State and Local

December 17, 2013 — Beginning in January, people around the country will get a chance to watch a few clever Mainers try to strike it rich in the slippery business of eel fishing.

“Cold River Cash” will debut on the Animal Planet cable network at 10 p.m. Jan. 2. The reality show will follow the work and play of three teams of Maine eel fishermen during last spring’s 10-week eel season.

Baby eels, known as elvers, are in such high demand in Asia that they can bring as much as $2,000 a pound. Some eel fishermen can make hundreds of thousands of dollars in one season.

“The stakes are high; the rivalry is intense; and the threat of danger is constant as each team struggles to come out ahead,” reads a line of the news release from Animal Planet announcing the show. The “stakes” mentioned are the fishermen’s potential earnings. No prize money is awarded.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald 

 

DANVERS, Mass. — December 18, 2013 — The New England Fisheries Management Council rolled through the first two days of its meetings here, setting its priorities for 2014 and attending to the other strands of minutia that, when spun together, finally give way to the intricate tapestry that is fisheries management in the 21st century.

While important, the work of the first 48 hours still has carried with it a sense of the undercard, inexorably leading the proceedings to today and the main event: assembling the preferred alternatives for the Omnibus Essential Fish Habitat Amendment.

The council is scheduled to begin deliberations on the dozens of proposals at 8:30 a.m. in the grand ballroom of the Doubletree Hotel, and it’s anyone’s guess when council chairman Terry Stockwell actually will call the vote. If there were a gambling line on it in Las Vegas, you might be wise to bet the over.

The task in front of the council is an immense one, carrying with it the weighty implications of helping decide — after another lengthy series of public comment and the final decision by NOAA and the Department of Commerce — just where commercial fishermen will be allowed to fish in the northeast multi-species fishery beginning in the winter of 2015.

A month ago, Jackie Odell, executive director of the Gloucester-based Northeast Seafood Coalition, was asked about the key issues facing the fishing industry in the near future, and her answer was as telling as it was simple.

“It’s habitat,” Odell said. “It’s all habitat.”

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

December 18, 2013 — The Wilmington District, US Army Corps of Engineers and the state of North Carolina have finalized an agreement to again allow dredging in North Carolina’s coastal waters so fishing and transportation vessels can more easily move through shallow inlets and channels.

“This agreement is critical to keeping our shallow-draft navigation channels navigable,” said Tom Reeder, director of the N.C. Division of Water Resources. “Our state is heavily dependent upon these channels for the operation of our commercial and charter fishing fleets, N.C. Department of Transportation ferries and recreational boat traffic. The continued maintenance of these channels is vital to North Carolina’s coastal economy.”

The agreement between the US Army Corps of Engineers and the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources for the continued maintenance dredging of North Carolina’s federally authorized shallow-draft inlets and channels was finalized in mid-November. It runs through September 2017.

Read the full story at Dredging New Online 

 

December 18, 2013 — The following was released by the New Bedford Ocean Explorium:

The Ocean Explorium is looking for a few good people.

Positions are available in Guest Services, Education, Husbandry, and Social Media/Graphic Design departments.  Applicants should be personable, neat, and dependable.

Guest Services includes handling cash registers, credit card transactions, and other tasks as may be assigned from time to time; training will be provided!

Guest Services volunteers are especially needed on Thursdays and Fridays, morning or afternoon; weekend hours are available in other departments.  All Ocean Explorium volunteers receive training, uniform shirts and other benefits.

Please take a moment to visit our website, www.oceanexplorium.org, and submit an application under the "Volunteer" tab.  You may also call 508.994.5400 to speak with Nick LeBlanc.

 

PORTLAND, Maine — December 14, 2013 — The Maine Department of Marine Resources is moving forward with plans to slash the lucrative glass eel catch, with one more public hearing before rules are drafted to cut the fishery by up to 40 percent.

Industry officials supported quotas based on historical catches during the first public hearing hosted by state regulators this week in Augusta. Another hearing will be held Jan. 2 in Brewer.

Fishermen are frustrated by the cuts, which will be in place when the season opens in March.

“We’re being led down the road by bad science,’’ said Jeffrey Pierce, executive director of the Maine Elver Fishermen’s Association. “It’s a data-poor species, so the scientists would rather err on the side of caution. That’s because they get paid and we don’t. They get a check every week. We only get paid if we catch something.”

Elvers, as the baby eels are known, have come under scrutiny since prices ballooned to $2,000 and more per pound in recent years. They are caught in Maine rivers and exported to Asia.

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

NEW BEDFORD, Mass., — December 11, 2013 — The Dock-U-Mentaries Film Series continues on Friday, December 20th with a narrated slide show presented by Rodney Avila. Dock-U-Mentaries is a co-production of New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park and the Working Waterfront Festival. Films about the working waterfront are screened on the third Friday of each month beginning at 7:00 PM in the theater of the Corson Maritime Learning Center, located at 33 William Street in downtown New Bedford. All programs are open to the public and presented free of charge.

Rodney Avila, an industry veteran who has spent more than 50 years working on the New Bedford waterfront as a fisherman, boat owner and safety trainer, will share photographs and stories documenting his years on the waterfront from the 1950s to today. Avila will show talk about the harbor, fishing vessels and changes in fishing techniques over the past 60 years.

Read the full story at The Herald News 

December 12, 2013 — It’s hard to image an Ocean State without a commercial fishing industry, but one local business owner warns it could happen.

Increasingly restrictive federal regulations have cut the commercial fishing fleet in half over the last four years and are imperiling its future, according to Richard Fuka, the president of the Rhode Island Fishermen’s Alliance.

“We’re at a dangerous low level,” Fuka said. If the fleet is diminished any further, Rhode Islanders could see a local heritage industry “slip away” and become “a museum piece,” Fuka says. Further tightening federal regulations he says could be just thing that pushes the industry over the edge, according to Fuka. (See below slides for data on the decline.)

Fuka said things took a decided turn for the worse after President Obama took office and his new appointee for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agenda has pursued a more aggressive regulatory agenda. But he says the industry was already chafing under regulations passed in the later years of the Bush administration.

Fishing contributes more than half a billion to RI economy

Data from an October 2011 study conducted by Cornell University confirm that the commercial fishing industry in Rhode Island was in decline, even before the full effect of the new regulations was felt. The number of state-licensed boats dropped from 1,488 to 1,298 between 2005 and 2011. Likewise, the demand for many state licenses has dried up. In 2011 the state issued 1,017 multi-purpose licenses. In 2011, it issued 867.

The decline in the Rhode Island fishing fleet is taking an economic toll as well: between 2006 and 2010, sales of locally caught fish dropped from $98.5 million to $60.4 million, according to the study. It was apparently the worst year since 1982, when sales were $56.7 million, in an absolute dollars-to-dollars comparison. But when those 1982 figures are adjusted for inflation, sales that year were actually $126 million, researchers found.

The fishing industry is a vital economic sector for Rhode Island. In 2010, commercial fishing generated a total of $763.3 million in sales and $239.9 million in income, when its indirect impact on distributors, restaurants, and grocers is taken into account, according to the study. The number of jobs related to the industry stood at 8,995.

The local restaurant industry is particularly reliant on commercial fishing, which generated $52.3 million in sales and $86.2 million in income for restaurants, along with 4,207 jobs, the data shows.

Read the full story at Go Local Providence 

 

 

AUGUSTA, Maine — December 11. 2013 — Should the state implement individual quotas for elver fishermen next spring, or should it just set a statewide quota and use a derby approach?

According to feedback Maine Department of Marine Resources officials received at a meeting Wednesday afternoon, individual catch quotas based on each fisherman’s catch history seemed to be the most palatable way to reduce statewide elver landings next spring. Because of concerns about the declining population of American eels, the Atlantic State Marine Fisheries Commission has ordered Maine to reduce its annual harvest of the juvenile eels by between 25 percent and 40 percent.

But there were some fishermen among the 90 or so people who attended the meeting at the Augusta Civic Center who favor a different approach. A derby fishery, in which Maine DMR would set a statewide cap and let everyone fish until that cap was reached, could allow some licensed fishermen to catch as much as they did this past spring or even more. The potential for a big payday for the pricey eels, for which dealers paid fishermen around $1,600 per pound last spring, would still be there, they said.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News 

 

CASTINE, Maine — Forty-five students from seven of Maine’s coastal high schools have been tasked with solving a unique challenge:

What do fishermen need to do to make winter flounder a viable fishery in Maine?

The students, some of whom are already fishermen and others who plan to be, are nearly halfway through a year-long course called the Eastern Maine Skippers Program created by educators from Deer Isle-Stonington High School and the Penobscot East Resource Center.

At the beginning of the year, the students were presented with a problem: Maine’s fishing economy is dangerously dependent on lobster, which accounts for 65 percent of the value of Maine’s catch, according to the Department of Marine Resources. The winter flounder, which is not fished commercially and has had a steady population in recent years, was suggested by teachers as an alternative. Now the students are working in four regional teams to find out if that new fishery has potential.

Along the way, they will need to design, build and field test their own fish traps, analyze data, apply to the state Department of Marine Resources for an exemption on a seasonal flounder fishing ban and present their findings to public officials.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News 

 

December 11, 2013 — Commercial fish harvesters and their business partners intent on assuring economic survival of this physically and financially tough business will gather in Anchorage Dec. 10-12 to teach what they know to the next generation of industry leaders

It's the annual Alaska Young Fishermen's Summit, aimed at building a network of future leaders in this lucrative, albeit dangerous business, where harvesters have to know everything from what's going on in state and federal fisheries politics to how to keep their negotiate a loan and understand both overseas and domestic markets.

Robert Heyano, the current president of the Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Association, will deliver a keynote address. The Dillingham resident, is an award winning highliner in the Bristol Bay salmon fishery.

Lea Klingert, president and chief executive officer of the Commercial Fishing and Agriculture Bank in Anchorage, will talk about what lenders look for in a borrower.

Read the full story at The Cordova Times