Saving Seafood

Right whale population drops to lowest estimate in nearly 20 years

November 2, 2021 — Researchers last week said the North Atlantic right whale population dropped to 336 in 2020, an 8 percent decrease from the previous year. 

The latest population figure for the critically endangered species dipped from 366 individuals in 2019 and is the lowest population estimate in nearly 20 years, according to the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium. The organization has been studying right whales since the 1980s and announced the estimate at its annual meeting last week.   

“We are obviously discouraged by this estimate, but quite frankly, not surprised,” said Heather Pettis, an associate scientist in the New England Aquarium’s Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life and the executive administrator for the consortium. “The right whale research and conservation communities know that while widespread efforts to change the trajectory of the species have been undertaken, they have not been enough.” 

The species, which migrates up and down the east coast, was generally rebounding until 2011, when the downward trend started. That prompted new regulations on Maine’s lobstermen and other fisheries. At that time, there were an estimated 481 whales, but since then the population has declined by 30 percent.  

Read the full story at the Mount Desert Islander

Maine research institutions receive more than $660K to study the American lobster

November 1, 2021 — Maine Sea Grant staff and Maine-based researchers will advance a multimillion-dollar NOAA Sea Grant American Lobster Initiative, which announced its third round of funding.

Six newly funded research projects, three of which are led by Maine-based researchers, will address critical gaps in knowledge about how the American lobster (Homarus americanus) is being impacted by environmental change in the Gulf of Maine, Georges Bank and southern New England. The focus of this work is based on specific language in Sea Grant’s fiscal year 2021 appropriations language.

One of the most iconic modern American fisheries, the American lobster also represents one of the largest and most valuable single species fisheries along the Atlantic coast. In 2020, the landings value of the American lobster fishery was estimated at $524.5 million in the United States, according to NOAA Fisheries, of which the Maine fishery accounted for an estimated $408 million. Within Maine, lobsters make up roughly 80 percent of the landings value of all fisheries combined. However, ecosystem shifts, food web changes and ocean acidification all present threats to the American lobster fishery.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

 

Nordic Aquafarms wins legal victory, moving planned farm in Maine a step forward

November 1, 2021 — Nordic Aquafarms, which has plans to build a large land-based salmon farm in Belfast, Maine, U.S.A., has won a “complete and total victory” in a court case brought against the company by project opponents.

Nordic Aquafarms has been embroiled in a court battle over the ownership of intertidal land adjacent to property the company purchased rights to in order to route inflow and outflow pipes essential to the operations of the company’s proposed recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) facility.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

ASMFC Atlantic Herring Area 1A Days Out Meeting Scheduled for November 4

November 1, 2021 — The following was released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission:

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Herring Management Board members from the States of Maine, New Hampshire and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts will meet via webinar on November 4, 2021 from 9 to 11 a.m., to consider adjusting the landing days for Season 2 (October 1 – December 31) for the 2021 Area 1A fishery (inshore Gulf of Maine). At the September 2021 days out meeting, the landing days were set at zero (0) for Season 2. The webinar and call information is included below:

Atlantic Herring Days Out Meeting

November 4, 2021

9:00 – 11:00 a.m.

You can join the meeting from your computer, tablet or smartphone at the following link:https://global.gotomeeting.com/join/881890621. If you are new to GoToMeeting, you can download the app ahead of time (click here) and be ready before the meeting starts. For audio, the meeting will be using the computer voice over internet (VoIP), but if you are joining the webinar from your phone only, you can dial in at +1 (224) 501-3412 and enter access code   881-890-621 when prompted. The webinar will start at 8:30 a.m., 30 minutes early, to troubleshoot audio as necessary.

The 2021 Area 1A sub-annual catch limit (sub-ACL) is 2,373 metric tons (mt) after adjusting for the increase of 1,000 mt based on catch information from the New Brunswick weir fishery, the carryover from 2019, the 30 mt fixed gear set-aside, and the 8% buffer (Area 1A closes at 92% of the sub-ACL). There is no research-set-aside (RSA) for 2021 because the participants in the program will not continue their RSA project in 2021.

The Board established the following seasonal allocations for the 2021 Area 1A sub-ACL: 72.8% available from June 1 – September 30 and 27.2% available from October 1 – December 31.

Please contact Emilie Franke, Fishery Management Plan Coordinator, at 703.842.0716 or efranke@asmfc.org for more information.

The announcement can also be found at http://www.asmfc.org/uploads/file/617bf260AtlHerringNov2021DaysOutMeetingNotice.pdf

 

Government, conservation groups file appeal to reinstate seasonal lobstering ban

November 1, 2021 — The federal government and a group of conservation organizations filed an appeal this week of a recent court decision that stopped a planned seasonal closure to traditional lobstering in an area of the Gulf of Maine.

The closure, which would have gone into effect Oct. 18, was intended to help protect the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale and would have made traditional, rope-and-buoy lobstering off-limits in the lucrative 967-square-mile zone from October to January.

The Maine Lobstering Union, Fox Island Lobster Co. of Vinalhaven and Damon Family Lobster Co. of Stonington filed a joint lawsuit against the fisheries service last month in an effort to block the closure, arguing that regulators used flimsy science to justify the restricted area.

In his ruling, issued just two days before the closure would have been implemented, U.S. District Judge Lance Walker sided with the lobstering groups and said regulators had relied on “markedly thin” statistical modeling instead of hard evidence to prove the area they had planned to close was really a highly traveled area for the imperiled whale.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

 

Maine relies on its marine life, but climate change will alter what that means

October 28, 2021 — Steve Train used to finish work by 1pm. In those days, Mr Train—who has worked as a lobsterman in Maine for more than 30 years—didn’t have to travel far to find the critters. Now he sometimes wraps up closer to 4pm. Some lobsters are still close to shore, but rising temperatures have pushed many of them into deeper, cooler waters that take longer to reach. Where Mr Train will find the creatures has turned into something of a guessing game. “More of us are hunting all the time,” he says, as he sips a mezcal margarita from Luke’s Lobster, a waterfront restaurant in Portland’s historic Old Port. This is where he docks his boat, sells his catch and, three or four days a week, stops in for lunch (often a lobster BLT, lobster roll or fried haddock bites). Lobstering is more than a job, he says. “It’s a culture.”

Warming waters have done more than change lobstermen’s schedules—they have disrupted entire ecosystems, the Gulf of Maine among them. The Gulf of Maine’s waters have warmed faster than 99% of the world’s ocean over the past 30 years. Experts attribute some of that to changing currents. The effects of the Gulf Stream from the south have grown stronger and have begun to constrict the flow of the Labrador current, which delivers cold water from the North Atlantic to the Gulf of Maine. “The magnitude of change is really going to be dependent on how much water temperatures change,” says Kathy Mills, a research scientist at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute. So far, the heat has altered the patterns of the state’s two most profitable species, lobsters and soft-shell clams, with some experts and industry folk worried about the potential for further population declines. Maine’s overall commercial landings brought in more than $500m last year, but maintaining those profits will require flexibility—at the least, it means acknowledging the gulf may look vastly different in years to come.

Read the full story at The Economist

 

Keith Decker to lead American Aquafarms

October 28, 2021 — American Aquafarms, a Maine-based aquaculture company with plans for ocean-based salmon operations, a hatchery, fish farm and processing plant, announced Wednesday that 30-year industry veteran Keith Decker will join the company as chief executive officer.

Decker has extensive experience in seafood production and processing, with particular experience guiding and directing fast-paced organizations through substantial change and development. He is currently CEO of Blue Harvest Fisheries, which he joined in 2018 as the firm moved from start-up to growth phase.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

 

MAINE: Seafood purveyors look to boost direct marketing

October 27, 2021 — A drop-off last year in seafood exports and the domestic wholesale market resulted in a pivot that increased direct marketing, retail and e-commerce sales.

Now a new survey is looking to help the commercial fishing industry continue the direct-marketing trend, as an important socio-economic hedge to protect against future shocks to the system and ensure food security.

A partnership between the University of Maine and federal agencies aims to help the commercial fishing industry understand local and regional seafood marketing practices, and help remove barriers to direct marketing.

UMaine initiated the partnership with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the National Marine Fisheries Service.

The service is a department of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Over the next year, the partners will develop a national benchmark survey of direct seafood marketing practices in domestic wild-caught fisheries in an effort to strengthen food systems and coastal community resilience.

“Currently, there is a gap in national-level data on the domestic seafood system,” Joshua Stoll, one of the principal investigators for the project and a UMaine assistant professor of marine policy.

Read the full story at Mainebiz

 

Federal rules are sinking Maine’s lobster industry

October 25, 2021 — As a lifelong Maine lobsterman, I understand the inherent dangers of my job. I keep watch on the forecast knowing that sudden weather changes can make the difference between a successful day at work and putting my crew’s life at risk. These days, however, the hazard posed by Mother Nature does not compare with the perfect storm of regulations coming out of Washington that threaten my job, our way of life and may eventually sink a fishery that has supported communities and generations of families here in Maine.

In May, National Marine Fisheries Service released a nearly 1,000-page document outlining a 10-year plan that mandates a seemingly unreachable goal to reduce risk from our industry to the endangered North Atlantic right whale by 98 percent. This not only affects me, but nearly 10,000 other men and women who make their living hauling traps.

The fisheries service rolled out the first phase of this plan in August, requiring new gear modifications to add more traps to each buoy line while simultaneously making each line weaker. These measures reduce risk by removing a lot of rope from the ocean and help any entangled right whale to break free from the lines that remain, but they will most certainly make a lobsterman’s already dangerous job even more so.

Recently, a federal judge in Bangor temporarily delayed a seasonal closure of more than 950 square miles of prime lobstering ground off Maine. While we are relieved with this decision, the proposed closure reflects just one in a long line of decisions in the government’s plan that is supposed to protect right whales. The problem is this misguided plan takes aim at the wrong target and may destroy our industry while doing little to help protect the whale.

Read the full opinion piece at the Bangor Daily News