shrimp Archives - Page 36 of 44

Shrimp may be plentiful in Gulf of Mexico, but not Maine

November 18, 2016 — ELLSWORTH, Maine — State and federal fisheries regulators have imposed a moratorium on shrimp fishing in the Gulf of Maine for the fourth consecutive season because of “the depleted condition of the resource.”

Meeting in Portsmouth, N.H., last Thursday, Northern Shrimp Section of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission extended the current moratorium on commercial fishing for the 2017 fishing season that would, if fishing were allowed, begin Dec. 1.

The Section also approved a 116,845 pound (53 metric ton) “research set aside” to scientists to continue to collect important biological data about the size of the shrimp population and where the shrimp are located. As a practical matter, that means 15 fishermen chosen by lottery from among those who apply will have a chance to harvest, and sell, a few shrimp. Preference will be given to individuals in the lottery using specific gear designed to limit the catch of small shrimp and who were active in the shrimp fishery June 7, 2011.

According to the scientific evidence, the news for Northern shrimp, and the fishermen who made a living chasing them in winter, is grim.

In 1969, Maine fishermen landed more than 24 million pounds of shrimp. Total landings, including those in New Hampshire and Massachusetts, totaled more than 28 million pounds.

After a steady decline, landings surged to 17.9 million pounds in Maine (21 million pounds overall) during the 1996 season that ran from December 1995 through April 1996.

During the truncated 2013 season, the last before the moratorium, Maine shrimp landings were just over 639,000 pounds.

According to the ASMFC, the latest stock status report for Gulf of Maine northern shrimp indicates that measures of both abundance and biomass volume over the past four years “are the lowest on record” for the 33 years during which the surveys have been done.

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American

Season for Maine shrimp closed for fourth winter

November 14th, 2016 — As expected, the Atlantic States Marine Fishery Commission will close the Gulf of Maine to shrimping in 2017 for the fourth consecutive season.

The ASMFC’s shrimp section, the panel responsible for setting the northern shrimp regulations, voted to extend the closure throughout 2017 and to establish a 53-ton research set-aside that effectively will produce the only shrimp harvested in the next year from the Gulf of Maine.

The shrimp section decision to shutter the beleagured fishery for a fourth consecutive season because of the vastly imperiled state of the northern shrimp stock follows the earlier recommendation of its northern shrimp technical committee.

The technical committee based its recommendation on its survey of the 2016 northern shrimp stock that showed northern shrimp remain in critical condition, with historic lows in biomass, spawning and recruitment.

“Abundance and biomass indices for 2012-2016 are the lowest on record of the 33-year time series,” according to the technical committee’s summary of the stock assessment. “Current harvestable biomass is almost entirely composed of the 2013 year class. Recruits from the 2015 and 2016 year classes are not expected to reach exploitable size until 2018 and 2019, respectively.”

Tina Berger, ASMFC spokeswoman, said representatives from Maine offered a motion for a directed, albeit limited, fishery rather than an extension of the moratorium into the fourth season, but that was struck down due to the continuing depleted state of the stock.

The 53-ton research set-aside more than doubles the 2016 RSA of 22 metric tons.

Read the full story at The Gloucester Times

Maine Lobstermen to Join in Shrimp Research Project

November 11th, 2016 — As the commission that regulates Atlantic fisheries is due to vote on whether to keep the shrimp fishery open for another year because of population concerns, a research project at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute is looking to get some real numbers about those populations.

The institute is sending Maine lobstermen out with acoustic equipment that will help them learn where the shrimp are congregating over the winter, and where they lay their eggs.

Adam Baukus, a research associate at GMRI, says using sound allows researchers to cover a lot more ground. “The sampling is being done in areas that haven’t been surveyed in the past, but in the future fisheries managers may use the results to figure out whether it’s time to reopen the shrimp fishery.”

It’s been closed since a population collapse during the 2013 fishing season that’s thought to be related to warming ocean temperatures.

Read the full story at Maine Public Radio

Maine’s depleted shrimp fishery to remain closed for another season

November 11th, 2016 — The Maine shrimp fishery will remain closed in 2017, but the amount that shrimpers can take during scientific surveys and then sell has more than doubled.

Interstate fishery managers at the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission voted Thursday to keep the shrimping moratorium in effect for the 2017 season on the advice of its science advisers. The popular winter seafood had been a favorite throughout New England before the population collapsed in 2013 despite several years of increasingly stringent fishing restrictions, such as trip and trap limits, and smaller landings.

The increase in the amount of shrimp that can be hauled for research work will mean this hard-to-get regional delicacy will once again be available over the winter, albeit in very limited batches, which will probably delight restaurateurs who like to serve up this sweet, pink protein in a saute, a skillet or a salad. Buyers paid a record $4 a pound for Maine shrimp at a research set-aside auction at the Portland Fish Exchange in 2015.

Scientists say the status of the small crustacean “continues to be critically poor” with the stock’s overall numbers, including the shrimp that can be harvested and could spawn new generations, at unprecedented lows for five consecutive years, according to the latest shrimp stock assessment report.

Read the full story at The Portland Press Herald

Sound technology helping scientists assess health of Maine shrimp population

November 10th, 2016 — This winter, a small fleet of Maine fishermen will head out to hunt for northern shrimp, even though the fishery itself has been closed for three years.

They won’t be landing the New England delicacy so it can be eaten. The fishermen will use acoustic transducers, and a few nets and traps, to help the Gulf of Maine Research Institute learn where these small pink crustaceans congregate in our near-shore waters over the winter, where they lay their eggs. Using sound waves to survey a species as small as shrimp is a new challenge for scientists.

“We have found low-frequency sound waves are good at detecting big fish, like cod, and high frequencies are good at detecting small organisms like shrimp,” said research associate Adam Baukus of GMRI. “The technology allows us to cover a lot more of the ocean than we can with trawls or traps alone. With sound, we can do 40 miles at a time. … Traditional (trawl) surveys are lucky to cover a quarter mile.”

To collect the data, GMRI has outfitted 10 lobster boats with echosounders, high-tech fish finders, to conduct monthly surveys of near-shore waters from Kittery to Cutler in January, February and March, which is the height of what used to be a $70 million fishing season. The lobstermen, who receive small stipends to cover fuel costs, will survey the same 40-mile-long stretch of water each time.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Maine’s shrimp fishery to remain shut down in 2017

November 10, 2016 — PORTLAND, Maine — New England’s shuttered shrimp fishery will not be allowed to reopen this winter.

An arm of the regulatory Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission decided on Thursday that it will keep the fishery closed because of concerns about poor reproduction in a warming ocean.

The fishery has been shut down since 2013. It was mostly based in Maine when it was open, though some fishermen brought the shrimp ashore in New Hampshire and Massachusetts.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at WLNE

Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission likely to keep Gulf of Maine shrimp fishery closed

November 8, 2016 — Maine shrimpers are all but resigned to another year of being unable to pursue their quarry in the Gulf of Maine, with a regulatory board set to decide this week whether to allow a season this winter.

Maine shrimp are fished in the Gulf of Maine and were a popular winter seafood for years, but regulators shut the fishery down after a collapse during the 2013 fishing season, and it has remained closed since. The shrimp have struggled to rebuild populations as waters have warmed.

A board of the regulatory Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission is set to decide Thursday whether fishing will be allowed this year. A committee of scientists has advised the board it’s not a good idea, with temperatures off New England inhospitable to the shrimp.

Spencer Fuller, a shrimp and lobster buyer with Cozy Harbor Seafood in Portland, said his company was once the largest processor of Maine shrimp in the country, and it has suffered. He said that he is prepared for another year of closure, but that it will send residual troubles through Maine’s seafood industry.

“All you have to do is look back to the history of shrimp here in the state of Maine and the contributions it has made over the last 60 years,” Fuller said. “It’s a big deal not only for us, but for the wharfs we deal with, markets we deal with.”

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Cold-water shrimp industry poised for shutdown to continue

November 7, 2016 — PORTLAND, Maine — Maine shrimpers are all but resigned to another year of being unable to pursue their quarry in the Gulf of Maine, with a regulatory board set to decide this week whether to allow a season this winter.

Spencer Fuller, a shrimp and lobster buyer with Cozy Harbor Seafood in Portland, said his company was once the largest processor of Maine shrimp in the country and has suffered. He said that he is prepared for another year of closure, but that it will send residual troubles through Maine’s seafood industry.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Seattle Times

Northern shrimp fishing season unlikely

November 3, 2016 — BAR HARBOR, Maine — The Atlantic States Fisheries Commission held its annual meeting in Bar Harbor last week and took action affecting the herring, menhaden, horseshoe crab and Jonah crab fisheries, among others.

The word on whether there will be a Northern shrimp fishery this winter, though, will have to wait until next week.

On Thursday, Nov. 10, the ASMFC’s Northern Shrimp Section and Advisory Panel will meet in Portsmouth, N.H., to review the latest stock status report and recommendations from the panel’s technical committee about what the 2017 shrimp fishery should look like.

Given the committee’s view that the Gulf of Maine northern shrimp stock “remains in a collapsed state,” odds are that, as during the past three seasons, it will be another winter of empty nets for fishermen.

For the past three winters, regulators have imposed a moratorium on fishing based on the what scientists said was the record low level of the shrimp resource and poor recruitment — the annual introduction of juvenile shrimp — since 2012.

Last week, the technical committee released a report incorporating its recommendations for the 2016-2017 season. Based on the latest scientific data, the recommendation was to keep the shrimp boats in port, and the trawl nets and traps out of the water for another year.

“Given the continued poor condition of the resource and poor prospects for the near future,” the committee recommended “that the Northern Shrimp Section extend the moratorium on fishing through 2017.”

Another moratorium would be bad news for Maine fishermen.

Annual landings figures are somewhat misleading, because each year includes parts of two fishing seasons. (Historically, each season ran from Dec. 1 to the following April.)

In any event, in 1996, Maine fishermen landed nearly 18 million pounds of shrimp worth some $12.9 million. By 2012, landings of shrimp in Maine had fallen to slightly more than 4.8 million pounds worth some $4.6 million.

Even at that lower number, that a significant bite out of winter fishing incomes.

According to figures compiled by the technical committee, the number of Maine boats active in the fishery in the years prior to the moratorium first imposed in 2014 has varied widely.

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American

Scientists say Maine’s shrimp season should stay shut down due to warming waters

October 28th, 2016 — A scientific committee says Maine’s shuttered cold water shrimp fishery should stay shut down for at least another year.

The shrimp fishery has been shuttered since the end of 2013 because of low populations. Scientists say warming ocean temperatures off New England are inhospitable for the shrimp.

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission says a scientific committee that studies the shrimp reports the species still faces “poor prospects for the near future.” The committee is recommending the commission extend the moratorium on fishing for the shrimp through 2017.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The Boston Globe