Saving Seafood

As Maine’s climate changes, scallop farming offers optimism

January 3, 2021 — As rapidly warming oceans continue to drive Maine lobster into more remote waters, some in the state’s fishing industry regard sea scallop farming as the prime candidate to help bring added stability to the industry and offset anticipated revenue losses.

But to fully capitalize on the species, renowned for its delicate texture and taste, the industry must solve a handful of nagging problems. Maine’s scallop fishery has been notoriously unstable over the past few decades, culminating in an outright crash in the mid-2000s from which the commercial fishery still hasn’t fully recovered.

Aside from concerns about overfishing, which Maine regulators have addressed through rotating fishery closures, harvesters also must contend with testing for biotoxins found naturally in scallops, which can add substantially to their cost.

But automation technology and farming techniques borrowed from more mature scallop fisheries as far away as Japan are giving some Maine seafood harvesters cause for optimism. They believe the growth potential for sustainable, farm-raised scallops is nearly limitless in Maine, if they can just figure out the right approach and make it affordable.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Counting Maine lobsters? There’s an app for that

December 28, 2021 — A new digital app that maps lobster fishing activity is expected to help the industry manage interactions with two other users of the ocean — the endangered North Atlantic right whale and the burgeoning offshore wind industry.

Developed by Louisiana technology company Bluefin Data under a contract with the Maine Department of Marine Resources, the app, called VESL, is the result of a required increase in the percentage of lobster harvesters who must submit reports.

The app is being provided for free to commercial fishermen and is meant to simplify required harvest reporting for both state and federally licensed fishermen, according to a news release. The required reporting includes location of fishing activity and pounds landed.

“We decided to develop a new app to make it easier for lobstermen to comply with the new reporting requirement,” the department’s commissioner, Patrick Keliher, said in the release.

Read the full story at Mainebiz

Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association files motion to join fight against federal lobster fishing regulations

December 27, 2021 — Maine lobstermen have a new ally in the fight against federal fishing regulations.

The Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association filed a motion to join the Maine Lobstermen’s Association’s lawsuit, challenging the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s 10-year right whale protection plan. The plan requires lobstermen to make significant changes to prevent whales from getting tangled in their gear.

The group filed the motion in Washington D.C. District Court, looking to join the lawsuit as a third party.

Massachusetts lobstermen said they want to get involved because they believe federal actions like this could directly impact their livelihoods.

The court still needs to approve the motion.

Some, including Maine’s lobster unions, have claimed the closure by NOAA falls during the peak fishing season.

According to data from the Maine Department of Marine Resources, lobstermen statewide hauled most consistently from July to October last year. They brought in a whopping 20 million pounds in October at peak, before numbers steadily fell back down through January.

Read the full story and watch the video at News Center Maine

 

4 years later, the 4 large fish farms planned for Maine haven’t started construction

December 27, 2021 — This year will be remembered in Maine, at least in part, as when interest in developing four large-scale fish farms on the state’s eastern coastline continued to intensify.

It also will be remembered by some as yet another year during which — nearly four years since plans for the first proposal were announced — none of the four separate projects began construction.

The projects are at various stages of the permitting process, with some being fully approved and others not yet having any permits. All have shied away from announcing specific timetables for when they hope to start to build.

Nordic Aquafarms

The biggest of the four proposals, and the first to be announced, is a $500 million land-based salmon farm near the Little River in Belfast. Nordic Aquafarms plans to produce more than 72 million pounds of salmon per year at the site.

The project received its final outstanding permit this summer, with local, state and federal authorities all giving the green light to move forward with construction.

But Nordic Aquafarms also has encountered fierce opposition, with critics fighting the company in court with a civil suit over the ownership of a strip of intertidal land that is instrumental to the project. This summer, the city of Belfast got involved by pursuing eminent domain in order to get the company an easement to cross the intertidal zone with its intake and outfall pipes to get to Penobscot Bay.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

MAINE: Whale rules, pending lawsuits focus of gloomy Advisory Council meeting

December 23, 2021 — A complicated and potentially grim future is predicted for the commercial lobster industry, with environmental groups, gear changes, the closure of offshore waters to lobster fishing and judicial rulings painting a “doom and gloom” picture, in the words of Department of Marine Resources (DMR) Commissioner Patrick Keliher. 

“I think there’s going to be a lot of moving pieces,” Keliher told Lobster Advisory Council members and others in virtual attendance at the council’s Dec. 15 meeting.  

Some of those pieces could spell the end of the commercial lobster fishery in Maine, DMR Deputy Commissioner Meredith Mendelson said, as she ran through the current lawsuits aimed at preserving the North Atlantic right whale. If any or all prevail, the lobster fishery will bear the brunt of the results. 

These days, lobstering is all about the right whale population, of which an estimated 336 whales – the lowest number in nearly 20 years – swam in the Atlantic Ocean in 2020. Right whales were listed as an endangered species in 1970 and became protected when the Endangered Species Act of 1973 was later passed. 

Read the full story at the Mount Desert Islander

Maine’s shrimp fishery will stay closed, but regulators warm to idea of limited harvest

December 20, 2021 — Maine’s northern shrimp fishery has been closed for seven years and regulators decided Friday to continue the harvest moratorium for another three years with no signs of rebound.

But in a change, officials with the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission entertained the idea of opening a small personal-use fishery at the suggestion of the Maine Department of Marine Resources and planned to look into it in the future.

A moratorium was enacted after the northern shrimp stock collapsed in 2013 and has been in place ever since. It is unclear what caused the shrimp’s downturn but recent research suggests that a species of squid that rode into the Gulf of Maine on a historic 2012 heatwave may have played a significant role.

Maine is the southernmost range of the shrimp and the gulf’s warming waters are also suspected to be part of the reason the cold-loving shrimp have struggled to bounce back, even with no commercial fishing for nearly a decade.

Read the full story at The Bangor Daily News

Maine Voices: We need more awareness of mental health stresses on Maine’s fishermen

December 20, 2021 — Farmers and fishermen both rely on the weather to determine their schedules. One prays for rain, the other for clear skies and calm seas. Both wake up before the rooster crows and go to bed thinking about another full day of work ahead. They have similar concerns: regulations, development, finances, labor and their families.

Other parallels that can be drawn include the generational nature of the work; intrinsic family and community culture, and legacies of land, boats or buoys. Both industries are grappling with climate change: Farmers are stewards of the land; fishermen are stewards of the sea.

Farming and fishing are two industries that are historically comprised of men, and in the past decade, the median age of both has increased (around 57). While there has been increasing attention on the mental health impacts and suicide risk factors for farmers, little research is focused on the specific mental health challenges of fishermen. Because of the similarities in work factors and demographics, research on the suicide risk for farmers may inform risks for fishermen.

Read the full opinion piece at The Portland Press Herald

A Maine clam could help fishermen as climate change pushes out other species

December 20, 2021 — Some commercially fished species in Maine have seen their numbers decline in recent years due to climate change, but one of the state’s clam fisheries is growing and could help provide another way for fishermen to earn a living.

Northern quahogs, also known as hard clams, are among a handful of fisheries including Maine oysters — most of which are grown at sea farms — seaweed, and baby eels whose harvest volumes and values have increased over the past decade. Meanwhile, others including northern shrimp, softshell clams — and even the state’s still dominant lobster fishery — have shrunk.

For Mark Cota, a Topsham fisherman who grew up in Harpswell, the money in quahogs (pronounced “ko-hogs”) has been good enough that this year he started harvesting them full-time.

“I’ve done it for like four years,” Cota, 33, said Friday, chatting on the phone while raking for the clams on the tidal New Meadows River, which separates the towns of Brunswick and West Bath. “The price is right, and I’m getting good at it.”

Read the full story at The Bangor Daily News

Clam industry growing as climate change warms New England’s waters

December 20, 2021 — Maine’s clam industry is growing as climate change warms the Gulf of Maine.

The Bangor Daily News reports northern quahogs are among the state’s fisheries that have seen increased harvest volumes and values over the past decade.

The average price of what are also known as hard clams has gone from 40 cents per pound in the 1990s to around $1.50 per pound in recent years, the newspaper reports.

Annual harvest totals have also increased since the early 2000s, reaching a record of more than two million pounds in 2019, according to the paper. The annual harvest value is around $2.6 million, up from just over $10,000 as recently as 2004.

Read the full story at WHDH

 

Lobstering, climate change, and Maine. Read 7 takeaways from our ‘Lobster Trap’ series

December 17, 2021 — In “The lobster trap,” The Boston Globe and the Portland Press Herald zoomed in on a small island central to Maine’s signature industry, smack dab in the crosshairs of global climate change. Reporters immersed themselves in the lives of local lobstermen reckoning with change and struggling to plot a path into the future.

Below are seven key takeaways from the series:

1. The forces that sparked a lobster boom, and brought unprecedented prosperity to Maine lobstermen, can also take it all away.

The American lobster thrives in chilly waters between 54 and 64 degrees, but can stay healthy up to 68 degrees. Long-term exposure to anything hotter spells serious trouble, like respiratory and immune system failure.

As ocean temperatures rise, the epicenter of the lobster population is shifting north to cooler waters. Right now, the thermal sweet spot is off midcoast Maine, where Vinalhaven and Stonington lobstermen fish.

But scientists warn the good times won’t last: As warming continues, they predict the catch will decline by half within 30 years.

Read the full story at The Boston Globe