Category: Fisheries

The Maine at Work article in today’s Press Herald tags along with Tim Downs as he digs clams in Scarborough.

“It’s important to keep the hole clean, so you can see where the clams are at,” Downs said.

Once he had a hole dug, he began digging up mud more strategically, looking for air holes the clams had made, and placing two of his four tines on either side of the hole so as to not pierce the clam. Then he’d flip a chunk of mud over, and more often than not, find clams.

“We’ll get this one next year,” said Downs, holding a clam that looked less than 2 inches long, which means the state deems it too small to keep.

Today’s newspaper also includes an article on the 2009-2010 Maine Shrimp Season.

Northern shrimp are believed to be so plentiful in the Gulf of Maine that regulators have declared a full six-month fishing season for a second straight year. And, unlike last year, fishermen and dealers are hopeful that there will be enough of a market to make money on the small pink crustaceans.

The New York Times has taken a look at Linda Bean’s fast growing, and sometimes controversial, role in the Maine lobster industry.

Her goal, she said, is to save Maine’s most iconic industry by ending its dependence on Canadian processors and, under her Linda Bean’s Perfect Maine label, to mass market Maine lobster the way Perdue does chicken.

MPBN had a report yesterday on the Calendar Island Lobster Company. The new company will be selling their lobsters with numbered claw bands that you can look up online to learn about the lobsterman who caught it.

Jordan says retail lobsters will be hand-selected for quality, and wear bands bearing a number code representing the fisherman who caught the crustacean. “So that if somebody in Dallas buys these lobsters, or somebody in Denver, they can type in the number code and go on to our Web site, so they can read about the lobsterman that actually caught their lobsters, learn a little about their lives and more about their product and everything and really know right where their lobster came from,” Jordan says.

The feature article in today’s Food & Dining section takes a look at several initiatives ranging from lobster barbecue to lobster wine, to help out the Maine industry.

“We smoke our lobsters here, and they are really a great vessel for just about any kind of sauce, and we’re trying to bring some attention to that,” [chef/owner of Buck’s Naked BBQ] Caisse said. “We’ve got a lot of local lobster guys who come in here to eat, and we hear stuff, we know how hard they’re trying to sustain their living. So we want to help them by telling people that lobsters are for more than just a special occasion.”

According to an article in today’s Press Herald, clam flats in Maine are reopening as the red tide dissipates.

Though there are still areas that are off-limits to digging, enough flats reopened Friday to put hundreds of diggers back to work and ensure a healthy supply of locally harvested steamers and fried clams for the first time all summer, dealers said.

“We’re very excited,” said Dave Wilcox, owner of Ken’s Place in Scarborough, a busy destination for fried clams and steamers. “People have been calling and asking, ‘Are the flats open yet?'”

According to an article in today’s Press Herald Maine lobstermen are “talking about a possible work stoppage to start as soon as next week.”

Frustrated with prices that continue to sink because of weak demand, lobstermen said they might stay on shore temporarily in an effort to reduce supplies and make their catches more valuable.

Lobstermen have threatened such shutdowns, known as tie-ups, in the past, and some have organized small-scale tie-ups in recent years to protest low prices or reduce excess supplies. But the fishermen also are notoriously independent, and there has not been a large-scale tie-up in decades.