Saving Seafood

Whale protection, trawl limits entangle Maine lobstermen

October 10, 2018 — DEER ISLE, Maine — October is a peak month, according to the state Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry, for feistiness in Maine’s population of hornets and wasps. Lobstermen too, judging by last week’s meeting of the Zone C Lobster Management Council at Deer Isle-Stonington High School.

The principal irritant is the still-simmering conflict over a rule adopted by DMR at the beginning of August establishing a five-trap maximum trawl limit for a 60-square-mile rectangle centered, more or less, on Mount Desert Rock.

The trawl limit was proposed by the Zone B management council last winter. The problem is that much of the western part of that area is fished by lobstermen based in Zone C — primarily Stonington and Deer Isle — who bitterly opposed adoption of a rule that Department of Marine Resources Commissioner Patrick Keliher called “one of the more difficult decisions that I have made.”

Last week, the Zone C council reviewed a proposed rule change that would eliminate the five-trap maximum in a large area west of Mount Desert Rock. While that might improve the situation for some Zone C lobstermen, the underlying problem reflects unhappiness on the part of lobstermen from Zone B, with limited entry for new fishermen, over the number of lobstermen from Zone C who fish across the zone line in waters they fished before the zones were ever established.

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American

 

Mainers grapple with risk that a shrimp season this year could be the last one

October 5, 2018 — PORTLAND, Maine — Scientists and policymakers gathered Thursday in Portland to weigh their desire for a 2018 Maine shrimp season — the first in five years — against the very real possibility that allowing shrimp to be harvested this year could leave the species beyond the point of return.

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission presented a draft of its Northern Shrimp 2018 Stock Assessment Report, which those assembled at the Maine Historical Society heard with resignation but not surprise.

The northern (Maine) shrimp stock is depleted and the biomass is at an all-time low due to high fishery removals and a less favorable environment, according to the draft.

The mortality rate in 2011-2012, the last years with shrimp seasons — was very high, and the number of juvenile shrimp has remained “unusually low” since 2010.

Furthermore, the environment in the Gulf of Maine is in flux, Margaret Hunter of the Maine Department of Marine Resources and chairwoman of the assessment subcommittee, said Thursday.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

 

Lobster industry blasts proposed regulations intended to protect whales

October 5, 2018 — Maine officials and members of the state’s lobster industry are blasting a new federal report on the endangered right whale, claiming it uses old science to unfairly target the fishery for restrictions.

The Maine Department of Marine Resources, the agency that regulates the $434 million lobster fishery, and the Maine Lobstermen’s Association, the trade group representing Maine’s 4,500 active commercial lobstermen, question the scientific merits of the report from the Northeast Fisheries Science Center, which was issued in advance of next week’s meeting of a federal right whale protection advisory team.

“They’re painting a big target on the back of the Maine lobster industry, but the picture isn’t based on the best available science,” DMR Commissioner Patrick Keliher said Thursday. “If we use the wrong starting point, and that’s what this report is, the wrong starting point, what kind of regulations will we end up with? Ones that could end up hurting the lobster industry for no reason and won’t do much to help the right whales. That is unfair.”

Read the full story at Portland Press Herald

 

Maine baby eel harvest on pace to hit record value under catch limits

April 30, 2018 — Halfway through the 2018 fishing season for baby eels, the value of landings in Maine is on track to reach its highest annual total since a statewide catch limit was imposed four years ago.

With the average price remaining above $2,300 per pound since opening day on March 22, the value of the statewide catch so far was nearly $12.5 million as of Friday evening, which is $337,000 more than the catch value for all of 2017. It represents 4,800 pounds caught statewide since the season started, meaning fishermen have caught only half of Maine’s overall annual catch limit of 9,688 pounds.

As of Friday evening, dealers were paying fishermen $2,600 per pound on average for baby eels, also known as elvers, the state Department of Marine Resources indicated in a news release. That average is twice as high as it was last year, when elver fishermen earned $1,300 per pound.

If the average price paid to fishermen stays above $2,500 through the remainder of the season, and if fishermen reach the statewide catch limit, the value of Maine’s 2018 elver landings would total at least $24 million.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

 

Maine: In new cautionary approach, Maine shellfish areas will be closed at first sign of toxins

April 17, 2018 — BOOTHBAY, Maine — Public health officials say they will use extreme caution to manage toxic algae blooms this year to prevent another expensive and potentially dangerous shellfish recall.

In the last two years, sudden toxic algae blooms of a previously unrecorded type of phytoplankton forced the Maine Department of Marine Resources to close huge sections of the Down East coast to shellfish harvesting and to issue rare recalls of tons of clams and mussels from as far away as Utah.

Recalls are bad for public health, business and Maine’s seafood brand, said Kohl Kanwit, head of the department’s public health division, during a workshop Tuesday for harvesters, seafood dealers, regulators and researchers at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in Boothbay.

“The risk is high; you never get 100 percent back” from a recall, Kanwit said. “It is really costly for the industry and bad all around.”

This year, the department isn’t taking any chances as it monitors for pseudo-nitzschia, a single-cell organism that can bloom unexpectedly and make domoic acid, a dangerous biotoxin that may cause amnesic shellfish poisoning, or ASP, in humans and animals. In serious cases, ASP can lead to memory loss, brain damage or even death. The first recorded ASP event, on Prince Edward Island in 1987, killed three people and made at least 100 sick.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

 

Lobster shell disease nudges up slightly off of Maine

April 13, 2018 — PORTLAND, Maine — A disease that disfigures lobsters has ticked up slightly in Maine in the last couple of years, but authorities and scientists say it’s not time to sound the alarm.

The disease, often called epizootic shell disease, is a bacterial infection that makes lobsters impossible to sell as food, eating away at their shells and sometimes killing them. The Maine Department of Marine Resources said researchers found the disease in about 1 percent of lobsters last year.

Circa the early- and mid-2000s, they almost never found it in Maine. But overall prevalence of the disease remains low, especially compared to southern New England waters, where it’s in the 20 percent to 30 percent range, the department said.

Scientists who study the fishery, such as microbiologist Deborah Bouchard of the University of Maine, said it remains important to monitor for the disease, which appears to correlate with warming temperatures.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Boston Globe

 

Maine: In new cautionary approach, Maine shellfish areas will be closed at first sign of toxins

April 11, 2018 — BOOTHBAY, Maine — Public health officials say they will use extreme caution to manage toxic algae blooms this year to prevent another expensive and potentially dangerous shellfish recall.

In the last two years, sudden toxic algae blooms of a previously unrecorded type of phytoplankton forced the Maine Department of Marine Resources to close huge sections of the Down East coast to shellfish harvesting and to issue rare recalls of tons of clams and mussels from as far away as Utah.

Recalls are bad for public health, business and Maine’s seafood brand, said Kohl Kanwit, head of the department’s public health division, during a workshop Tuesday for harvesters, seafood dealers, regulators and researchers at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in Boothbay.

“The risk is high; you never get 100 percent back” from a recall, Kanwit said. “It is really costly for the industry and bad all around.”

This year, the department isn’t taking any chances as it monitors for pseudo-nitzschia, a single-cell organism that can bloom unexpectedly and make domoic acid, a dangerous biotoxin that may cause amnesic shellfish poisoning, or ASP, in humans and animals. In serious cases, ASP can lead to memory loss, brain damage or even death. The first recorded ASP event, on Prince Edward Island in 1987, killed three people and made at least 100 sick.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

 

Lobstermen will get extension on medical waivers

April 11, 2018 — AUGUSTA, Maine — A Maine law is now on the books to extend the amount of time some commercial fishing license holders can receive a medical waiver.

Harpswell Democratic Rep. Jay McCreight’s measure allows the Maine Department of Marine Resources commissioner to renew a temporary medical waiver for lobster and crab fishing licenses up to one year.

McCreight says she was motivated to make the proposal at the request of a Harpswell lobsterman who needed help because he’s struggling with a terminal illness, but still needs to work.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Portland Press Herald

 

Whale-protection grant to fund study of how Maine lobstermen deploy their gear

April 10, 2018 — Maine is getting a $700,000 federal grant to collect details about how the lobster industry deploys its fishing gear, especially rope, in an effort to help protect endangered right whales.

The species recovery grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will underwrite a three-year project scheduled to start this summer to collect information that federal regulators need for future deciding right-whale protection regulations. The government is considering what steps it could take to protect the roughly 450 surviving members of the species in the wake of 17 North Atlantic right whale deaths last year in Canadian and U.S. waters.

“This research will ensure that future regulations are based on current, relevant data,” said Erin Summers, biological monitoring division director of the Maine Department of Marine Resources and the person who will lead the collection project. “Maine has been involved in the development and evolution of whale protection regulations over the past two decades. … This study is another example of Maine taking a leadership role in the protection of whales.”

Regulators will need to know how and where fishing gear is used throughout the Gulf of Maine to understand the relative risk of whale entanglement. That’s one of several factors known to play a role in the dwindling number of right whales – ship strikes are the other major cause of death, and scarcity of the whale’s favorite food, copepods, also contributes to dwindling reproduction rates.

The project will ask harvesters from Maine to Connecticut to voluntarily share information about how they rig and fish vertical lines, the rope that extends from the floating buoy to the string of lobster traps on the ocean floor. Data will include rope type and diameter, trap configuration and depth, and distance from shore. The project also will include a study on the breaking strength of vertical lines and the amount of load put on the lines during different hauling conditions.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

 

Right whale extinction threat is being overstated, lobstermen fear

April 9, 2018 — The math of protecting right whales from extinction is scary stuff: The stakes are high, scientific opinion varies and some rescue plans could make it impossible for lobstermen to earn a living.

Getting that math right matters when the futures of right whales and Maine’s lobster industry are so closely intertwined. Right whale numbers have dwindled to about 450 because of deadly ship strikes, fishing gear entanglements and low birth rates, while Maine’s lobster industry is the backbone of the state’s coastal economy, raking in about $434 million from landings in 2017 and generating another $1 billion for Maine in post-dock revenues.

“This will be the largest challenge for this industry,” said Commissioner Pat Keliher of the Maine Department of Marine Resources.

Those who fish for lobster in Maine and manage the fishery claim that their side of the whale story, and peer-reviewed species projections, are being lost in the extinction din.

Regulators claim they already have a right whale management plan in place and that it’s working. Despite the industry’s size, and the up to 3 million lobster traps in the water, no scientist or whale advocate has ever linked a whale death back to Maine’s lobster fishery, Keliher said. Dead whales have washed ashore in Maine, but they can swim for miles before they die, and carcasses can drift, too. No dead whale has ever been found in marked Maine ropes, officials say.

“None of the mortalities have any relationship back to the Maine fishery,” Keliher said Thursday at a Lobster Advisory Council session on right whale strategy.

Read the full story at the Sun Journal