Maine fisheries still strong

First published in Landings, December 2014/January 2015.

It wasn’t a cheerful fall. Fishermen along the coast lamented the closure, once again, of the winter fishing season for Northern shrimp. Groundfishermen bemoaned the emergency six-month closure of the Gulf of Maine cod fishery, followed by the New England Fisheries Management Council’s decision to cut the 2015 cod quota by 75%, to 386 metric tons. And Maine’s elver fishermen were rankled by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s decision to slightly reduce their quota in 2015.

Yet despite these highly publicized restrictions on several important commercial fisheries, the outlook for many of Maine’s marine resources in 2015 is good. “It’s always challenging to forecast for a year ahead, because managing healthy stocks and rebuilding depleted stocks is an ongoing effort that we’re always going to be in the middle of, and we always have more work to do,” said Meredith Mendelson, deputy commissioner of the Department of Marine Resources (DMR).

Halibut

Some fisheries are holding their own or improving. Let’s take a look at Atlantic halibut. These are giant flounders, weighing 100 to 200 pounds or more. In 1988, Maine fishermen landed more than 125,000 pounds of these tasty fish, at a value of $280,000 or $2.23 per pound. Landings took a dive after that, plunging to 6,217 pounds in 2000. But due to improved management of the species at the federal and state level (currently Maine fishermen can only fish for halibut during May and June and are limited to a total of 25 fish), landings slowly picked up again. By 2005 Maine landings were slightly less than 25,000 pounds, at $2.82 per pound. In 2013, Maine fishermen landed 50,311 pounds of halibut, at a value of $6.53 per pound. Not a bad recovery in just a decade.

Scallops

Maine’s scallop fishery is another example of a stock that has rebounded. “Essentially we have been able to make real gains in the past couple of years,” explained Trish Cheney De Graf, scallop resource manager for DMR. “It was through some harsh rebuilding measures -- limited entry, fewer days in the season plus area closures.”

During the 1980s and 1990s, scallop harvests in Maine were booming. A lobsterman simply had to re-rig his vessel to accommodate a scallop dredge at the close of his lobstering season and off he went. Landings were above a million pounds each year until, one day, scallops crashed. In 1996, scallop fishermen landed 1,008, 329 pounds, worth more than $6,830,000. By 2005, that harvest had dropped to 33,141 pounds.

Scallops are fairly fast-growing creatures, although they don’t reach full sexual maturity until about four years in age. The regulators at DMR recognized that to ensure a consistent supply of the high-value scallops, they needed to give the shellfish a rest. So in 2009 DMR instituted three-year closures of 20% of all scallop areas along the coast, raising the hackles of scallop fishermen. The agency limited access to the remaining areas to one day per week and reduced the daily quota. Fishermen grumbled.

Many of those closed areas reopened during the 2011-2012 season. Scallop fishermen were limited both in the number of days they could fish and the amount they could harvest in a day. Emergency closures were enacted when a certain percentage of the scallops in a given area were harvested. And take a look at the result: in 2012, Maine fishermen landed 286,411 pounds of scallops at a value of $11.14 per pound. In 2013, that number increased to 424,547 pounds, at $12.24 per pound. “The fishermen have been helped by the increase in price,” De Graf said. “We cut the daily limit by 25% last year but the price increase pretty much nixed the effect.”

DMR will be phasing in a rotational management system this winter in scallop Zone 2. Over the next ten years two-thirds of the scallop beds in the zone will be closed to harvesting; one-third will remain open for one season and then close for the next two. “It’s like crop rotation,” De Graf explained. She believes that fishermen themselves will see the full benefits of earlier closures this season, particularly in Cobscook Bay. “We did a fall survey of Cobscook Bay. The biomass [of scallops] there is the highest we’ve ever seen in ten years of sampling.”

Soft shell clams

To have a successful soft shell clam fishery, a state must have clean water. Under the National Shellfish Sanitation Program, a state that sells shellfish across state lines must also be able to certify that it has clean water. In Maine, which tends to have fairly pure coastal water, it’s the certification that has been a problem in the past. To comply with the Sanitation Program, DMR must conduct surveys of shellfish growing areas to identify any sources of fecal coliform bacteria. These surveys must be updated every year. If the agency can’t update the annual surveys, the clam beds are closed.

“Three years ago the Commissioner and Governor LePage made it a priority [in DMR] to try to reopen flats that had been closed for a long time,” explained Kohl Kanwit, director of DMR’s Public Health Bureau. “The bottleneck had been that the agency was doing so much to keep in compliance with the federal government regulations but not much more.”

“One of the first things we did was look more carefully at how shellfish bed classifications were done,” Kanwit continued. For example, many shellfish beds in the state were classified as conditional, meaning that if one inch or more of rain fell during a period, the beds were automatically closed for 14 days.

So the agency decided to take a closer look at the amount of time it really took shellfish in these conditional areas to cleanse themselves of bacteria after a 1-inch rainstorm. “We learned that we could reduce that time to nine days from 14,” Kanwit explained. “That might not seem much to you or me but to a clammer, every tide counts.”

In another example of prioritizing limited funds, DMR conducted a special two-year study of the shellfish beds of the Kennebec River. The Kennebec River and its tributaries drain a large portion of the state. The standing regulation was that when water volume in the river was high, it was time to close the shellfish beds to harvesting because all that water undoubtedly brought bacteria and other harmful contaminants into contact with the shellfish. “It was a one-size-fits-all approach,” Kanwit said.

DMR’s study, however, found that it was the season of high water that mattered more than the finite volume of water. Heavy rains in the fall would produce more contaminants due to the activities going on during the warmer summer months (farming, lawn care, animal and human refuse). The spring melt, on the other hand, generally resulted in clean water flowing in the Kennebec. With this knowledge, DMR was able to open more shellfish beds along the river. “In 2012 83% of days were open [in the year]. In 2013 it was 93% compared to the 58% it would have been prior to this change,” Kanwit said. “I believe that if we can assure that the clams are clean, you should be able to harvest them.”

Landings statistics reflect these changes. Soft shell clam harvests have gone up over the past few years, from 1,899,000 pounds in 2009, to 2,178,000 pounds in 2013. The soft shell clam harvest in that year brought slightly less than $17,000,000 to the state, much of it to the small towns and villages of Downeast Maine.

Black Sea Bass

Black sea bass is another fishery that, although in its infancy, could become a source of revenue for Maine fishermen. Black sea bass were once a rare catch in the Gulf of Maine. These pelagic fish like the warmer waters found below Cape Cod. But as the waters off the Maine coast grow warmer, black sea bass have become more common. So DMR took steps to ensure a sustainable fishery in the future.

“… [T]he department determined that it was important to develop regulations that would provide opportunity for both recreational and commercial fishermen while ensuring that this new commercially viable species can be sustained,” said DMR Commissioner Patrick Keliher in August when announcing new management measures to regulate the fishery. The state’s regulations will harmonize with the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s existing fishery management plan for black sea bass. A 10,850-pound quota was set for 2014 with a daily limit of 50 pounds.

“While this is a small fishery, it is a nice opportunity for younger fishermen just starting out and smaller operators because it is a high-value fishery,” said Ben Martens, executive director of the Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association, in a press release. “With declining stocks of other species like Atlantic cod, this also provides an opportunity for fishermen interested in pursuing the growing interest in boutique hook and line fisheries.”

“Our changing environmental conditions will drive many conversations [about fisheries management],” Mendelson said. “DMR wants to talk with Maine fishermen and think collaboratively with the industry about how to improve monitoring and management so that these resources can continue to support both those currently fishing and the generations to come.”