Enhanced cargo service in Portland, Maine could be boon for seafood shipments
April 30, 2019 — On 23 April, the largest vessel to ever call on the International Marine Terminal in Portland, Maine arrived for the first time.
The ship, named the Pictor J, is a 461-foot container ship belonging to Eimskip, an Icelandic freight company that has headquarters in Portland. The new ship is longer, wider, and faster than any Eimskip ship before it and has nearly twice the carrying capacity of the old ships – 925 20-foot shipping containers versus the previous 505.
While 23 April was the first visit, it won’t be the last. The Pictor J is just the first of three ships being built that will be used collaboratively by Royal Arctic Line (RAL) and Eimskip, which was given formal approval for a Vessel Sharing Agreement by the Icelandic Competition Authority on 23 April. According to a release by RAL, Eimskip will own two of the ships, while RAL will own one. Two more ships are expected to be delivered by fall, increasing the amount of cargo going to and from Portland weekly.
“For Maine seafood processors that are importing fish, this is going to be good news,” Dana Eidsness, director of the Maine North Atlantic Development Office at the Maine International Trade Center, told SeafoodSource.
The new ships and expanded services, said Eidness, will allow for better freight rates, and weekly trips to smaller west Nordic markets.
“The opportunity for Maine in all of this is via our existing connection to Iceland through Eimskip service,” she said. “Using Iceland as a hub we can send cargo via this weekly service schedule.”
NEFMC Hosts Offshore Wind Session; Discusses EBFM, eVTRs, RSA Program
April 30, 2019 — The following was released by the New England Fishery Management Council:
The New England Fishery Management Council met April 16-18, 2019 in Mystic, CT and capped off its meeting with a Special Session on Offshore Wind in the Northeast Region. The session was organized and hosted by the Council to give Council members and stakeholders the opportunity to learn more about:
- The total scope of planned offshore wind energy development in the region with emphasis on projects off New England and New York;
- The players involved and their roles in the process with an emphasis on NOAA Fisheries consultations with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM);
- Research and monitoring issues, including current federal, state, and developer-funded efforts, implications for the Northeast Fisheries Science Center’s fishery independent surveys, and regional coordination initiatives through the newly formed Responsible Offshore Science Alliance (ROSA); and
- Updates on the timing and status of specific Northeast Region projects.
See long hidden historic photos of the gritty, compelling lives of tough Maine fishermen
April 30, 2019 — This month, the Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport finished preserving, scanning and cataloging National Fisherman magazine’s massive photographic archive. The images were stuffed into filing cabinets at the publication’s Portland office for decades. Now, every image is online, in a searchable database, for the whole world to see for free.
The broad ranging archive reveals the compelling, gritty world of commercial fishing. The collection of prints and negatives originally accompanied stories and advertisements. They show emerging technology, as well as everyday fisherfolk hauling nets, processing the catch, repairing trawlers, building boats and setting Coast Guard buoys.
The Penobscot Marine Museum’s mission is to preserve, interpret, and celebrate the maritime culture of the Penobscot Bay region. The museum dedicates significant resources to preserving historic photographs. It currently holds more than 140,000 negatives, prints, slides, postcards and daguerreotypes. All are available for research, reproduction and licensing.
National Fishermen is still published by Diversified Communications. It’s headquartered on Commercial Street in Portland. It covers the fishing industry all over the country. It began publishing in Camden in 1946 as Maine Coast Fisherman. Over the ensuing decades, it bought and consolidated several regional fisheries magazines. It became National Fisherman in 1960.
A daunting task begins: Reducing lobster gear to save whales
April 30, 2019 — Fishing managers on the East Coast began the daunting process Monday of implementing new restrictions on lobster fishing that are designed to protect a vanishing species of whale.
A team organized by the federal government recommended last week that the number of vertical trap lines in the water be reduced by about half. The lines have entrapped and drowned the North Atlantic right whale, which number a little more than 400 and have declined by dozens this decade.
The interstate Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission met Monday outside Washington to discuss the implementation of the new rules, which are designed to reduce serious injuries and deaths among whales by 60 percent.
The rules will be developed in the coming months and could have a huge effect on the lucrative fishery. Some individual lobstermen place several miles of trap lines in the water, meaning hundreds of miles will have to be removed in total to meet the goal.
“States are committed to taking on the reductions,” said Toni Kerns, interstate fisheries management program director for the commission, after the meeting. “This is a very complex issue, and it will be challenging, but they will find a way to make it work.”
Exactly how long it will take to implement the new rules is unclear at the moment, Kerns said. It also remains to be seen whether the commission or states will take the lead in implementing the rules, she said.
Colleen Coogan, who coordinates the federal government team designed to protect the whales, said during the meeting that cooperating with Canadian authorities is also going to be very important. Canadian fishermen harvest the same species of lobster, and the endangered whales also swim in Canadian waters.
Read the full story from the Associated Press at The Washington Post
Maine eyes projects to improve coastal infrastructure
April 28, 2019 — Maine’s state government is seeking to fund projects that will improve coastal infrastructure.
The Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation & Forestry’s Municipal Planning Assistance Program and the Maine Department of Marine Resources’ Maine Coastal Program are both seeking applications. The state says projects must be designed for endeavors such as improving water quality and conserving coastal habitat.
New England Stakeholders Agree On Recommendations For Reducing Risk Of Right Whale Entanglements
April 28, 2019 — Stakeholders from 14 states agreed Friday on recommendations for reducing the risk that endangered North Atlantic right whales will be injured or killed by entanglement with fishing gear, with big stakes for Maine’s lobster industry.
The state’s delegation agreed to reduce the vertical lines its lobster fleet puts in the water by 50 percent, as well as reducing rope strength and a more rigorous gear-marking program.
Steuben lobsterman Michael Sargent is a member of the “Take Reduction Team” that met for four days this week in Providence. He says the proposal would require him to take more than 10 miles of rope out of the water.
He says he is scared, but can live with it.
“It’s scary for me, but I know that’s something I can go back to my fishery and explain to my fishermen,” says Sargent. “This is something we can do. I think it’s a realistic number. It’s something a lot of fishermen understand. And I would be willing to go back and have that conversation.”
New restrictions placed on New England fishing industry to protect whales
April 29, 2019 — Fishermen across New England are facing new restrictions after a panel of experts convened by the federal government agreed on Friday to a plan to step up protection of the endangered North Atlantic right whale.
The group of federal and state officials, scientists, fishermen and environmental advocates, created by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, capped a four-day meeting in Providence by reaching consensus on a plan to reduce entanglements in fishing gear, which is the leading cause of injuries to the whale and deaths. The measures, which include using weaker ropes or breakaway ropes and reducing the number of vertical lines in the water, will primarily affect the region’s lobster fisheries.
While the plan agreed to by the Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Team sets an overall goal of reducing whale deaths caused by fishing gear by 60 percent, each state will meet that target through a combination of different measures.
In Rhode Island, lobstermen will cut the number of end lines — the ropes that run vertically from traps on the ocean bottom to buoys on the surface — by 18 percent over the next three years and, on the remaining lines, use rope sleeves that would break apart under enough force. In Massachusetts, the reduction in vertical lines will be 30 percent and in Maine 50 percent.
US scallop prices still in ‘sawtooth’ mode; U-10s less common
April 29, 2019 — Steven Costas has an expression that he uses when talking to his buyers about the period that typically follows a month or more after the new Atlantic scallop season opens: “the beginning of price discovery”.
It’s when the up and down “sawtooth” pattern of prices begins to flatten out, and more consistently stay on the lower end, explains the account executive at Marder Fresh & Frozen Sales, a seafood wholesaler based in New Bedford, Massachusetts.
That could be what’s beginning to happen for 10-20s, the most common size of scallops landed, at the big New Bedford auction more than three weeks into the season, reveals a review of prices by Undercurrent News. However, the teeth of the saw remain pretty pointy for big scallops – sizes 10 and 12 – as they’ve not been as easy to find as the beginning of last season and, as a result, are commanding higher stickers.
Seaweed matters: Eat your vegetables
April 26, 2019 — When I sat down at a Portland kombucha bar to attend a local Seaweed 101 session, I fully expected a love story about wild, vegan kelp and how we can change the world by eating more sea vegetables. What I didn’t expect was an in-depth exchange about federal fishery management and how it has decimated the industry’s communities in New England.
VitaminSea owner, and host of the session, Tom Roth was a commercial tilefish captain out of New Jersey a lifetime ago. He transitioned into New York Harbor tugboats as the industry declined, and started diving for kelp in his spare time from his home base in southern Maine about 15 years ago.
These days he goes out in a 40-foot boat that carries three other divers, two wooden skiffs and two Zodiacs. Each diver takes a small craft out on his own; they spread out, harvest, then meet back at the boat to help each other unload.
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