Saving Seafood

MAINE: DMR seeks nomination

February 7, 2017 — The Department of Marine Resources is seeking recommendations from fisheries associations and individuals for Gov. Paul LePage’s nomination of a person to fill an at-large seat on the New England Fishery Management Council currently held by a Maine resident.

Recommendations should be submitted to this department by Feb. 20 to provide nominees with adequate time to complete the required paperwork. Call 624-6553, fax 624-6024 or email your recommendations to Amy Sinclair at amy.sinclair@maine.gov.

Read the full story at the Mount Desert Islander

MAINE: DMR sets scallop closures

February 6, 2017 — The Department of Marine Resources has imposed immediate “emergency” closures of several scallop fishing areas that became effective this week “due to the risk of imminent depletion and unusual damage” to the resource.

The closed areas are located in: the Chandler Bay/Head Harbor Island area Downeast; Lower Blue Hill Bay and Jericho Bay; the Mid-Penobscot Bay area; around North Haven; the Upper Damariscotta River; and Casco Bay.

Announcing the closures, DMR said that it is concerned that unrestricted harvest during the remainder of the 2016-2017 fishing season in those specific areas may damage sublegal scallops that could be caught during future fishing seasons, as well as reducing broodstock essential to a recovery.

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American

Are Maine halibut heading for trouble?

December 28, 2016 — PORTLAND, Maine — Go to Scales, an elegant waterfront restaurant on a Portland pier, and a plate of pan-roasted halibut with hazelnuts, brown butter and new potatoes will cost you $38, tax and tip extra.

Over the decade between 2006 and 2015, the last year for which the Department of Marine Resources has figures, the boat price for halibut increased some 44 percent and landings increased from just 30,018 pounds worth about $139,000 to more than 93,000 pounds that brought fishermen some $623,000. Go down to the dock in Lubec or Stonington during May and June, when Maine fishermen are allowed to harvest halibut from state waters inside the three-mile limit, and $38 would buy you about 5 pounds of halibut, if you could buy less than a whole fish directly off the boat. And that’s the problem.

Now federal fisheries regulators are saying that halibut may be in trouble.

Of course, it isn’t just that Maine fishermen are landing more halibut. It’s fishermen from all over New England who are pulling in plenty of the pricy and delicious flatfish from federal waters.

In 2006, only Maine recorded halibut landings. In 2015, according to NOAA Fisheries, halibut landings throughout New England reached almost 216,000 pounds — worth about $1.4 million. Of that, about 123,000 pounds were landed outside Maine.

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American

Maine men lose licenses after allegedly removing eggs from female lobsters

December 14th, 2016 — The Department of Marine Resources has suspended for six years the licenses of two lobstermen who allegedly removed eggs from female lobsters.

Dexter Bray Jr., 36, of Stonington and Phillip Poland, 42, of Cushing also face a year in jail and fines of more than $1,000 if they are found guilty of the misdemeanor crimes, according to a release from Department of Marine Resources spokesman Jeff Nichols.

After an investigation prompted by an anonymous complaint received in the spring that Bray was “scrubbing” lobsters — artificially removing eggs from the underside of a female lobster’s tail — he was charged with removing the eggs of two female lobsters.

Investigators determined that Bray had attempted to sell two egg-bearing female lobsters at a lobster co-op in Stonington, according to the release.

The Marine Patrol also received an anonymous complaint about Poland, which spurred an investigation that allegedly revealed Poland had “scrubbed” the eggs from three lobsters.

“Scrubbing lobsters is one of the most serious violations of marine resource laws we see,” Maine Marine Patrol Col. Jon Cornish said in the release. “By removing eggs to make a short-term monetary gain, criminals deny future generations of fishermen the opportunity those eggs represent. Just as important, they undermine the work law abiding harvesters do every day to sustain this important resource.”

Read the full story at Bangor Daily News 

MAINE: Shellfish closure expanded; cost to industry mounts

October 13, 2016 — ELLSWORTH, Maine — Downeast shellfish harvesters are reeling as the Department of Marine Resources last Friday expanded its closure of the Downeast clam and mussel fisheries because of the westward spread of the microscopic marine organism that causes amnesic shellfish poisoning (ASP).

On Sept. 27, DMR closed Cobscook Bay from Perry and Lubec to the Canadian border to the harvesting of mussels. A day later, the department expanded the closure to include clams.

On Sept. 30, DMR closed the entire state east of Otter Point on Mount Desert Island to all clam and mussel harvesting. Last week, the closure boundary was shifted westward to encompass much of Penobscot and Blue Hill bays and the outer islands.

“Currently, mussels, carnivorous snails and surf clams are closed from Deer Isle to the Canadian border,” DMR spokesman Jeff Nichols said in an email on Friday. “All other clams (softshell and hardshell) are closed from Isle au Haut to the Canadian border; European oysters are closed from Deer Isle to Machiasport.”

Harvesters and dealers have already felt the impact.

On Sept. 30, DMR ordered the recall of mussels and mahogany quahogs harvested or wet stored in the Jonesport area between Sept. 25 and Sept. 30. It also ordered a recall of clams harvested in the area between Cranberry Point in Corea and Cow Point in Roque Bluffs between Sept. 28 and Sept. 30.

According to Nichols, the recall affected five licensed shellfish dealers, “and more than 10,000 pounds of product was recovered and destroyed, which was more than 96 percent of the total product recalled.”

Read the full story at the Ellsworth American

Maine fisheries experts head to Japan to learn scallop practices, buy machinery

October 4th, 2016 — Expanding on earlier visits to Japan, 10 aquaculture and fisheries experts from Maine are headed for Aomori Prefecture in the northern part of Japan’s main island of Honshu to learn successful techniques to grow scallops and to buy machinery to help harvest them.

“Sea scallops are among the most lucrative commercial marine species caught in the United States,” Hugh Cowperthwaite, fisheries project director at Coastal Enterprises Inc. (CEI), of Portland and the trip leader, told Mainebiz as he was preparing to leave for Aomori last Friday. “The nationwide landings value of sea scallops remained high in 2013 and was ranked fourth among all species with a total worth of $467.3 million. In 2015 the Maine wild caught scallop season witnessed prices at $12 per pound for 20-30 counts … [and up to] $16 per pound for 10 counts.”

Maine’s scallop industry was worth $5.7 million in 2015 for 3,770,760 million live pounds of scallops, down from 2014’s $7.6 million and 5,042,648 live pounds, according to the Maine Department of Marine Resources. The per pound price remained similar however, at $12.70 in 2015 and $12.67 in 2014.

Read the full story at Mainebiz 

New Technology Supports Efforts to Restore Maine’s Urchin Fishery

September 1, 2016 — The following was released by the Maine Department of Marine Resources:

September 1, 2016 – While Maine’s 2016-2017 sea urchin season will be a repeat of last season in terms of the number of fishing days and daily landing limits, harvesters and dealers will be equipped with new technology designed to improve future prospects for this fishery.

Maine DMR is launching a new swipe card system for the sea urchin fishery which will create efficiencies for industry and DMR staff, and will support efforts to restore and sustain this fishery, at one time second only to lobster in landed value.

By automating required weekly dealer reports, previously done on paper, “swipe cards reduce the chance of human error which can occur when transcribing landings information,” said Trisha Cheney, DMR Resource Management Coordinator for Sea Urchins.

Similar to the elver fishery, each time urchin harvesters sell their product, they swipe their card in the dealer’s card reader, and the dealer enters the sales information into a computer loaded with customized reporting software.

Each transaction, including the harvester’s information encoded on a magnetic strip on the back of the card, and pounds and price entered by the dealer, will be uploaded from the dealer computer to a secure server accessed by DMR managers.

“My intent in expanding the use of the swipe card system is to ensure the accurate and timely landings information which is crucial to the successful management of Maine’s commercial fisheries,” said Patrick Keliher, Maine Department of Marine Resources Commissioner. “This is especially important in a fishery like this, which was once the second most valuable in Maine.”

Beginning in the 1980s, Maine sea urchin landings began to rise dramatically with the development of a market in Japan. The rising demand prompted increased fishing pressure. By 1995 there were 1,840 licensed harvesters who landed 34.2 million pounds valued at more than $35 million, behind only lobster in value for wild harvested fisheries.

However the increasing pressure on the resource resulted in a prohibition on new licenses, which is still in place. In 2015, Maine’s 305 urchin harvesters landed 1.5 million pounds valued at $4.3 million dollars.

“When managers must rely on insufficient or outdated information, it forces them to be more precautionary in their approach,”   said Cheney. “By providing managers with more timely and accurate data, the new urchin swipe card system will improve our understanding of the fishery, allowing for more targeted measures, which could mean more harvesting opportunity in the future.”

“The DMR has had great success with the swipe card system in the elver fishery. This technology has helped Maine ensure the future of that important fishery,” said Keliher. “We anticipate that the swipe card system will also support efforts to restore and sustain Maine’s urchin fishery.”

MAINE: Shortage of herring used for lobster bait sparks run on pogies

August 9, 2016 — In the midst of a bait shortage, Maine has closed down the fishery for lobstermen’s second-favorite type of bait after fishermen exceeded the state’s quota on pogies for the first time.

Despite anecdotal reports of strong lobster landings and prices this season, lobstermen have been struggling to find suitable bait to fill the bags used to lure lobster into their traps.

The offshore supply of fresh Atlantic herring, the go-to bait for most Maine lobstermen, has been in short supply, driving prices up as much 30 percent in late July, the Maine Lobstermen’s Association said. The shortage triggered near-shore fishing restrictions to try to stretch out the summer herring catch in hopes of keeping bait bags full as Maine’s lobster season hits its peak.

With herring getting scarce and expensive, fishermen have turned to other bait for relief, especially the pogie, the local name for Atlantic menhaden. It’s the No. 2 bait fish among Maine lobstermen, according to a state Department of Marine Resources survey.

Maine fishermen have never landed the state’s entire pogie quota, which is set at about 166,000 pounds annually. But this year they had caught all of that and a bit more by July 31, said Megan Ware, head of the menhaden program for the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, which oversees the pogie catch and other migratory fisheries on the East Coast.

Read the full story from the Portland Press Herald

Maine scallop farmers borrow from Japan in test to expand fishery

June 13, 2016 — Maine sea farmers are taking a page from Japan (again), an industry titan, to test a new method of farming scallops they hope will grow larger mollusks, and grow them faster than current methods do.

The experiment, in which sea scallops are pinned in pairs to vertical ropes suspended in the ocean water, exposes the animal to more water flow. That, in turn, causes them to open and close their shells more often to feed and helps their adductor muscle, the part that Americans eat, grow larger through exercise during the scallops three-year seed-to-harvest cycle. Farmers hope the “ear-hanging” method will allow them to develop their test farms into commercial-scale operations, which are needed to keep up with rising consumer demand.

And they hope that three scallop pinning, drilling and cleaning machines that a Maine-based investor is bringing to the state from Japan will help them rein in the high labor costs of ear hanging, so they can turn a bigger profit.

The state has granted a handful of limited leases to test the potential market, tapping into the small, tight-knit network of farmers who already raise oysters, clams, and mussels in leased state waters up and down Maine’s 3,500-mile shoreline. These demonstration projects will help scientists determine which husbandry methods, nutrient mix, hanging heights and water temperature grow the biggest, fastest, and healthiest scallop meats, and if it’s profitable enough to become a commercial aquaculture fishery.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

MAINE: Big tides, mild nights propel elver harvest

April 21, 2016 — ELLSWORTH, Maine — With a magnetic swipe card system now in place, the Department of Marine Resources is able to track elver landings — or at least sales by harvesters to dealers — more or less as they occur in real time.

On Friday, DMR released totals, current through 5 p.m. on Thursday, April 14, for all elver purchases reported by licensed dealers from DMR and tribally-licensed harvesters.

As of the cutoff time, fishermen had landed a total of 2,932.39 pounds of elvers since the season began on March 22. That represents just over 30 percent of the 9,688-pound annual quota for all harvesters set by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission.

In the four days since the previous report, harvesters sold some 738 pounds of elvers to Maine dealers. Of that, harvesters licensed by DMR rather than by one of the state’s four recognized tribes landed 426.34 pounds. As of Tuesday morning, dealers were paying harvesters about $1,450 per pound for live elvers.

See the full story at the Mount Desert Islander