Economic Impact

April 5, 2012 – NEW BEDFORD— From Labrador to the Falkland Islands, there are not many fishing grounds Stanley Adamczewski has not trawled in 46 years on the water as a commercial fisherman. Fishing has been good to the Polish native who came to the U.S. in 1974 and started out as a deckhand on a groundfish boat. Through hard work and diligence, the man who fled communism to pursue the American dream realized his life's ambition in 1986 when he was able to buy his own fishing boat in New Bedford, the 72-foot steel dragger Odin. He renamed her Humbak, the Polish word for the humpback whale. But today the dream is fading. The days when a single-vessel owner like him can make a living on the water and keep a crew employed are vanishing before his eyes, he says.

Adamczewski has plenty of figures to support his belief. Last year, the fish he landed from his 72-foot steel dragger grossed more than $1 million at the dock, yet neither he nor his crew made a living wage for their long hours of hard, physical labor in one of the country's most dangerous professions.

It has been a long, slow decline for his business and his crew, best illustrated by the settlement sheets he produces from nearly identical fishing trips made several years apart.

In 2003, with a crew of five, the Humbak made port after 10 days fishing and grossed $38,000. Each crew member's share came to $2,631.

On March 20 this year, after a very similar trip and with the crew reduced to four, the catch brought $46,000 at the auction but, after expenses of $35,609, the crew received only $1,083.85 apiece for their efforts.

"They made less than minimum wage, about $4 an hour for around 240 hours work," Adamczewski said. "They could make more on welfare than fishing."

Read the complete story from The Standard-Times.

 

 

 

 

 

 

PORTLAND, Maine — Tiny translucent elvers — alien-looking baby eels the size of toothpicks, with big black eyes and spines — are mysterious creatures, floating thousands of miles from their birthplace in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean before ending up each spring in Maine’s rivers and streams.

But there’s no mystery about what’s drawing hundreds of fishermen to riverbanks to catch the creatures during the two-month fishing season. The price of the eels has skyrocketed to unparalleled levels, with catches bringing up to $2,000 a pound.

A worldwide shortage of the prized dinner fare, imported in infancy from Maine to Asia to be raised in farm ponds, has buyers paying top dollar for the baby American eels. A pound of eels should be worth around $30,000 on the open market once grown to market size, according to one dealer.

Read the complete story by The AP at The Boston Globe.

 

 

 

 

 

 

March 29, 2012 – The next two months will bring sleepless nights and high anxiety — and quite possibly an extraordinary windfall — for a small universe of people in Maine. They are the lucky few with licenses to catch elvers — young, tiny eels that look like cellophane noodles and by some accounts are fetching up to $2,200 per pound this spring.

Maine is one of only two states, along with South Carolina, where elver fishing is still allowed. And with Asian demand especially high — last year’s tsunami curbed supply in Japan, and Europe has cracked down on exporting eels — a gold rush of sorts is on along the rivers and streams of coastal Maine. Since the season began last week, stories have abounded of people making a small fortune in an often hard-luck state.

Elvers are a hot commodity in Asia, where aquaculture farms grow them to adult size and sell them for sushi and other food. They are believed to spawn in the Sargasso Sea and drift on currents to Maine, where they make their way to fresh water and, from March 22 through May 31, into the waiting nets of some 400 elver fishermen. The action takes place overnight, when elvers are most active.

“The first two days of the season were extremely amazing,” said Bill Quinby, an exporter based in Charleston, S.C., who shipped about 90 pounds of elvers to South Korea on Tuesday after buying them from Maine fishermen. “People were making $30,000, $40,000 a night.”

Takes like that have brought poachers out in force. Gov. Paul R. LePage signed emergency legislation on Thursday increasing fines for unlicensed elver fishing to $2,000, up from a maximum $500. The law also stiffens penalties for catching elvers before the season starts and tampering with the nets that they are caught in. Prices have dropped this week, though they remain far higher than in previous years. David Smith, a licensed elver fisherman from Southwest Harbor, said they were down to about $1,750 per pound, perhaps because the catch was so abundant in the first few days of the season.

Read the full story at the New York Times.

March 28, 2012 – Agar Supply, New England’s largest independent food distributor, has partnered with Legal Sea Foods to launch a new label that will allow restaurants and supermarkets to track fresh fish all along the supply chain.

Legal Sea Foods wholesale division, Nor’Easter, will supply nearly all of the fresh fish marketed under Agar’s “Nautifish” brand, including haddock, cod, salmon, and tuna. Nor’Easter is creating a barcode label on each package that will include details such as when the seafood was caught, the name of the boat and captain, the region where the fish was caught, and when it was prepared for packaging.

“Seafood can sometimes be an underhanded business and we have a commitment to truth in marketing,” said Karen S. Bressler, chief executive of Agar Supply.

Read the complete story from The Boston Globe.

 

 

 

 

 

 

March 22, 2012 – Years of economic pain has sharpened the message of fishing advocates who want Congress to make changes to the federal fisheries law, and the rhetoric.

“I have a front-row seat,” Rep. Steve Southerland II, R-Fla., told around 1,000 fishermen gathered in Washington, D.C. Wednesday, as he fumed over restrictions on Gulf of Mexico fishermen. “It’s a freedom issue.”

Not to be outdone by President Obama’s recent singing, Rep. Tim Scott, R-S.C., dipped into Ray Charles’ repetiore to express his feelings about fishing cutbacks and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Read the complete story from Asbury Park Press.

 

 

 

 

 

ELLSWORTH, Maine — It may have to go up quite a ways more before it compares to gold or saffron, but the price of elvers sure has come a long way in the past two years.

According to officials with Maine’s Department of Marine Resources, the first day of the state’s 2012 elver fishing season on Thursday saw some fishermen getting as much as $2,200 per pound.

Compare that with the 2010 elver fishing season, when the average price fishermen got for juvenile eels was $185 per pound. Between 1994 and 2010, the highest average price for their catch that elver fishermen received in any year was $346 per pound in 2007.

Then last year, it jumped. Demand for the eels, which are shipped live to the Far East and then raised to adult size before being sold in seafood markets, reached unprecedented highs, causing the average price for the season to increase to nearly $900 per pound, according to DMR statistics. In some areas last year the price was reported to be more than $1,000 per pound.

Read the complete story from The Bangor Daily News.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

EASTON, Maryland – – The Atlantic State Marine Fisheries Commission, which manages the menhaden fishery, held the hearing at Easton High School to take public comments on how it should manage proposed changes. The commission in November voted to reduce the annual harvest, and now must draft an implementation plan.

The commission released a public information document last month that provides an overview of five issues: a timeline to achieve a new mortality target, rules on catch reporting, management tools for both the recreation and commercial fisheries and De Minimis requirements.

De Minimis status essentially means a state with low menhaden landings could become exempt from the new requirements.

Mike Waine with the commission gave an overview of the public document, then took comments from 10 people at the hearing. The four watermen who commented three pound netters and one crab potter said they have had enough regulations.

Larry "Boo" Powley has had enough.

"We've lost and we've lost … you keep taking until there is nothing left. You're stealing my heritage from me," said Powley, a pound netter for the past 35 years, at a Monday night hearing on menhaden harvest reductions.

"I live in rural Maryland," the 59-year-old said. "What am I going to do, drive to Cambridge and welcome you to Walmart? You're killing us. You take these … I'm done. Where does it stop? People are getting tired of it."

"We're under so much pressure," said Captain Scott Todd, a crab potter and fifth-generation waterman in Dorchester County. Many crabbers rely on the small, silver, oily fish as bait, as do lobstermen up north. "If we're faced with 20 to 30 percent fewer (menhaden) available, it's a trickle down effect. It boggles my mind."

Read the full article at the Easton Star Democrat.

 

 

PENDER COUNTY, NC – March 22, 2012 – Many North Carolina residents have been dealing with pains at the pump lately thanks to rising gas prices, but it's not just drivers on the road dealing with the problem.

Commercial and recreational fishermen rely on hitting the open waters everyday to provide fresh local catches for restaurants, especially during the tourism months.

The steep gas prices, along with new, strict federal regulations for commercial fishermen, have some of them calling it quits.

Read the complete story from WECT.

 

 

 

 

 

 

March 23, 2012 – Eastern Fisheries Inc., which bills itself as world’s largest harvester, processor, and marketer of scallops, said it has added the Maelstrom to its fleet of fishing vessels.

The 95-foot-long Maelstrom will be the 24th vessel in its fleet, New Bedford-based Eastern Fisheries said.

The company also plans to replace four older vessels in the fleet with new boats.

Read the complete story from The Boston Globe.

 

 

 

 

 

March 25, 2012 – Onkfish, redfish, silver hake, yellowtail flounder, winter skate, pollock, and northern shrimp are among the delicious seafood from swimming off Bay State shoes that consumers may have never tasted — unless they have joined a new cooperative venture that brings them a weekly allotment filleted and ready to cook.

Cod and scallops are New England favorites, but there is more variety out there to be had — and in bountiful supply, experts say.

"More money for the fishermen, less wasted bycatch, fewer threatened fish caught per year, and maintaining a healthy fishery," are the goals of Dave Henchy's new business concept — Cape Cod Fish Share (capecodfishshare.com), he said.

Eco-friendly fishing standards, green packaging, and making good on buying local are essential criteria for Henchy's business. "He's tapping into all the current trends in the food industry: organic, sustainable, natural, local," said Tobey Stapleton, full time lecturer and marketing expert at UMass Dartmouth's Charlton College of Business who is advising Henchy.

Henchy is bringing a new level of sustainability, accountability, and fish-to-plate benefits to kitchens around the SouthCoast and Cape Cod, even up to the Boston area. He promises people they'll know exactly what kind of fish they're eating, what boat it came from (Yellow Bird out of Chatham is a regular), and that they're getting it on the same day the fish was caught.

Read the complete story from The Standard-Times