Saving Seafood

Maine joins national offshore wind research consortium

March 1, 2021 — Maine has joined the National Offshore Wind Research and Development Consortium, a public-private partnership that could expand the state’s access to research and resources for its offshore wind program.

“Through the consortium, Maine has the opportunity to learn and advance technologies alongside a variety of others to guide offshore wind energy in the Gulf of Maine,” Dan Burgess, director of the Governor’s Energy Office, said in a news release Thursday. “Access to more knowledge, data and research from around the country will inform our approach to offshore wind and benefit Maine’s people, communities and economy.”

Maine’s membership in the consortium includes the Governor’s Energy Office and the University of Maine, a center of technology and innovation in floating offshore wind. The nonprofit consortium, established in 2018, works to advance offshore wind technology in the United States through cost-effective and responsible development to maximize economic benefits.

Read the full story at MaineBiz

MAINE: New England Aqua Ventus moving forward with turbine

February 23, 2021 — New England Aqua Ventus (NEAV), formerly known as Maine Aqua Ventus, will soon begin ramping up efforts to put a single 10-12 megawatt turbine about two miles south of Monhegan Island. The project seeks to lay over 20 miles of cable several feet under the ocean floor from East Boothbay shores to the site.

The floating semisubmersible hull is a University of Maine Advanced Structures and Composites Center design patented as VolturnUS. The UMaine-based researchers and engineers constructed and ran a 1:8, one-to-eight, version of a six megawatt turbine off the coast of Castine.

The project scored $39.9 million in U.S. Department of Energy research and development funds beating out 70 other public and private projects; however, the project cost, about $100 million, and other snags along the way kept the project relatively dormant until Gov. Janet Mills signed a law in November 2019 directing Maine Public Utilities Commission to approve the project’s contract. This paved the way for Aqua Ventus to sign a 20-year power-purchase agreement at above-market rates with Central Maine Power.

When the project rebranded in August 2020 as NEAV, partnering UMaine with Mitsubishi subsidiary Diamond Offshore Wind and German utilities giant RWE Renewables, the two-turbine project morphed into a singular larger one. Since then, NEAV has waited for the COVID-19 pandemic to quiet down before attacking the project in earnest and connecting with the coastal and fishing communities.

Read the full story at The Boothbay Register

Lobster research explores ocean warming effects

February 22, 2021 — A team of researchers from the University of Maine’s Darling Marine Center in Walpole and Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in East Boothbay and the Maine Department of Marine Resources in West Boothbay Harbor recently published their research on the effects of ocean warming and acidification on gene expression in the earliest life stages of the American lobster.

The work was published in the scientific journal Ecology and Evolution with collaborators from the University of Prince Edward Island and Dalhousie University in Canada.

The team’s experiments examined the gene regulatory response of post-larval lobsters to the separate and combined effects of warming and acidification anticipated by the end of the 21st century. They found that genes regulating a range of physiological functions, from those controlling shell formation to the immune response, are either up- or down-regulated. Importantly, they observed that the two stressors combined induced a greater gene regulatory response than either stressor alone.

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American

Entrepreneurs are finding new ways to use fish waste at a Maine co-working space

February 10, 2021 — Patrick Breeding and his partner developed a cream to fight dry skin from lobster waste out of necessity.

He and girlfriend Amber Boutiette were bioengineering graduate students at the University of Maine studying ways to use lobster byproducts, the parts that are tossed away. At the same time Boutiette was unable to find a product that relieved her eczema, a condition that makes skin red and itchy.

The duo discovered a protein in a lobster circulatory fluid that helps the crustacean heal wounds, developed the cream and last November formed Marin Skincare to sell it. The initial batch of the cream sold out in two months, Breeding said.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

A New Device Tracks Lobsters as They Move Through the Supply Chain

January 11, 2021 — Lobsters are big business in Maine. In 2019 alone, the state netted almost US $500-million from this popular crustacean. Profits would likely be even higher, though, if the seafood industry could reduce “shrink”—the number of lobsters that die on their way through the supply chain. Every one percent in shrink means almost $5-million in unrealized income, says Eric Thunberg, an economist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. “Those aren’t small losses.”

“There’s a lot of interest in reducing shrink,” says Rick Wahle, a zoologist at the University of Maine. “Unfortunately,” he says, “there’s very little hard data to work with.”

“In most cases, it’s not going to be rocket science to mitigate these problems,” says Wahle. “It may just be shorter handling times, reducing time between the dock and the holding tank, dropping more aerators in the water, or lowering storage density.” The question is where along the supply chain those changes should be applied.

A new project, led by Wahle and supported by NOAA, is now tackling that question with two purpose-designed technologies to record the health and environment conditions of lobsters as they move from trap to distributor. One sensor package, called MockLobster, measures temperature and acceleration of a crate of lobsters as it’s moved around. The team wants to add other sensors for dissolved oxygen and acidity, but these features are still being prototyped.

Read the full story at Smithsonian Magazine

MAINE: With $500K award, Local Catch Network will grow ‘boat-to-fork’ market

January 5, 2021 — The Local Catch Network, based in the School of Marine Sciences at the University of Maine, was founded in 2011 as a nonprofit network of seafood harvesters, researchers and community organizations across North America.

Today, the network has more than 200 members, including 12 in Maine. It promotes “boat-to-fork” systems of local and regional seafood distribution, such as community supported fisheries.

Last month, the Local Catch Network received a $499,463 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farmers Market Promotion Program to accelerate the local distribution model and fund “Scale Your Local Catch,” the first nationwide training and technical assistance program to catalyze direct-to-consumer seafood operations.

In all, the organization has raised $624,331 for the program, including a 25% match from the University of Maine System. Expecting to recruit its first cohort this summer, the program will help fishing communities gain marketing, social media, pricing and permitting skills through workshops, networking, mentorships and digital tools to link consumers with producers in their local areas.

Read the full story at MaineBiz

Research reveals diverse community benefits of small-scale fisheries

December 22, 2020 — Marine fisheries provide many benefits to coastal communities. Fisheries generate food, provide employment and economic profit through the supply chain, and play an important role in a sense of community and individual identity.

University of Maine researchers Heather Leslie and Kara Pellowe are studying the diverse benefits provided by fisheries in partnership with harvesters and other local experts in multiple regions, including Maine and Mexico.

Pellowe, a former UMaine postdoctoral scholar now at the Stockholm Resilience Centre in Sweden, and Leslie, director of the UMaine Darling Marine Center in Walpole, contend that the benefits provided by fisheries are more diverse than is often accounted for in fisheries management.In a recent study published in the scientific journal Ambio, Pellowe and Leslie study the diverse benefits that small-scale fisheries provide to coastal communities. The research indicates that non-fishing families recognize the diverse benefits associated with coastal fisheries. The study specifically investigated how these benefits were recognized in the community of Loreto in the northwest region of Mexico, where both fisheries and tourism play important roles in the local economy, much like the Maine coast.

Read the full story at PHYS.org

North American Local Catch Network Awarded $500,000 USDA Grant to Catalyze “Boat-to-Fork” Seafood Marketing in the United States

December 18, 2020 — The following was released by the North American Local Catch Network:

The Local Catch Network, based in the School of Marine Sciences at the University of Maine, has received a half-million dollar grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Farmers Market Promotion Program (FMPP) to support better integration of seafood into local and regional food systems and fund the creation of ‘Scale Your Local Catch,’ the first nationwide training and technical assistance program to catalyze sustainable direct-to-consumer seafood operations.

The Local Catch Network has raised $624,331 for the project, which included a 25 percent match contribution from the University of Maine System, in addition to a $499,463 grant awarded by the USDA. With funding secured, the Local Catch Network is now in the beginning stages of building out the Scale Your Local Catch program’s infrastructure and expects to start recruiting its first cohort in the summer of 2021. To start, the program will prioritize seafood operations that serve consumers in low income and low food access areas.

Joshua Stoll, Assistant Professor of Marine Policy at the University of Maine and co-founder of the Local Catch Network, explained the significance of the project:

“We are thrilled that the Local Catch Network is receiving this incredibly important and timely grant. As we have seen during the COVID-19 pandemic, and repeatedly in recent history, fishers and seafood harvesters are vulnerable to social, environmental, and economic shocks. Direct and values-based seafood businesses have been a bright spot, stepping up during the pandemic when traditional supply chains have faltered. This grant will help to ensure that these alternative business models remain sustainable long-term and seafood is recognized as an integral part of local and regional food systems.”

A broad range of skills, from marketing and social media management to pricing and permitting, are required to successfully sell seafood directly to consumers. Scale Your Local Catch will reduce the learning curve for fishing communities by leveraging the collective experience of the Local Catch Network and partnering organizations through workshops, networking and mentorship opportunities, and digital tools, such as a next-generation Seafood Finder designed to link consumers with producers in their local area. Scale Your Local Catch is being modeled after ‘Ag of the Middle,’ a well-established training program for small and mid-sized agricultural businesses facilitated by the Oregon-based non-profit, Ecotrust.

“We’ve successfully built a training program for farmers in the Northwest to expand their ability to feed the region. Scale Your Local Catch will expand the model and reach communities across the country, especially low-income communities and areas with low food access,” said Tyson Rasor of Ecotrust, one of the grant program partners.

“As a seafood business owner, I am so pleased with this opportunity to expand the Local Catch Network and support business models like ours across the US,” said Kerry Marhefka of Abundant Seafood and Executive Committee member of the Local Catch Network. “We must work collectively to demystify seafood as a protein source for consumers, remove physical, financial and educational barriers to access, and foster greater understanding of community supported fisheries as a path to creating more resilient and thriving local economies.”

Online ‘Entangled’ film screening and panel discussion presented by University of Maine

December 7, 2020 — The University of Maine Hutchinson Center will host a free online screening of award-winning documentary “Entangled” at 7 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 11. The film will be introduced by filmmaker David Abel and followed by a discussion featuring a panel of researchers and industry experts.

The film will be shown online and the discussion will take place via Zoom. There is no cost to participate. To register, visit the Hutchinson Center website.

“Entangled” is an award-winning, feature-length film (75 minutes) about how climate change has accelerated a collision between one of the world’s most endangered species, North America’s most valuable fishery, and a federal agency mandated to protect both. The film chronicles the efforts to protect North Atlantic right whales from extinction, the impacts of those efforts on the lobster industry, and how regulators have struggled to balance the vying interests. Directed by David Abel and Andy Laub — makers of “Lobster War” and “Sacred Cod,” “Entangled” won a 2020 Jackson Wild Media Award, nature films’ equivalent to the Oscars. It also won Best Conservation Film at the Mystic Film Festival.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

Proposal Would Build 16-Square-Mile Wind Farm Off Maine Coast

November 23, 2020 — Gov. Janet Mills on Friday announced an ambitious, state-led effort to build as many as 12 floating wind-energy turbines off Maine’s coast.

Mills is on the hunt for a location for the array, in partnership with the University of Maine and the big-money investors behind the pioneering Aqua Ventus turbine experiment near Monhegan Island. But that’s got some fishermen worried.

The effort to win a so-called research lease from the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management will be led by Dan Burgess, director of the Governor’s Energy Office.

“The opportunity to work with these developers using the Maine-made, Maine-developed floating technology is just a really significant opportunity for the state and for us to continue to take a national and even global leadership position for floating offshore wind,” he says.

The Mills administration is pitching the project as small scale, needing “only” 16 square miles of ocean as compared to lease areas ten times as large for wind projects off southern New England. Still, with as many as 12 turbines running at a capacity of 10 megawatts each, Burgess says they could provide enough energy for 70,000-100,000 homes.

Read the full story at Maine Public