Saving Seafood

Fishermen indicted in federal court for alleged fraud, violation of herring laws

February 3, 2022 — Five Maine fishermen  and one fisherman from New Hampshire, along with a corporation, were charged with conspiracy, mail fraud, and obstruction of justice in connection with a multi-year scheme to sell unreported Atlantic herring and falsify fishing records, U.S. Attorney Darcie N. McElwee announced in a news release. An indictment was filed January 27 in U.S. District Court.

Glenn Robbins, 75, of Eliot; Ethan Chase, 44, of Portsmouth, New Hampshire; Neil Herrick, 46, of Rockland; Andrew Banow, 35, of Rockport; Stephen Little, 56, of Warren; Jason Parent, 49, of Owls Head; and Western Sea, Inc., were named in a 35-count indictment returned Jan. 28.

Robbins is the owner and one of the captains of the Western Sea, a 99-foot purse seiner, and a federally permitted Atlantic fishing herring vessel moored in Rockland, according to the indictment.

Atlantic herring is defined as a small schooling fish that serves as a primary bait for Maine’s lobster industry.

Read the full story at the Penobscot Bay Pilot

‘It’s not hard work for me’: At 101 years old, this Maine lobsterwoman still works the water

August 16, 2021 — It’s not yet 5 a.m., and the landing at the Spruce Head Fishermen’s Co-op is shrouded in predawn fog that obscures the waters beyond. It’s time to go to work, and Virginia Oliver and her son Max approach the dock in the dark in a 30-foot lobster boat.

They tie up under the stark, mist-speckled glare from an overhead light. Bait is brought aboard, equipment adjusted, and Max peers into the gloom as he eases the boat into Penobscot Bay.

In the world of Maine lobstering, it’s a scene that is repeated countless times up and down the state’s rugged coast. But here’s the difference: No other boat has a 101-year-old lobsterwoman aboard, and a fully working one at that.

“I grew up with this,” said Virginia Oliver, a Rockland woman who began lobstering when she was 8, just before the Great Depression. “It’s not hard work for me. It might be for somebody else, but not me.”

Oliver moved deliberately but confidently about the boat, which is named Virginia, for her. She smiled and laughed readily, walked with only a slight stoop, and bent to her work with no-nonsense attention to detail and not a word of complaint.

The fog began to burn off shortly before 7 a.m., and the Olivers pointed out landmarks that have been embedded in family lore for well over a century. Fat seals lay perched on seaweed-covered rocks. Max pointed out a “sweet spot” for lobstering among the many small, rocky islands.

His mother came to work this day with a bit of makeup on her face, her blue eyes and a pair of small earrings twinkling in the hazy dawn.

Read the full story at The Boston Globe

MAINE: Rising seas could require $4.8 million in retrofits in Rockland alone, study estimates

January 16, 2020 — The cost for Rockland to protect its waterfront properties near Harbor and Buoy Parks from rising seas will cost more than $4.8 million, a study says.

These estimates do not include the cost to prepare other municipal shorefront properties or private property in Rockland.

These are the findings of a report commissioned last year by the Maine Department of Marine Resources. The city received the report this month.

The study looked at single sites in 10 communities along Penobscot Bay.

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.

For Rockland, the report – developed by Wood Environment & Infrastructure Solutions, Inc. of Portland – focused on the middle pier next to Buoy Park, the harbor master’s building at Harbor Park, the sewage treatment pump station at Buoy Park, and the Maine Lobster Festival’s lobster cooker.

Read the full story from The Courier-Gazette at The Portland Press Herald

Maine commercial fish pier gets $830K grant for upgrades

August 22, 2018 — The U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration has awarded the city of Rockland, Maine, an $830,000 grant to renovate its commercial fish pier.

The renovations will support the region’s lobster and herring fleets.

The project will include resurfacing the pier, stabilizing the storage areas, and upgrading the electrical system. According to the administration, the investment is expected to help retain 86 jobs.

“The grant for the Rockland Municipal Fish Pier will have a positive impact to Rockland’s local economy and fishing industry. Rockland should continue to find a balance between the tourism industry that has seen tremendous growth in the past two decades and the long history of fishing and maritime tradition,” said Casey O’Hara, the assistant treasurer for the Maine- and Alaska-based fishing company O’Hara Corp. The company has some offices located in Rockland. “The impact of the herring and lobster industries benefit not only Rockland but the entire state of Maine.”

The $830,000 grant will be matched by a $350,000 federal grant from the Northern Border Regional Commission as well as funding from the Maine Department of Transportation and city of Rockland, according to a release from Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine). The total cost of the project is projected to be $1.66 million.

“The EDA is an important source of investment for Maine, which is why I have been proud to work with appropriations colleagues from both sides of the aisle to protect its funding from being eliminated, as the Trump administration has proposed the last two years,” said Pingree. “The jobs this project preserves and creates shows why it’s so important to keep defending the EDA and other effective programs.”

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Low Numbers of Endangered Whales Sparks Debate About Whether Lobster Industry Threatens Species

March 9, 2018 — The population of the endangered North Atlantic right whale took a big hit last year with a record number found dead in Canadian waters from ship strikes and entanglements. With this year’s calving season ending and no new births observed, an ongoing debate over whether Maine’s lobster industry poses a mortal threat to the species is gaining new urgency.

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution scientist Mark Baumgartner says that to help the whales survive much longer, the ropes Maine lobstermen use to tend their traps have to be modified or even eliminated. And it’s not just for the whales’ sake.

“I feel the industry is in jeopardy,” Baumgartner says.

Baumgartner was at the Fishermen’s Forum in Rockland late last week to detail the whale’s plight. If the lobster industry doesn’t respond effectively, he says, the federal government will step in.

“As the population continues to decline and pressure is put on the government to do something about it, then they’re going to turn to closures, because that’s all they’ll have,” he says.

There were about 450 North Atlantic right whales estimated to be alive in 2016. There were only five calves born last year, and a record 17 deaths caused by entanglement or ship strikes.

Read the full story at Maine Public

 

Gulf of Maine lobster conservation efforts to be reviewed

August 4, 2017 — ROCKLAND, Maine — This is peak season for eating Maine lobster. The proof is in the pots, or the cookers, at the 70th annual Maine Lobster Festival in Rockland. Crowds eagerly gobbled up plates of hot lobster ton Thursday, and many went back for seconds.

Ellen Robinson came to Maine from  Tennessee, and said her goal was, “to eat lobster as much as I can hold, which I’m doing, and I will eat more.”

The lobster industry likes to hear those comments, as they show there are plenty of customers waiting for what Maine fishermen catch. The industry has seen record catches and income in recent years. But researchers have said there appear to be fewer small, juvenile lobsters growing on the bottom of the inshore areas of the Gulf of Maine.

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission has decided to study the conservation efforts in the three states of the Gulf to determine what works best, and whether any changes are needed to keep the population healthy.

Read and watch the full story at WCSH

Future lobstermen are staying in school thanks to unique Maine program

April 10, 2017 — Were it not for the fisherman’s academy at Oceanside High School, 16-year-old boat captain Payten Simmons said she would have little incentive to go to class.

“I don’t know if I [would have] dropped out, I don’t know what I’d be doing … [but] it makes me want to go to school,” she said. “I like to come to school now.”

Simmons, who lives in Friendship and is the only girl out of six 11th-graders in the program, bought her own lobster boat, Fear Knot, and has been operating it for the last three years. She is the only member of the program who hauls traps in the winter and the summer, which means most of her weekends during the school year are spent hauling, sometimes with the help of her dad, who also is a lobsterman.

Simmons, who has an apprentice lobster license, is limited to fishing 150 traps, which tend to yield around 1,000 pounds of lobster each time she goes out to haul her traps. With Maine fishermen being paid on average $4 per pound the past couple of years, she makes good money.

When the option of making that kind of money is on the table for a student, “part of me doesn’t blame them for not [wanting] to come to school,” said Ian Carey, a social studies teacher at Oceanside who also teaches academy students. “I can definitely see how the value of an education is definitely clouded.”

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

Drop in herring a mystery in Maine as bait price booms

March 13, 2017 — ROCKLAND, Maine — Maine’s booming lobster industry has a big problem involving a little fish.

The state’s iconic lobster fishery is healthy, having set records for volume and value in 2016. But the fishery for herring, a small schooling fish that lobsters love to eat, is another story.

Herring is suddenly the second-most valuable fishery in the state, and Maine’s most valuable species of fish, bringing in $19 million at the docks in 2016. It’s also the most popular bait used in lobster traps, and the climb in value corresponds with demand from the hungry lobster fishery and a drop in catch of herring off of New England.

Scientists and fishermen are trying to figure out why Maine’s Atlantic herring catch — the largest in the nation — has fallen from 103.5 million pounds in 2014 to 77.2 million last year. The per-pound price of the fish at the dock has gone up 56 percent since 2014, and that price is eventually borne by people who buy lobsters.

“The whole dynamic of the fishery has changed,” said Jeff Kaelin, who works in government relations for Lund’s Fisheries, which lands herring in Maine.

Kaelin, and others who work in and study the fishery, thinks climate and the way the government manages herring may have played a role in the decline of catch. Atlantic herring are managed via a quota system, and regulators have slashed the quota by more than 40 percent since the early 2000s.

Read the full story at the Associated Press

MAINE: State senate candidate Emery applauds reopening of Atlantic menhaden fishery

August 30, 2016 — ROCKLAND, Maine — Facing a shortage of herring that threatens the Maine’s fishing industry, lobstermen and bait fishermen have been relying on menhaden during the peak of the lobster season. Menhaden, known locally as pogies, is the common alternative bait used by lobstermen.

The annual catch limit had been exceeded in July and an emergency extension of the quota to 3.5 million pounds for New England was instituted. As the catch rapidly approached the temporary “episodic event” quota extension, the Maine Department of Marine Resources closed the pogie fishery.

The week of Aug. 19, Maine DMR reopened the pogie fishery after it determined that, even with the increased catch, fish stocks remain healthy.

Dave Emery, Republican candidate for the Maine Senate in District 12, was a member of the Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries, Conservation, and the Environment when he served in Congress. Emery met at F.J. O’Hara & Sons with fishermen and industry experts two weeks ago to discuss the bait issue, along with other issues impacting the industry.

“Better data and more frequent analysis would provide the industry with a more complete understanding of fish population. This is important both to guarantee necessary conservation measures, but also to provide the lobster industry with sufficient bait for the robust lobster market, which is valued at $500 million in Maine,” Emery said.

Read the full story at the Village Soup

Exactly where do Maine lobstermen find their catch? Hard to say

July 13, 2016 — It is the state’s largest fishery, bringing in more than $500 million a year and employing tens of thousands of people up and down the supply chain, but there is no map that shows exactly where Maine’s lobstermen trap their catch.

Most of them fish within 3 miles of the coast, and thus do not fill out detailed federal catch reports or have onboard satellite tracking systems that lend themselves to detailed maps of valuable fishing territories.

That suits many lobstermen just fine, because they say their territory changes from year to year and they don’t like the notion of the government tracking where they fish. But that attitude makes life difficult for regulatory agencies responsible for permitting non-fishing activities in the Gulf of Maine, such as wind farms or mining operations.

The lack of detailed, up-to-date maps of lobster fishing grounds is obvious when reviewing the hundreds of maps collected by the Northeast Regional Planning Body, the federal planning body that is overseeing the nation’s regional ocean planning from the Gulf of Maine to Long Island Sound. The council is building a trove of online data, maps and information tracking a wide range of coastal and marine activities, from popular cruise ship routes to protected marine mammal habitats to public beaches and beach restoration projects.

Trying to fill the information gap

The data portal has maps that paint a detailed picture of other fisheries, with current and historical views of the number of fishermen who work any given area for each species of groundfish and how much they are catching in each area. But the information about lobstering is limited to a few lobster biomass maps and management area maps.

The Island Institute, a nonprofit group out of Rockland that represents the interests of Maine’s island and more remote coastal communities, is trying to step up to fill that gap, if not with maps, then with voices from the lobstering industry.

The group has issued a report on the “spatial characterization” of the lobster fishery, which is government-speak for what a map of the lobster industry would look like if such a map existed, said Nick Battista, marine programs director for the institute and part of the team that produced the report.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald