creating complex challenges for migrating fish.
May 12, 2025 — Maine lobstermen once held more than 7,000 commercial licenses, but now about half many actively fish for Maine’s most valuable catch.
The decline has occurred since the late 1990s as Maine’s commercial fishing industry, which is dominated by lobstermen, faces increasing challenges in the form of climate change, increased regulation and competition for space in the Gulf of Maine.
While the drop has been gradual, its effects could be far-reaching, given lobstermen’s central role in Maine’s coastal economy and their political might in both Augusta and Washington D.C.
On the local level, declining numbers of lobstermen could take away a key economic support for Maine towns and businesses that rely on the fishery.
May 11, 2025 — Virginia Olsen has pulled lobsters from Maine’s chilly Atlantic waters for decades while watching threats to the state’s lifeblood industry mount.
Trade imbalances with Canada, tight regulations on fisheries and offshore wind farms towering like skyscrapers on open water pose three of those threats, said Olsen, part of the fifth generation in her family to make a living in the lobster trade.
That’s why she was encouraged last month when President Donald Trump signed an executive order that promises to restore American fisheries to their former glory. The order promises to shred fishing regulations, and Olsen said that will allow fishermen to do what they do best — fish.
That will make a huge difference in communities like her home of Stonington, the busiest lobster fishing port in the country, Olsen said. It’s a tiny island town of winding streets, swooping gulls and mansard roof houses with an economy almost entirely dependent on commercial fishing, some three hours up the coast from Portland, Maine’s biggest city.
Olsen knows firsthand how much has changed over the years. Hundreds of fish and shellfish populations globally have dwindled to dangerously low levels, alarming scientists and prompting the restrictions and catch limits that Trump’s order could wash away with the stroke of a pen. But she’s heartened that the livelihoods of people who work the traps and cast the nets have become a priority in faraway places where they often felt their voices weren’t heard.
Read the full story from the Associated Press at ABC News
May 8, 2025 — As part of the Trump’s administration’s effort to expand fossil fuel production in the United States, the Department of the Interior announced recently that it would accelerate the permitting process for a range of energy sources and seek new oil and gas lease sales in offshore waters, including in the Gulf of Maine.
Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum said the permitting changes — which speed up review under the National Environmental Policy and Endangered Species Acts, among others — would cut what is often a multi-year review process down to several weeks.
Environmental groups and Maine lawmakers decried the moves while oil and gas industry representatives celebrated them. Days later, a group of New England Senators, including Sens. Susan Collins and Angus King, introduced legislation to ban offshore drilling in waters throughout New England.
“The waters off Maine’s coast provide a healthy ecosystem for our fisheries and are an integral part of our tourism industry, supporting thousands of jobs and generating billions of dollars in revenue each year,” said Collins in a statement. “Offshore drilling along the coast could impact Mainers of all walks of life for generations.”
May 2, 2025 — For more than a decade, the sweet, pink Maine shrimp has been little more than a memory for fishermen and seafood lovers alike. Once a staple of a winter fishery, the northern shrimp has vanished from docks and dinner tables across New England, its fishery shut down due to warming waters and dwindling biomass.
This winter, there was hope-tempered but real that the tides might shift in favor of Maine shrimpers. A limited test fishery allowed seven veteran Maine fishermen to haul small catches in the name of science, raising spirits along the state’s coast. Still, the results were disappointing, and the waiting game continues.
Gary Libby, a commercial fisherman in Port Clyde, Maine, was among those hopeful for better news. Libby, who began fishing at the age of 18 and now chairs a regulatory shrimp advisory panel, told Marketplace reporter Caroline Losneck he’s long advocated for more comprehensive, year-round sampling to better understand the species’ health. But with little sign of recovery, Libby has shifted his winter focus to maintaining gear for other fisheries.
“This is what I do in the winter when I’m not fishing: try to keep my gear in good shape,” Libby told Losneck, speaking from his workshop.
The shrimp fishery, once an economic cushion during winter’s leaner fishing months, officially closed 11 years ago. Libby recalled pulling 1,000 pounds of shrimp daily during the 1980s and 1990s. By the early 2000s, he was landing 5,000 to 6,000 pounds a day, and all at a going rate of just 50 cents per pound.
May 1, 2025 — The Trump administration is developing an offshore oil and gas leasing plan that could include waters in the Gulf of Maine.
The Natural Resources Council of Maine warns there are no economically recoverable fossil fuels in the region and that drilling risks environmental and economic harm.
“Offshore oil and gas exploration would directly threaten our marine ecosystems, risk devastation to our vibrant tourist economy, and harm our heritage fishing industry,” the council’s climate and clean energy director Jack Shapiro said in a statement.
The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management this month opened public comment on developing a new five-year lease schedule for the outer continental shelf.
April 25, 2025 — Senators Susan Collins and Angus King are cosponsoring a bipartisan bill to ban offshore drilling off the coast of Maine and New England.
The New England Coastal Protection Act would ban oil and gas leasing off the coast and in protected areas.
NOAA Fisheries reports ocean and coastal industries generate more than $17.5 billion in New England annually.
April 22, 2025 — Lobster trade associations in Maine are hailing an executive order from the White House that would ease or eliminate regulations on seafood fisheries.
The Maine Lobstermen’s Association “has been fighting government overregulation for years and won a historic court case that challenged draconian whale rules taking a big step forward in ending this abuse of power,” said Patrice McCarron, executive director of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association. The executive order “recognizes the challenges our fishing families and communities face and we appreciate the commitment to reduce burdensome regulations and strengthen the competitiveness of American seafood.”
“Maine fishermen have been supporting Maine’s economy for generations,” said Virginia Olsen, a lobster fisherman and director of the Maine Lobstering Union.
April 21, 2025 — Many Maine fishermen are applauding a new executive order from President Trump, which calls on the federal government to identify and roll back regulations that are overly burdensome to the commercial fishing industry.
The order signals that the Trump administration wants to listen to commercial harvesters and involve them in decision-making and research, said Ben Martens, executive director of the Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association.
“There are a lot of regulations that you could take a scalpel to, right? We can clean things up,” he said. “There’s a piling up regulations that takes place over time, and so I think it needs to be done carefully.”
Jerry Leeman, CEO of the New England Fishermen’s Stewardship Association, described the order as a “long time coming.” Many of his members have long questioned the data that federal fisheries regulators use to conduct stock assessments and set stock limits.