November 12, 2018 — PORTLAND, Maine (AP) – Fishing managers will decide this week if New England’s fishery for shrimp must remain closed because of concerns about the environment and the animal’s population.
The shrimp fishery, based mostly in Maine, has been closed since 2013. The small, pink shrimp, once a popular winter seafood item, have been mostly unavailable to consumers in America since.
Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Washington Times
October 26, 2018 — Portland, Maine — A small species of shark that is fished for food off the East Coast has declined slightly in population, and fishermen will be allowed to catch slightly less of it in the coming year.
Spiny dogfish are harvested off several Atlantic states, and they are especially popular in Europe. The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission says a recent assessment of the shark’s population shows a decline in the number of spiny dogfish.
The commission says the decline requires a 46 percent reduction in the dogfish quota for the 2019-20 fishing year. The commission says the reduction is designed to avoid overfishing.
Fishermen will be allowed to catch about 20.5 million pounds of the dogfish in the new fishing year. They caught nearly 27 million pounds in 2016.
Read the full story from the Associated Press at U.S News and World Report
March 8, 2018 — Sardine fishing nets will remain empty for a fourth straight year along the West Coast, where biologists are comparing the dramatic decline of the schooling fish to the infamous collapse that led to the downfall of Monterey’s once-thriving Cannery Row.
The northern Pacific sardine population, stretching from Mexico to British Columbia, has plummeted 97 percent since 2006, according to an assessment released this week by the National Marine Fisheries Service and the Pacific Fishery Management Council.
The perilously low numbers give regulators no choice but to close fishing, which had been scheduled to start July 1, from Mexico to the Canadian border.
The 14 voting members of the fishery council, which makes policy along the coasts of California, Oregon and Washington, will meet April 8 in Portland, Ore., to discuss the results, but everyone agrees a fishing ban is inevitable. The council is required by federal law to close ocean fishing when the numbers fall this far below conservation objectives.
Read the full story at the San Francisco Chronicle
November 29, 2017 — PORTLAND, Maine — An advisory group is recommending regulators reopen New England’s long-shuttered shrimp fishery next year.
An arm of the regulatory Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission will decide on Wednesday in Portland if there will be a fishery this coming season. The advisory board’s recommendation clashes with an opinion from the commission’s technical committee, which wants to keep the fishery closed.
New England shrimp fishing is based in Maine and has been shut down since 2013.
Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Bradenton Herald
November 27, 2017 — PORTLAND, Maine — A decision is coming this week about whether New England’s long-shuttered shrimp fishery can reopen.
New England shrimping, largely based in Maine, has been shut down since 2013. Regulators say the shrimp are suffering from poor reproduction and warming ocean temperatures.
An arm of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission is meeting on Wednesday in Portland to decide if there will be a fishery this coming season.
Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Bristol Herald Courier
November 22, 2017 — The Maine shrimp fishery appears headed toward another closed season in 2018 based on bleak stock assessments made earlier this year, according to federal officials.
If a panel meeting next Wednesday in Portland agrees with the recommendations released this week, 2018 would be the fourth year the small but much-loved winter fishery is closed.
“It was not a good result for shrimp this year,” said Max Appelman, who coordinates the fishery for the federal regulatory body, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, that oversees the fishery.
Abundance of the species was at a 34-year low in 2017, according to the commission. During the annual summer scientific survey, data showed that survival of the shrimp that spawned in 2016 was the second lowest observed in the history of the survey, which began in the mid-1980s.
Climate change is the likeliest cause for the crash in the fishery; Northern shrimp, or pandalus borealis, require cold winter water to spawn. Waters in the Gulf of Maine, the southern most waters the shrimp can survive in, are warming faster than 99 percent of the world’s oceans, according to the Gulf of Maine Research Institute.
The environment for shrimp is increasingly “inhospitable,” according to the report.
Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald
November 13, 2017 — PORTLAND, Maine — Maine is allowing scallop fishermen to catch the same amount of scallops in the coming season as they did in the previous one.
The Maine Department of Marine Resources says its advisory council has approved the specifications for the 2017-18 scallop fishing season. Last year, fishermen were allowed to harvested 15 gallons of scallops per day in the Cobscook Bay area and 10 gallons per day in the rest of the state.
Read the full story from the Associated Press at Maine Public
November 7, 2017 — PORTLAND, Maine — Fishermen up and down the New England coast say it has been decades since they’ve been able to catch so many Atlantic bluefin tuna, so fast. Once severely depleted, populations of the prized sushi fish appear to be rebuilding.
Now the industry and some scientists say the international commission that regulates the fish can allow a much bigger catch. But some environmental groups disagree.
Peter Speeches is a commercial fisherman who sails his 45-foot boat, the Erin & Sarah, out of a Portland marina. His rods and reels are racked, though, and the boat has been docked the past several weeks. That’s because tuna fishermen reached their fall catch quotas earlier than ever this year.
“There was more fish here than I’ve seen in 30 years, and I fish virtually every single day. This year we caught probably the same amount, but in half the time,” he says.
This year, Speeches says, the thousand-plus boats that fish bluefin off New England were blessed by day after day of good boating weather. Forage fish such as herring and pogies showed up in numbers — and they swam relatively near to shore, bringing the big tuna in to feast, where smaller boats could get at them pretty easily.
Above all, he says, there were just a whole lot of bluefin around, and biting.
“They were everywhere. When they hit this year in July, they hit from the Canadian border to New Jersey, and they were thick. And they got caught fast,” Speeches says.
October 10, 2017 — PORTLAND, Maine — is getting more than $1 million from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to support expanding the state’s local food economy.
The funding includes a $500,000 USDA Local Food Promotion Grant to Greater Portland Council of Governments for its “Scaling for Growth in the Portland Foodshed” project to address a lack of food processing infrastructure and an inefficient distribution network. The project will add processing capacity, reduce food waste by finding inefficiencies, and is expected to increase local food purchasing among retailers and institutions by $7.5 million.
“Increasing the production and consumption of local food represents a fantastic opportunity for Maine jobs and businesses,” U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-Maine District 1, said in a news release announcing the awards. “From boosting local food processing in Greater Portland to marketing locally caught seafood, these federal investments will be terrific assets to building Maine’s food-based economy. That’s why I’ve advocated so hard for these kinds of investments in Washington and am actively working to strengthen them.”
October 3, 2017 — PORTLAND, Maine — Fishing regulators will decide in November whether it’s time to reopen Maine’s shuttered shrimp fishery.
An arm of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission plans to meet on Nov. 29 in Portland to determine specifications for the 2018 fishing year. The fishery was shut down in 2013 amid concerns about poor reproduction and declining population.
The shrimp have been largely unavailable to American consumers since the shutdown, though they are also harvested by Canadian fishermen.
Read the full story from the Associated Press at the News & Observer