July 12, 2019 — Maine lobsterman have gained a new option for baiting their traps as Cooke Aquaculture USA has secured permission from the state’s Department of Marine Resources to process and use whole blackbelly rosefish as lobster bait.
The new bait comes as the fishery’s main source of bait, herring, has faced a significant cut to quotas in 2019 and potentially beyond. The New England Fishery Management Council elected to slash the herring quota from nearly 50,000 metric tons (MT) to just over 15,000 MT – a 70 percent reduction – in the wakes of biomass surveys that indicated substantial declines in recruitment and biomass of the fish.
That quota cut means the lobster industry has to go without roughly 55 million pounds of bait in 2019; and the management council may cut quotas further in 2020 and 2021.
“Lobstering is an important part of the communities where we operate. Lobster fisherman are our friends, neighbors, and in many cases, family,” Glenn Cook, CEO of the Cooke Inc. family of companies, said in a release. “When we learned about the bait shortage and its impact on the lobster industry in Maine, we began to explore possible solutions.”