Penobscot Bay Blog: Bangor Daily News

Maine Coast Eco-history 1998. The below BDN article by reporter Mary Ann Clancy describes how Maine Governor Angus King in being opposed as he tries to implement state wild salmon conserving alternative to federal Endangered listing of Atlantic salmon.
At issue: stakeholder Denny's River Watershed Council opposes state setting up fishtraps called weirs to capture all upmigrating salmon, allow culling of aquaculture escapees, counting/ releasing wild fish. Problem: concentrates the salmon schools into single location- much more available to seals & 2-leggers at both ends of the weirs)

The Bangor Daily News Thursday, August 6, 1998

Dennys River Watershed council says salmon face predators at proposed weir site
By Mary Anne Clancy, Of the NEWS Staff --

Map Source _USFWS and NOAA

DENNYSVILLE - Maine's federally mandated state plan to protect Atlantic salmon took a
blow from within this week when a local watershed council opposed state placement
of a fish weir on the Dennys River.

The weir, designed to keep farmed salmon from
entering the river while allowing wild salmon to swim upstream to spawn, is a
critical part of Maine's Atlantic Salmon Conservation Plan.

The state adopted the
plan earlier this year to prevent a federal
listing of the Atlantic salmon as threatened
under the Endangered Species Act.

The Dennys River Watershed Council, which voted to oppose the weir this week, has no
authority to prevent it. But the local opposition comes as state officials begin the
first major salmon protection project amid expectations of a lawsuit that could call the
state plan into question.

The threat of a lawsuit was heightened last week when a federal court ordered the
National Marine Fisheries Service to designate coho salmon on the Oregon coast
as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. The court order stemmed from a
lawsuit by environmentalists and fishing groups in the Northwest who challenged
the validity of a largely voluntary state plan to protect the salmon. The court ruled that
NMFS could not accept the Oregon plan as a substitute for strong federal action. Some say
the ruling portends a similar lawsuit against Maine's plan.

Bill Nichols, chairman of the Maine Atlantic Salmon Authority, said the Dennys River
weir is an essential part of the Maine plan. For that reason, the salmon authority will
proceed with plans for the $250,000 weir, he said.

''I feel badly because we'd like to operate with community approval, but we're also
under pressure because the weirs are required under the Maine Atlantic
Conservation Plan,'' Nichols said. ''One way or another, there will be a weir there and
the only question is who will build it - the state or the federal government.''

Bill Robinson, chairman of the Dennys River Watershed Council, said his group supports
the state plan and knows that weirs are critical, but believes the location on the
Dennys River that the salmon authority has chosen is ''all wrong.'' The salmon authority
wants to put the weir at the site of an old mill pond at the mouth of the river and close
to the tidewaters of Cobscook Bay, Robinson said.

Salmon that don't swim into the weir esigned to channel them upriver quickly -
and many salmon won't enter a weir - either will be forced out to Cobscook Bay and
devoured by seals or will linger near the Edmunds bridge and be targets for anyone
who wants to take them, Robinson said.

The Dennys is one of seven Maine rivers that federal fishery agencies believe are home to
the last wild runs of Atlantic salmon in the United States. Earlier this year, Maine
adopted a salmon protection plan for those rivers as an alternative to a federal proposal
to designate the salmon as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. The
seven rivers are the Dennys, East Machias, Machias, Pleasant and Narraguagus in
Washington County and the Sheepscot and Ducktrap farther south in Maine.

Local watershed councils for each of the seven rivers also are part of the state
conservation plan. Members of the councils are to include all stakeholders in the
watershed, including major landowners, state and federal agencies, municipal
officials and businesses. The councils will identify and protect against threats to water
quality and salmon habitat within the rivers, according to the state plan.

At a meeting to adopt bylaws Monday, the Dennys River Watershed Council
unanimously opposed the weir site as its first official action, Robinson said. In addition to
expressing concerns about seals and human predators, the 15 people at the meeting
identified several other reasons for their opposition in a news release issued Tuesday.

The group said the weir would interfere with the scenic view of the lower Dennys
River. Construction of the weir would disturb sediments and logs on the river bottom,
possibly damaging downstream tidal clam flats, the council said. The release also stated
there had been no environmental impact statement.

Nichols said he agrees that seals could pose a problem, but that is something the salmon
authority will have to address through other measures.

The V-shaped weir is designed to guide fish swimming upstream into a trap. The trap
will be checked daily to allow wild salmon to swim freely upriver to spawn, and to remove
any aquaculture salmon from the river.

Weirs are a key part of the state plan for the Dennys, East Machias, Pleasant and
Narraguagus rivers because the rivers are close to salmon aquaculture operations on
the Washington County coast. The weirs also will be used to count the number of salmon
returning to the river, and to collect brood stock that will produce wild salmon for
future river stocking.

According to federal and state officials, aquaculture salmon that escape from their
sea pens pose several threats to wild salmon. The farmed salmon can expose the wild
salmon to diseases and parasites. The aquaculture fish can interbreed with the
wild salmon or the farmed fish could lay their eggs on top of the wild salmon eggs,
smothering them and reducing survival rates.

Nichols said the weirs should pose no threat o clam flats because the salmon authority
will use coffer dams to contain sediment during construction. The state wanted to
construct the weir on the site of a previous fence weir on land owned by the Dennys
River Salmon Club, but the club refused to grant the salmon authority access rights for
more than one year at a time, Nichols said.

Since the new weir will cost $250,000 and is epected to be in place for 10 years, the
state could not agree with that arrangement, he said.

Nichols said the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has given Maine $1 million and instructed
the state to install the weirs. The money will pay for weirs on the Dennys, East Machias
and Pleasant rivers, and the Machias River weir will be put on hold, he said. The salmon
authority will install a temporary fence weir at the site this fall and will install the more
permanent V-shaped weir next spring, he said.

Henry Nichols, coordinator of the Maine Atlantic Salmon Conservation Plan and no
relation to Bill Nichols, said the job of the watershed councils is habitat protection, not
fish management. The state plan delegates fish management responsibility to the
Atlantic Salmon Authority, Nichols said.

''Obviously, we'd like to be partners in all aspects of this effort, but not putting in that
weir will cetainly jeopardize the whole state plan,'' he said.

1998, Bangor Daily News

Jun 14, 2015

Searsport dredging issue heats up Summer 2015

Local and regional media coverage of the public hearing Held June 9, 2015 by maine DMR about the proposed federal dredge

* Audio of selected speakers from the 6/9/26 public hearing

Coverage of the meeting
WCSH TV Searsport Harbor dredging opponents speak at public hearing
Excerpt: "Opponents of the proposal said this dredging will harm the fishing industry. The Friends of Penobscot Bay Group says it will take at least four years for recovery and re-colonization of lobster in the area, and that would cause at much as a $68 million loss for the industry."

Belfast Republican Journal/Waldo Village Soup
Fishermen, environmental activists urge state officials to revisit dredging plans Department of Marine Resources hearing attracts more than 100 people
Fishermen and activists warned officials from the Department of Marine Resources June 9 that a "calamity of turbidity," seven years' bad catch and other hazards await the fishing industry if a major dredging at Mack Point marine terminal goes ahead as planned.

Bangor Daily News
Objections Raised over Searsport Dredging
Excerpt: "During the Maine Department of Marine Resources public hearing on the impact to the fishing industry of the dredging project....[all] who spoke warned of the possible negative effects the dredging and dumping of 900,000 cubic yards of silt and sediment could have on the bay."

Apr 15, 2013

BDN: Elver fishery boom & 1990s urchin bust. Text and video

Bangor Daily News story and video features Friends of Penobscot Bay Board member and urchin tender Robert Iserbyt on April 14th. Click headline link below for video.

Elver fishery boom generates memories of 1990s urchin bust
by Bill Trotter, BDN April 14, 2013

Elvers, the spaghetti-thin transparent juvenile American eels, may be the most sought-after commercial marine species in Maine right now, but they are not the first to rocket to prominence due to demand in the Far East.

Robert Iserbyt tends an urchin diver. About to sort.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, it was sea urchins. The round, spiny, baseball-sized creatures are treasured in Japan and neighboring countries for their roe, which is considered a seafood delicacy. But in the late 1980s local stocks in the western Pacific Ocean began to wane. That’s when Asian seafood dealers discovered that Maine had plenty.

Landings for Maine urchins, long considered a nuisance by lobstermen, soared at a time when few restrictions on urchin harvesting were in place. In less than 10 years, the statewide volume of urchin landings exploded from 1.4 million pounds to more than 41 million pounds.

The boom, however, turned into a bust. The annual value of Maine’s urchin landings went from $236,000 in 1987 to more than $35 million in 1995, but declined quickly again in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Last year, when the average annual price was $2.63 per pound, urchin fishermen statewide earned less than $5 million for their catch and, for the first time since 1987, caught less than 2 million pounds.

Inside a sea urchin

Now that a spike in Asian demand for eels has elvers fetching top dollar — around $2,000 per pound this spring, as opposed to $185 per pound three years ago — some are wondering if Maine’s elver fishery will go the way of the urchins.

But others who had a front row seat to the urchin gold rush of the late 1980s and early 1990s say the regulatory situation with elvers is very different. Unlike the urchin fishery, American eels make up a multistate fishery and so are regulated by federal law. And unlike urchins, strict conservation measures for elvers had been in place for many years before the price exploded.

Bill Sutter, a Wiscasset resident who has dragged for urchins since the 1960s, said Thursday that federal regulators likely will impose tighter restrictions on American eel harvests before catches start declining. Annual catches of elvers in Maine increased from 3,100 pounds in 2010 to 19,000 in 2012.

Sutter, who has never fished for elvers, said the urchin boom coincided with a sudden increase in the Gulf of Maine’s urchin population. There has been no similar spike in the eel population, he added. In fact, the Atlantic State Marine Fisheries Commission indicated in a stock assessment last year that the eels’ population is depleted in American waters from historical levels, and U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service is considering listing the species under the Endangered Species Act.

Elver poacher's nets discovered

State officials have said that despite the overall decline of eels along the East Coast, they don’t believe the elver fishery in Maine — which is one of only two states where elver fishing is allowed — is having a significant effect on the species’ overall population.

According to Sutter, increased regulation may reduce the amount of elvers that are harvested in Maine, but he doesn’t expect there to be any sudden declines in existing population levels that would cause buyers to look elsewhere. Federal regulators will act before that happens, he said.

“It won’t be a repeat [of the urchin bust],” he said.

Ian Emery, a Cutler resident who like Sutter sits on the Maine Department of Marine Resources’ urchin advisory council, said Thursday that when the price of urchins soared in the late 1980s, all that was needed was a general commercial fishing license. When he got into the fishery in the early 1990s he could go diving as often as he wanted, any time of year, and faced no catch limit. It took only 15 minutes of diving to fill up a 150-pound tote, he added.

“Some of the guys were making $1,000 or $2,000 a day,” Emery said. “It was second only to lobsters in terms of landings [volume] and value.”

Elvers, with an overall 2012 catch value of nearly $38 million, now rank second in Maine behind lobster in statewide fishing income. But with license limits that are in place, that income is spread out among fewer fishermen than it was during the urchin boom.

According to DMR records, there were more than 2,700 licensed urchin fishermen in Maine in 1994 (and only 377 in 2011). From 2006 through 2012, DMR capped the number of elver licenses it issued each year to 407. As part of an ongoing dispute with the Passamaquoddy Tribe about how many licenses the tribe can give its members, DMR increased its elver license limit this year to 432. (cont'd below photo)

DMR’s goal is to keep the statewide license total below the 744 limit set by ASMFC.

In contrast to the lack of fishing time restrictions during the urchin boom, elver fishermen are limited to fishing five days a week during a 10-week season that runs each spring from March 22 through May 31.

Robin Alden, who headed up the Maine Department of Marine Resources from early 1995 through 1997, said Thursday that not only were there almost no fishing restrictions on urchin fishing in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it took a relatively long time to put conservation measures in place.

At the time, DMR did not have the authority to implement new regulations on its own for new fisheries, as it does now, said Alden, who now serves as executive director at Penobscot East Resource Center in Stonington. Consequently, it was up to the Legislature to implement management measures for urchins. And because demand and profitability already had soared, there was an intense lobbying effort to minimize whatever restrictions might be put in place, she said.

“There was a tremendous amount of lobbying,” Alden said. “It was really, really tough [to pass new conservation measures].”

Terry Stockwell, a longtime senior official at DMR, said Thursday that at the time, the prevailing approach was to help provide financial opportunities for fishermen, particularly those who lived Down East. He hesitated to say urchins were overfished, saying that environmental factors may have contributed to a decrease in their population, but that DMR’s regulatory approach has changed. The department still wants to help fishermen earn a living, he said, but not at the expense of any fishery’s long-term viability.

“It’s sort of lesson learned,” Stockwell said.

When it comes to the future of the elver fishery, he added, “ASMFC will be driving the bus.”

And no matter what restrictions might be put in place, Stockwell added, Mother Nature might address the issue on her own, he added.

Scientists believe that one reason that the urchin population in the gulf has not recovered is because of the dominant presence of kelp. Urchins feed on kelp and, when their numbers were high, prevented kelp from growing into thick patches that provide habitat to predators. Now that kelp is prevalent along the coast, the theory goes, it is providing shelter to a growing population of crabs that eat young urchins.

Stockwell said warm temperatures in Maine last spring contributed to robust elver runs in tidal estuaries and to the high elver landings total. Conversely, warm water temperatures in the Gulf of Maine this past winter have contributed to low shrimp landings, he added. This winter’s shrimp season in the gulf, which ended Friday, April 12, will be the first since at least 2010 that fishermen failed to reach their cumulative quota, which has been reduced each of the past four years.

“We’re nowhere near reaching the quota [of nearly 1.4 million pounds],” Stockwell said.

Alden cautioned that, even with elver management practices well established, it is unknown how they will affect Maine’s elver supply over the long term.

She said the fishery targets an early juvenile stage of the eel; that eels can live for 15-20 years; and that they don’t spawn until the end of their lives. The combination of these three factors means the effect of today’s fishery on the reproductive success of the species won’t be known for some time.

“We may not know the impact on the population for another 15-20 years, and that’s really scary,” she said.

Also, Alden said, the complex life cycle of the eel makes it more difficult to survey the population. Adult eels swim out to breed in the Sargasso Sea in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean before dying, and their young swim back to shore into tidal estuaries and upriver into lakes and ponds, sometimes choosing an entirely different latitude from where their parents spent their lives. Taking a survey to gauge how many eels might be out there, Alden said, is no simple task.

Urchins, by contrast, spend their life cycles in a much more concentrated area, reproducing in the same waters where they were born and grew, she said. If an area along the coast seems to have a relatively healthy adult population, it can be assumed that the population will remain healthy for at least the near future.

Sutter, however, is not optimistic about the future of Maine’s urchin fishery. During this past season, which ended last month, urchin fishermen in western Maine were limited to only 15 days fishing, while fishermen in eastern Maine, where the resource is healthier, were limited to 36 days. Regulators are calling for more reductions for the 2013-2014 season, which Sutter predicted will put some processors out of business. If the overall catch is too small, he said, processors and dealers won’t be able to produce enough to interest potential buyers, which will make it harder to sell what urchins are caught and push prices down.

Sutter said there are areas west of Penobscot Bay that haven’t been fished in seven or eight years and still urchin numbers remain low, which suggests environmental factors are at work.

Urchin aquaculture or seeding projects are possible but expensive, he added, and wouldn’t be effective without the establishment of smaller management zones, which would give local fishermen more control over the areas where they fish.

As long as there are only two zones and increasing catch restrictions, it will make it harder for fishermen to try out different management techniques that might prove effective.

“It’s been in a downward spiral for 20 years,” Sutter said of the urchin fishery. “I think it’s going to keep going that way.”
END

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