Saving Seafood

Black sea bass gobbling up lobsters

March 12, 2019 — Black sea bass, a saltwater fish taken commercially and recreationally in Massachusetts, have increased in number throughout southern New England waters and rattled the lobster industry with their wolfish appetites.

“They feed aggressively,” Rutgers University marine biologist Olaf Jensen said. “They’re not picky eaters. If it’s the right size and it’s alive, they’ll eat it.”

The young of New England’s iconic crustacean fall into the right size category. “Black sea bass love little lobsters,” Michael Armstrong, assistant director of the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, said.

That’s of deep concern to Beth Casoni, president of the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association, who says lobster traps are being pillaged by these fish. They are often hauled up with the bass inside the traps, alongside lobsters they couldn’t fit in their mouths, she said. Even more concerning to Casoni is their alleged habit of picking off undersize lobsters tossed overboard by lobstermen.

Read the full story at The Martha’s Vineyard Times 

Maine Lobstermen Share Anxieties Over New Regulations In The Industry At Annual Forum

March 4, 2019 — At Maine’s annual Fishermen’s Forum in Rockport Friday, a historic $600 million harvest season coincided with a slight increase in lobster landings and lingering concerns over potential changes to gear rules around protecting endangered right whales. But looming over the forum are major cutbacks in the quota of crucial herring bait fish — which could ripple across the industry.

Patrice McCarron is executive director of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association (MLA). She is worried about the severity of herring restrictions imposed by the federal government after the species failed to reproduce in sustainable numbers last year.

“It’s about as bad as we can imagine, but we don’t yet know what it’s going to translate to for the fishermen,” McCaroon says.

McCarron says that Maine fishermen face a shortage of some 50-million pounds of bait in the coming season.

Fisherman are used to catching the traditional lobster baitfish in Maine’s coastal herring fishery all summer and into the fall, but McCarron says that will change under the new quotas.

Read the full story at Maine Public

MAINE: Whale rule changes coming on two tracks

January 9, 2019 — Maine lobstermen and their representatives, along with state fisheries regulators, continue in the trenches of debates about how much the Maine lobster fishery is implicated in the decline of the North Atlantic right whale.

Ongoing efforts to protect the whales from entanglement with fishing gear may result in two different new sets of regulations, Sarah Cotnoir, resource coordinator for the Maine Department of Marine Resources, and Patrice McCarron, executive director of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association, told the Zone B Council last week.

The two sets of regulations come from parallel processes under two federal laws, the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) and the Endangered Species Act (ESA).

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American

Feds beat fishermen: Court dismisses challenge to Atlantic monument

October 10, 2018 — A federal judge upheld the creation of the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument last week, dismissing a lawsuit from commercial fishing groups that challenged presidential authority to establish the monument.

The national monument, created by former President Barack Obama, was authorized under the Antiquities Act. Representatives from the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association argued that the act does not include authorization to protect bodies of water and that the monument in question, an area of nearly 5,000 square miles, was too large.

But U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ruled that the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument complied with the law and sided with the Trump administration’s motion to dismiss the suit.

“In all, plaintiffs offer no factual allegations explaining why the entire monument, including not just the seamounts and canyons but also their ecosystems, is too large,” wrote Boasberg in his decision.

He also clarified that the Antiquities Act histories grant that waterways, as well as land, can be protected under the act.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

 

Federal court rules against fishermen in Northeast Canyons monument lawsuit

October 10, 2018 — A federal judge last week dismissed a lawsuit brought by commercial fishing groups that challenged the creation of a marine national monument in 2016.

The organizations, which included the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association and the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association, claimed the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama did not have the authority to establish the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument.

The monument is the first national marine monument established in the Atlantic Ocean. Because of the designation, commercial fishing – except for certain red crab and lobster fishing – is prohibited in the 5,000-square-mile area. The crab and lobster fishing will continue until their permits expire.

While the administration of current U.S. President Donald Trump has been considering reopening it and other marine monuments for commercial fishing, it did seek the dismissal of the lawsuit, claiming the Antiquities Act gave presidents the right to establish and define such monuments.

“This is not a joke, jobs will be lost and thousands of people’s lives will be impacted through a back-door process that did not require formal federal review,” said Bonnie Brady, executive director of the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association in a Facebook post.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

 

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 lobster fishing group to replace longterm leader

February 28, 2018 — The largest commercial fishing industry group on the East Coast will elect a new leader this Friday for the first time in 27 years.

Kristan Porter, a Cutler fisherman, is expected to take the reins of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association at the end of its annual meeting in Rockport. Porter, however, said it is “not a done deal” that he’ll become the group’s next president.

Porter, 47, would take over for South Thomaston lobsterman David Cousens, who is stepping down as MLA president after having held the post since 1991. Porter said he knows of no other board member who has expressed interest in the job but that other names might be submitted for nomination at the meeting.

“I don’t know if it’s set in stone,” Porter said Monday.

The MLA was founded in 1954 and, with 1,200 members, bills itself as “the oldest and largest fishing industry association on the East Coast.” It holds its annual meeting each year at the Maine Fishermen’s Forum, a three-day commercial fishing conference held every March at the Samoset Resort in Rockport.

If Porter is elected as MLA president, he said, “I’m not going to be on the 27-year plan like Dave was.”

Porter, who currently holds the post of first vice president, said he expects he would serve as president for only a few years and then step aside so a younger fisherman could take on the leadership role.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

Maine lobster industry facing many challenges, changes

February 21, 2018 — Maine’s lobster industry is pushing back against new rules that they say are costly and put onerous requirements on them to record data.

Maine does not have the funds to pay for the new reporting requirements mandated by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, according to Patrice McCarron, the executive director of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association. McCarron said the new rule, which requires 100 percent of Maine lobstermen to report certain catch data over the next five years, is cost-prohibitive.

“We have more than 4,000 lobstermen, so we have no way to collect trip-level data from all of them,” she told SeafoodSource.

Currently, data is collected from only 10 percent of the state’s lobstermen. The MLA opposed the ASMFC’s proposal on the reporting requirement, explaining that the state does not have the funds for data collection and that its current data system has a 95 to 98 percent confidence interval level.

“The question for Maine is how do we pay for it. We need electronic reporting technology that would make it simple and fast,” McCarron said.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association lobster analyst Peter Burns said the more thorough reporting requirements are necessary to give scientists a fuller picture of how the fishery is performing.

“We have a big black hole of reporting somewhere in the Gulf of Maine and into Georges Bank,” Burns told the commission, according to the Portland Press Herald.

As a compromise, ASMFC is phasing in the more stringent reporting requirements over five years, which it said would give Maine time to implement an electronic reporting requirement that may reduce the burden placed on fishermen to comply with the rules.

Read the full story at Seafood Source