Category: In the news

At last week’s United Nations Climate Change Conference in Germany, an issue of vital importance to Maine fishermen and shellfish growers took the international spotlight.
This issue is the increasing acidity of the sea, which is making it harder for some shellfish to grow their shells.
The governors of Washington state and Oregon joined the fisheries minister of Fiji, the meeting’s official host nation, to announce the expansion of a year-old international alliance to combat the problem. It now includes four states, two Canadian provinces and nine national governments.

Gov. Paul LePage was on Capitol Hill on Thursday to testify against a House bill designed to support working waterfronts.
HR 1176 is sponsored by Democratic U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree of Maine’s 1st District, but LePage takes issue with the role the federal government would play.
Pingree’s bill, co-sponsored by Republican Rob Wittman of Virginia, offers two basic amendments to the 1972 Coastal Zone Management Act.

A Maine congresswoman is calling on the federal government to establish a grant program to preserve waterfront access for those who make a living on it.
U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree testified at a House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Water, Power and Oceans hearing Thursday, 2 November, in support of her bill, dubbed the Keep America’s Waterfronts Working Act. The Democrat said that commercial fishermen and others whose jobs are based on waterfronts are losing access to them because housing and other development opportunities.

Briana Warner is the economic development director at the Island Institute. The nonprofit, which has a mission of sustaining Maine’s island and coastal communities, recently released a report on consumer preferences for edible seaweeds.
We called her up to talk about the report, which she co-authored. Our conversation ranged from why growing kelp is such an easy aquaculture sell for fishermen and ways to build demand for Maine seaweed to what the “low tide test” is and how to pass it. And yes, we did ask her about the much-loved pie company she used to run.

Maine mussels are losing their muscle. The state’s blue mussels are beloved by seafood fans near and far, but the size of the annual harvest has dipped in recent years, bottoming out at a 40-year low in 2016.
Harvesters collected less than 1.8 million pounds of mussel meat in 2016, the lowest total since 1976.
That year also marked the first time the state’s mussel harvesters topped a million pounds. They have exceeded 6 million pounds three times in the 1980s and 1990s, and routinely topped 3 million pounds until 10 years ago.

Edible seaweed is nothing new. Along Ireland’s rocky coast, seaweed has been harvested for food for centuries, even, legend has it, brought along as a provision by St. Brendan on his fifth-century voyage to find paradise.
It’s a staple of Asian food and no sushi bar is without it.
But Maine edible seaweed? Definitely not the stuff of legends, or even of most dinner tables.