Category: Fisheries

Portland Psst! has a report on the Blue Dragon mussel CSF. The Blue Dragon Mussel Wagon will begin delivering wild mushrooms to Portland on a weekly basis starting July 17.

The Maine Sunday Telegram published a trio of articles today on the lobster industry. The first two examined the roadside direct sales of lobsters and the potential impact on the industry. The third takes a look back at the Lobster War in the 1950s.

The Forecaster has a report on the LobsterBIZ program that occurred Monday at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute. LobsterBIZ is a day long seminar being held in Portland, Rockland and Ellsworth to provide lobstermen with the business knowledge they need to succeed in the current market.

LobsterBIZ coordinator Meredith Mandelson, GMRI’s community project manager, said the seminars are being funded through a $50,000 grant from the Lobster Research, Education and Development Board, which oversees the revenue generated from lobster license plate sales. Now that the ground work has been laid, Mandelson said she hopes the seminars will become an annual event.

After a very rough year in 2008, lobstermen are hoping for a better market price this year. According to a front page story in today’s Press Herald,

The price paid to lobstermen last week ranged from $4 per pound in Portland to $3.25 per pound Down East. Retail prices started at about $5.50 per pound for the smallest lobsters.

The lobsters on the market now are usually the most valuable of the season, both because they are in tight supply and because their hard shells mean they can be shipped live around the world as well as sold locally. When the peak summer season starts around July 4, the market is typically flooded with soft-shell lobsters that can only be sold locally, bringing the price down by as much as $2 a pound.

An article in today’s Press Herald explains the reproductive cycle of Maine shrimp (Pandalus borealis) and how the temperature sensitive process might be impacted by global warming.

Shrimp spend their brief adult lives on the dark ocean bottom and never come near blooming plankton. So, to synchronize the egg hatching and plankton blooming, it seems, the shrimp key in to the temperature at the ocean bottom.

Today’s Press Herald reports on a recent research study that suggests bigger fish are more fertile, and that current fishing regulations are encouraging harvesting the gene pool for exactly those characteristics fish populations need to thrive again.

An article in the latest issue of Working Waterfront reports on the belief by some that the recent fluctuations in lobster price are the result of price fixing.

Some fishermen think dealers and poundkeepers cheat them and have “since time immemorial,” to quote one, as a matter of course, and nothing will disabuse them of this notion. But fishermen and dealers from both sides of the border, this time, were sure someone-and by that they meant one of the big dealers or perhaps one of the big Canadian processors-must have been manipulating the price. There could be no other reason for the price to jump so high so fast.

There’s an article in today’s paper about a fisherman, Craig Pendleton a 3rd generation fisherman, and his decision to get out of fishing entirely.

Pendleton, 48, is trying to sell his boat, and last month started taking classes toward a business degree at Husson University in South Portland. For the third-generation fisherman, it is more than a career change. It’s the end of a way of life and a family heritage.

“I’m the last Pendleton to fish out of Camp Ellis,” he said. “I held out for as long as I could.”

Lobstermen hit hard by low prices are looking for new business models to help make themselves profitable, according to an article in this week’s edition of The Forecaster.

Chebeague Island, a handful of men in thick flannel shirts joked: “How many lobstermen does it take to change a light bulb? … Change?”  But that’s exactly what they were setting out to do.