Saving Seafood

Consultant sees huge growth potential for Maine aquaculture

October 27, 2016 — With its clean, cold waters, its proximity to large markets and its wide open coastline, Maine’s farmed oyster, mussel and scallop industries are poised to more than quadruple in value over 15 years, according to a new report from the Gulf of Maine Research Institute.

Right now, Maine produces $24 million worth of oysters, mussels and scallops a year, 4 percent of the $700 million national market. Aquaculture accounts for about a quarter of Maine’s shellfish, worth about $6.5 million a year, according to state data.

But a market analysis prepared for GMRI by The Hale Group, the Massachusetts-based food and agribusiness consultancy, predicts that Maine’s shellfish aquaculture industry will grow to $30 million by 2030, which gave Maine ocean farmers and groups that work with them, like GMRI, reason to cheer.

“The major finding is the significant room for growth in farmed oyster, mussel, and scallop sectors at a scope and scale that fits with Maine’s working waterfront culture,” concluded GMRI in the report that it unveiled Wednesday.

Mussels and scallops show the most promise, according to the market analysis. Demand for Maine’s mussels is expected to grow faster than the industry average, given their market reputation. The domestic supply of scallops, meanwhile, meets just half the nation’s demand, giving Maine scallops a big opening.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Elevating the Maine Scallop to Haute Cuisine

October 25th, 2016 — Togue Brawn and I hunker down in the wheelhouse for warmth, next to the captain who’s got one hand on his radio, the other turning the wheel. The GPS, he grunts, is broken. He’s navigating blind.

Behind us on the deck, an enormous spool of steel cable unravels and drops an iron-mesh dredge—basically a supersized bag-like fishing net—down to the seafloor. The boat circles until the captain makes the call and the spool retracts, pulling up the dredge, which appears suddenly at the boat’s stern, swinging to and fro. Two deckhands, each clad in orange rubber overalls and knee-high boots, grab for the large bar beneath the net, yelling above the engine’s roar. The net groans with scallops, each nestled safely inside its brown shell flecked with mud and barnacles.

The deckhands start sorting, small scallops arching overboard and larger ones clattering into nearby bins. Then they don thick workman’s gloves to pry open the shells, tossing the entrails into the sea; the jiggling adductor muscle, the part we eat, goes into buckets, where they gleam bright white. All around us, on the decks of near-identical boats (mostly retrofitted lobster vessels) other fishermen—and they are almost all men—do the same, silhouetted against the pink streaks of a frigid dawn. By mid-morning, they have found their rhythm, and the whole of it—the unwinding, dragging, hauling, sorting, and shucking—coupled with the bobbing of the boat, feels like an act of meditation.

The scene will no doubt replay tomorrow and the day after that and so on until the season is done. Today is December 1, and scalloping season has opened in eastern Maine.

Read the full story at Hakai Magazine 

MASSACHUSETTS: Shellfish, except bay scallops, still off-limits

October 24th, 2016 — Shellfish harvesting — with the exception of bay scallops — continues to be banned in Nantucket waters because of toxic plankton, which first arrived Oct. 7 in Cape Cod waters and made its way to the island a few days later.

“On Tuesday the state Division of Marine Fisheries requested shellfish to sample and we sent them 20 oysters from the harbor for tissue testing,” said Jeff Carlson, Nantucket’s natural resources coordinator.

“Hopefully they can get the testing done quickly and if it comes back clean, we can open things back up.”

Carlson said he did not know how long the state would take to test the samples and added it had sent out similar requests to towns bordering Nantucket Sound that have been included in the harvesting ban.

The reason for the state-mandated closure is plankton called Pseudo-nitzschia that produces a toxin that if consumed leads to amnesic shellfish poisoning. Symptoms of such poisoning include nausea, abdominal cramps, vomiting, dementia, amnesia, permanent loss of short-term memory and, in extreme cases, coma or death.

Read the full story at The Cape Cod Times 

MAINE: Ruling soon on how many scallops Mainers can catch this year

October 18th, 2016 — State regulators will make a decision soon about the scope of this year’s Maine scallop fishing season.

Maine scallops are popular in the seafood world because of how big and meaty some of them grow. The scallop fishery has been relatively stable in recent years, with prices high and volume of catch holding around 300,000 to 600,000 pounds of meat per year.

The state has proposed that fishermen be allowed to catch about the same amount of scallops this coming winter as they did in the previous fishing year. The state also wants to close several scallop fishing areas, including the Sheepscot River and Muscongus Bay.

The proposal was the subject of public hearings, and public comment closed on Oct. 12.

 The fishing season runs December to April.

 Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Portland Press Herald 

Japan gives visiting Mainers the scoop on scalloping

October 18th, 2016 — A group of Maine fishermen from Cape Elizabeth to Stonington traveled to northern Japan this month to study mechanized techniques for growing scallops.

Funded in part by a grant from the United States-Japan Foundation, the 10-person group traveled to the coastal region of the Aomori prefecture to learn about the machines that the fishing and aquaculture cooperatives there use to grow scallops on vertical lines suspended in the sea, a farming method proven to speed up their growth. The group also learned about shellfish processing and value-added shellfish products.

“We want to get key people there to see what’s possible in scallop farming and to believe it can be replicated in Maine, although at a much smaller scale,” said trip leader Hugh Cowperthwaite, fisheries director for Coastal Enterprises Inc., which promotes rural economic development. “This exchange allows us to make new and deeper connections. Can this industry find its footing and create jobs in Maine?”

This isn’t the first time that Mainers have traveled to Aomori, which is more than 6,200 miles from Portland. The Japanese shellfish community started the information exchange in 1999, with a focus on how to collect wild seed and grow scallops from juveniles to adults. During Cowperthwaite’s first trip in 2010, he learned how Japan has mechanized several of the most labor-intensive steps of scallop farming.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald 

Will scallops become extinct?

October 13th, 2016 — Nantucket resident and documentarian John Stanton examines the declining sea scallop harvest threatening Nantucket’s bay scallop fishery. Environmental factors have spread this problem throughout the East Coast and, even in decline, Nantucket remains the last commercially viable scallop fishery. Beyond the industry that is at stake, Stanton profiles the vital communities of fishermen who are being impacted. Stanton will lead a post film discussion.

The film will be shown at 7 p.m., Oct. 21, at the New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center, 33 William St.

Dock-U-Mentaries is a co-production of New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park, the New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center. Films about the working waterfront are screened on the third Friday of each month. All programs are open to the public and presented free of charge. This monthly program is co-sponsored by Buzzards Bay Coalition.

Read the full story and watch the video at The New Bedford Standard-Times 

WHFF Brings ‘Sustaining Sea Scallops’ To Coonamessett Farm

October 3, 2016 — The Woods Hole Film Festival will launch its 2016-2017 “Dinner & A Movie” series on Sunday, October 9, with a sea-themed dinner at Coonamessett Farm featuring the film “Sustaining Sea Scallops,” a short documentary by Woods Hole filmmakers Elise Hugus and Daniel Cojanu. The dinner will begin at 6 PM.

“Sustaining Sea Scallops” is a 35-minute film featuring the history and resurgence of the Atlantic sea scallop as told through the lens of local fisherman and researchers invested in keeping the scallop industry alive through sustainable fishing. In 1999, facing fisheries closures and bankruptcy, the scallop industry began funding a research program to minimize impacts on the marine environment. Fifteen years later, the Atlantic sea scallop is hailed as one of the most sustainable and lucrative fisheries in the world. From New Bedford to Seaford, Virginia, the film also highlights how cooperative research can serve as a new way to unite not only the fisheries, but also entire communities.

Made with support from the Coonamessett Farm Foundation, “Sustaining Sea Scallops” will screen outdoors at Coonamessett Farm with a question-&-answer session to follow with the film’s directors and Coonamessett Farm owner Ron Smolowitz, who is featured in the film.

Read the full story at The Enterprise

High US scallop yield expectations may impact market now

September 28, 2016 — Contrary to expectations in some quarters, there may not be a boom in US scallop landings next year, and planning for one now could adversely affect the market, Joe Furtado — executive vice president of Eastern Fisheries — told Undercurrent News.

“If your only source of information was the headlines of most of the articles over the last year, you would think that the fishery is going to be double what it has been. But the reality is that the exploitable biomass just isn’t growing as quickly as anticipated,” he said.

Scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in 2015 claimed to have identified very strong scallop recruitment throughout the Mid-Atlantic, and especially so in an area called the ‘Elephant’s Trunk‘.

“Recruitment refers to two-year-old scallops, roughly two inches in shell height,” Dvora Hart with NOAA told Undercurrent at that time.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News 

US scallop prices expected to rise with little relief in sight

September 27, 2016 — US scallop prices look set to fluctuate but generally trend upwards throughout the fall, with no alternatives at reasonable prices, sources told Undercurrent News.

After the July 4 celebrations, prices for fresh scallop raw materials took an unusual dip in pricing, several sources said – though this quickly corrected and prices are now high again.

“Pricing started off very strong at the beginning of the season; ex-vessel prices of $18.50 per pound for U10s and U12s, and $12+ for both 10/20s and 20/30s,” said Joe Furtado, executive vice president of Eastern Fisheries.

“But, over the last 60 days, we have actually seen a reduction in ex-vessel pricing, where it is trending about $1/lb less than April/ May pricing.”

“It’s actually the first time that I have seen post July 4 pricing trend downward,” he added.

However, two other sources suggested this dip was only temporary, and that more recently prices were right back up again.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

Warming waters threaten young lobsters, study finds

SOUTH BRISTOL, Maine — The Gulf of Maine’s lobster population, which has boomed even as climate change and overfishing have hurt other commercial species, could suffer if water temperatures keep rising, according to a University of Maine study.

The study suggests that, as the Gulf of Maine continues to grow warmer, the state’s $495 million lobster industry — by far the most valuable commercial fishery in Maine — could face the same kind of population decline that has affected urchins, scallops, groundfish and shrimp. Overfishing greatly reduced harvests for many of these species, but warming waters have been identified as an impediment to recovery.

The new lobster study, conducted by UMaine’s Darling Marine Center and by Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, indicates that larvae reared in 66-degree water had a distinctly higher mortality rate than those cultivated in the water 5 degrees cooler, the temperature now typical in the western Gulf of Maine. Water temperatures in the western Gulf of Maine are expected to rise 5 degrees by 2100.

The study looked only at larval lobsters, which spend all their time floating, and not at juveniles or older lobsters that live on the ocean floor.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News