PMFHF Executive Director Crystal Canney said, “While the landings value is a great number – more than 405 million dollars, the impact of the lobster industry is much higher, it’s believed the impact of indirect jobs puts the lobster industry worth more than 1 billion dollars a year. The lobster is Maine’s most iconic brand and its most valuable fishery.”

While the state noted that the market could have collapsed due to COVID-19, there are still a number of obstacles lobstermen are fighting today. Everything from right whale regulations, to siting around offshore wind to conflicts with corporate aquaculture that are growing along Maine’s coast.

Good Morning,

Protect Maine’s Fishing Heritage Foundation (PMFHF) will be supporting a bill critical to the protection of our oceans, including the protection of the ocean bottom. Among our concerns is the reporting by some lobstermen that conditions around in-water salmon pens are harming the lobster habitat.

This bill is a concept draft pursuant to Joint Rule 208.

This bill proposes to amend the Maine Revised Statutes, Title 12, chapter 605 and Title 38, chapter 3 to protect Maine’s ocean waters, support robust regulatory oversight and the long-term health of the aquaculture industry and advance the interests of the people of the State.

By Ian Urbina, originally published in The New Yorker

Gunjur, a town of some fifteen thousand people, sits on the Atlantic coastline of southern Gambia, the smallest country in mainland Africa. In the spring of 2017, the town’s white-sand beaches were full of activity. Fishermen steered long, vibrantly painted wooden canoes, known as pirogues, toward the shore, where they transferred their still-fluttering catch to women waiting at the water’s edge. The fish were hauled off to nearby open-air markets in rusty metal wheelbarrows or in baskets balanced on heads. Small boys played soccer as tourists watched from lounge chairs. At nightfall, the beach was dotted with bonfires. There were drumming and kora lessons; men with oiled chests grappled in traditional wrestling matches.

Originally published in the Ellsworth American

By Keith Kennedy

Protect Maine’s Fishing Heritage Foundation (PMFHF) stands firmly in its support of Maine’s heritage fisheries and small aquaculturists along Maine’s treasured coast. PMFHF is a relatively young nonprofit and has supported legislation that will protect Maine’s waters. Our philanthropy recently worked to raise money to provide COVID relief to lobstermen. Our board is comprised of longtime lobstermen and concerned citizens. Our membership is expanding beyond the lobstering community to people who recreate along the coast and small aquaculturists who are concerned with what is happening with regard to the recent increased number of proposed and approved larger and inappropriately sited aquaculture farms.

From MaineBiz

The state of Maine is asking fishermen to help site a proposed offshore wind turbine array that the industry largely opposes.

“We know the industry has emphasized that nowhere is a good place for this. We hear that loud and clear,” Meredith Mendelson, deputy commissioner of the Department of Marine Resources, said at a virtual meeting Wednesday to discuss the array's potential location off the southern Maine coast.

From the Bangor Daily News

Crystal Canney, head of a group called Protect Maine’s Fishing Heritage Foundation, said that the group, along with traditional fishermen and small-scale aquaculture growers, is concerned that such a large “industrialized” project would have “a tremendous impact on the Maine coast and the lobster industry.”

From the Ellsworth American - GOULDSBORO — American Aquafarms reported Wednesday that it had filed two draft lease applications for a closed-pen, Atlantic salmon farm in Frenchman Bay.

From MPBN

A Norwegian investor this month filed applications to establish and operate two 60-acre salmon farms in Frenchman Bay — a proposal that is already drawing fire from local seafood harvesters and landowners.

Large aquaculture leases are causing concern. In the video below, hear from the fishermen and others who are watching it happen.