Got bait? DMR bait list finalized

First published in Landings, February, 2016.

In 2012, the state Legislature gave the Department of Marine Resources (DMR) authority to review and prohibit the use of any freshwater or marine organism as lobster and crab bait that poses an unacceptable risk to the marine environment and consumers. The new authority was in response to the growing use by lobstermen of frozen bait made up of species caught on the West Coast, in fresh water or abroad. Those species potentially could introduce diseases and pests into Maine’s coastal waters.

A survey of bait dealers in 2013 revealed that 42 different species of fish were being sold as lobster bait. DMR hired Kennebec River Biosciences to assess the risk from those species to Maine coastal waters and creatures. The firm reviewed the risks based on possible pathogens carried, the toxicity threat to lobsters, and larger ecological consequences. Viruses such as viral hemorrhagic septicemia and white spot syndrome were known to have entered the U.S. via frozen seafood imports.

The new bait rules went into effect in June, 2015. “We’ve seen no effect from the list,” said Wyatt Anderson, head of bait operations at O’Hara Corporation in Rockland. “Carp was banned but we didn’t carry it anyway.” Seth Anderson, who oversees O’Hara’s frozen bait department, also said the prohibited bait list hadn’t caused him trouble. “Some guys want orange roughly but that’s no big deal. In fact the list helped me out. Before I didn’t have room for what I sell the most [rockfish, herring and pogies] because I had to stock all those other things in the freezers.”

Jennie Bichrest, owner of Purse Line Bait in Harpswell, thinks that DMR did the right thing to create the prohibited list but has taken too long to implement the rules. “DMR was trying to do the right thing by giving us time to get rid of what we had. Some guys gave DMR a bunch of bull about how much stuff like carp they had in stock. So they have until May to sell it. One or two guys are gaming the system and it fries my butt,” she said.

She also is concerned about the requirement to get approval from DMR to sell a species found on the East Coast, like fluke. “I thought that originally the aim was to get rid of the oddball stuff, bait from freshwater or the Pacific Ocean. I was told that if I wanted to sell fluke from New Jersey it would have to be sent to the lab and have all these tests run. I think anything that you can show was caught in the Atlantic should be O.K.” she said.

DMR director of marine policy and management Deirdre Gilbert explained the agency’s point of view. “If the species is not on the list now then a bait dealer does have to contact us. When they do, the species is referred to the bait review team, which does a literature search and risk assessment scoring to determine if there’s a possible problem. We only go to the testing phase if something is flagged by the team,” she said. Even if the literature indicates that a pathogen or disease is associated with the species, there may be ways to mitigate that risk. “It could be that there is no risk if the bait species comes in frozen, for example, or in some other form,” Gilbert said. “The department is primarily concerned that nothing is used that has diseases endemic to that species.