Saving Seafood

MAINE: Belfast lobstermen fear Nordic Aquafarms’ discharge pipes will harm fishery

May 22, 2019 — Some Belfast lobster fishermen told the local Harbor Advisory Committee that they were concerned that dredging for installation of Nordic Aquafarms’ discharge and intake pipes along submerged lands could release mercury in the ocean sediment and pose a hazard to navigation.

Mercury contamination has closed lobster and crab fishing in part of Penobscot Bay in recent years.

The Belfast Town Council heard about the concerns at its May 7 meeting.

“The fishermen have concerns,” advisory committee member Dan Miller told the council. The committee doesn’t have any purview over Nordic Aquafarms’ proposal, he noted. “Our place is to ask you to make sure those concerns are in some way addressed by the appropriate agency.”

Miller said “a handful of fishermen” voiced concerns that dredging for installation of the pipes could stir up mercury. He noted that some testing for mercury has been performed in the area. Further testing would likely identify whether it’s a valid concern, he said.

“We would suggest that, if we run into mercury during the [installation] process, we would stop the process and look again,” Miller said. “But we won’t know until we get there, short of considerable testing.”

The committee also heard concerns that pipe operation could increase water temperature in the surrounding area and affect lobster fishing, he said.

With regard to the possibility of mercury being stirred up through dredging, “Is this something that we as a city should contact the state to have them address?” Councilor Paul Dean asked the city’s director of code and planning, Wayne Marshall.

Read the full story at MaineBiz

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.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

Maine to study sea level rise impact for Penobscot Bay towns

March 29, 2019 — Ten communities surrounding Penobscot Bay will be the subjects of a state study to determine what actions to take to deal with rising sea levels.

The Maine Coastal Program, part of the Maine Department of Marine Resources, received a grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to conduct the study in Rockland, Camden, South Thomaston, Lincolnville, Belfast, Searsport, Vinalhaven, North Haven, Castine, and Stonington, said Coastal Program Deputy Director Matthew Nixon.

The goal of the project is project the sea level rise for each community and develop recommendations on protecting public infrastructure such as piers, public landings, and causeways.

“If there is going to be public investment, we want to make sure it’s spent wisely,” he said of public infrastructure projects.

Read the full story at The Courier-Gazette

Maine fish farm foes ask legislators to let agriculture commissioner kill projects

March 1, 2019 — The debate over two land-based salmon farms in Penobscot Bay spilled inland to Augusta on Thursday during a public hearing on a proposed law that would affect the licensing of such projects.

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Jan Dodge, D-Belfast, would allow the commissioner of the Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry to refuse to issue or to revoke an existing license for a land-based aquaculture project if it alone or in combination with another project is found to present an unreasonable risk to native species or the environment.

Some of those who testified in favor of LD 620 are veterans of the fight over Nordic Aquafarms’ proposed land-based salmon farm in Belfast, which has consumed the community for more than a year. Another project, Whole Oceans, to be located in the former Verso paper mill in Bucksport, has received much less criticism locally, but has been challenged by some in Belfast and Waldo County.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

MAINE: Good scallop season may be bound for a change

January 9, 2019 — Maine’s scallop season got off to a good start last month, with supplies plentiful and a strong price, but that may be about to change.

Early on, according to Melissa Smith, the scallop resource manager at the Department of Marine Resources, along most of the coast between Penobscot Bay and Cobscook Bay landings varied were “variable depending on the location.”

Scallop meat sizes also ranged from quite large to relatively small depending on where they were brought up, “as is the norm for any fishing year.”

Harvesters were generally able to get their daily limits — three 5-gallon buckets or about 135 pounds of shucked scallop meats — by the early afternoon or even earlier.

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American

Maine: Scallop farm first of its kind in local waters

November 30, 2017 — Just about one year after father-and-son fishermen Marsden and Bob Brewer returned from Japan, where they learned new scallop-farming techniques firsthand, Bob Brewer was granted a 3.23 acre experimental aquaculture lease southwest of Andrews Island. It is the first scallop farm of its kind in Penobscot Bay.

The Brewers can grow up to 200,000 Atlantic sea scallops using lantern nets, where mesh nets, each 10 floors deep, hang from a 600-foot longline.

“It’s a big circular tube with floors,” Bob Brewer said. “They’re used in Japan. That’s where we learned how to do it.”

Brewer grows the scallops from seed, caught in spat bags while he and Marsden are out lobstering.

Read the full story at Island Ad-Vantages

 

Maine’s Scallop Season Nearing End for 2016-17

March 28, 2017 — PORTLAND, Maine — Maine’s scallop season’s winding down as dragger boat operators are entering their final week in some parts of the state.

This is the last week of fishing for draggers in the state’s central and eastern coasts. The only open days from the Penobscot Bay area to far eastern Maine are Monday and Tuesday. Limited parts of far eastern Maine are open on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Monday is also the last day of the year for people who dive for scallops in far eastern Maine.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at U.S. News & World Report

MAINE: Scallop season opens with high hopes

November 29, 2016 — ELLSWORTH, Maine — After an eight-month hiatus when, like summer tourists, the only scallops in local stores are “from away,” the Maine scallop fishing season is finally opening, at least for a handful of harvesters.

All along the coastline, licensed scallop divers are allowed to start fishing for the succulent bivalves today, Thursday, Dec. 1. Dragger fishermen will have to wait to wet their gear until next Monday, Dec. 5.

The season opens on an optimistic note. Over the past five years, scallop landings have increased steadily, from just over 175,000 pounds of scallop meats (about 1.5 million pounds in the shell) during 2011 to almost 453,000 pounds in 2015.

As in the past several years, fishermen will have a 60-day season in state waters between the Maine-New Hampshire border and western Penobscot Bay (Zone 1), a 70 day season in the waters between eastern Penobscot Bay and the Lubec Narrows bridge (Zone 2) and a 50-day season in Cobscook Bay—the state’s most productive scallop fishing grounds.

Fishermen are subject to a daily possession limit of 15 gallons (about 135 pounds) of scallop meats in all state waters except Cobscook Bay where the daily limit is 10 gallons.

Because commercial fisheries landings are generally reported on an annual basis, it is can be difficult to tease out how well the fishery did during a single season which incorporates parts of two calendar years. Dealers can also be slow in reporting landings information.

That said, during the 2014-2015 fishing season Maine harvesters landed about 525,000 pounds of scallops worth some $6.5 million. Virtually all of those scallops came from state waters—inside the three-mile limit.

The number of active scallopers has increased steadily over the past seven years.

Read the full story at the Ellsworth American

Fish survey key to developing viable management plan

October 25, 2016 — STONINGTON, Maine – It’s been 20 years since the ground fishing population collapsed in the eastern Gulf of Maine.

Now, researchers are optimistic that fisheries could be replenished in the future.

In the 1990s, halibut, cod and pollock populations from Penobscot Bay to the Canadian border diminished so rapidly the fishery collapsed. Over fishing has been cited as a factor in the fishery being depleted.

And for the past several years, researchers have been taking a fish census of sorts.

“And that is a sentinel survey which sending out commercial fishermen with commercial gear, but in this case with fish hooks, both long lines and jigs, to try to catch codfish,” said Robin Alden, executive director of Penobscot East Resource Center. The survey is a collaborative effort between Penobscot East and the University of Maine.

In fact, the long line is two miles long and used for trolling from the stern of the vessels, while the jigs are cast from the boats’ deck every few minutes.

“I think species diversity is always important, especially when you have coastal communities that depend on fishing for a living. It’s dangerous to rely on just one species,” according to Pat Shepherd, logistics manager for the sentinel survey.

Read the full story at Fox Bangor

MAINE: Luke’s Lobster, fishermen’s co-op join forces as wharf gets new life

July 5, 2016 — TENANTS HARBOR, Maine — Nearly seven years after selling his first lobster roll, Cape Elizabeth native Luke Holden has opened the first Luke’s Lobster in Maine, a seasonal shack on Millers Wharf in Tenants Harbor.

Why did Holden, a 32-year-old who splits his time between New York City and Biddeford, choose to make his Maine debut in this scenic but out-of-the-way spot in coastal Knox County, 10 miles south of Thomaston? For the lobster, of course.

The Tenants Harbor shack actually sits on the wharf where 20 local lobstermen who fish Penobscot Bay will land over half a million pounds of lobster this year.

“This is about as close to the source as you can get,” said Holden, gesturing out to the lobsters sunk under the buy float just off the dock. “High-quality new shell Maine lobster. That’s my secret.”

But Luke’s has been buying lobster from a dozen Maine docks since he opened his first shack in New York City’s East Village in 2009. He could have opened a shack in any one of those places.

If he was going to come home to Maine, where most fishing villages have a good, if not great, local lobster shack, Holden wanted to do something different, something that would help the industry.

Then the owners of the wharf – the Miller brothers – and their lobstering pals gave him an opportunity to do that.

At Millers Wharf, Luke’s Lobster is now more than just a buyer. Luke’s sister company, Cape Seafood, is the guaranteed buyer of every lobster hauled by the 20 members of the newly founded Tenants Harbor Fisherman’s Co-op.

In a cooperative, fishermen bond together to split the overhead costs of running a dock, such as insurance, electricity and staffing the buy float, where boats unload their daily hauls for underwater storage.

The Tenants Harbor co-op is built to make money by shortening a lobster’s route from trap to table, eliminating middlemen such as lobster dealers and redistributing that savings to members.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald