Maine’s Seafood Industry in Crisis

Continued from May 2020 Homepage

The MLA has teamed up with four other industry associations asking Maine’s Congressional delegation to ensure the stimulus package has the flexibility needed. Patrice McCarron, MLA.

In the short-term, Mills said, harvesters have only limited opportunities within their communities to sell small quantities of product in the hopes of earning just enough money to buy weekly groceries.

“In the long-term,” she wrote, “it is clear that the collapse of the international and larger domestic markets will devastate Maine’s commercial fisheries.”

The Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association (MCFA) had to postpone a financial aid webinar, scheduled for April 16, because the federal Paycheck Protection Program ran out of money that day. The program’s first round of $349 billion was already depleted after less than two weeks. MCFA’s webinar was intended for fishermen, crew, and harvesters.

“There is still no clarity on how the $300 million designated for the fishing industry under the CARES Act will be used,” Ben Martens, MCFA’s executive director, wrote in a Facebook post.

He was referring to a nationwide earmark under the act that authorizes the Secretary of Commerce to provide $300 million in appropriated funds to assist fishery participants affected by COVID–19.

A post on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s website, as of mid-April, said the goal of the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) is to distribute that money as quickly as possible.

In a March 31 statement, Martens noted that, for Maine’s more than 5,000 community fishermen and seafood businesses, “this is a crisis far beyond being trapped at home. Seafood sales, and the entire seafood marketplace, have been upended, undermining businesses and creating uncertainty and fear for the future of Maine’s fishermen.”

MCFA is helping fishermen connect directly with consumers to sell local seafood and launched a COVID-19 fishermen resource guide (www.mainecoastfishermen.org) as a clearinghouse of information for issues related to Covid-19.

“Maine fishermen are on the front line of our food system and are being directly impacted by this pandemic,” Martens wrote.

MCFA said it is continuously updating its list of places that consumers can find local Maine seafood.

Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association and Maine Aquaculture Association are among about two dozen seafood industry organizations nationwide that have banded together in the newly-formed Seafood4Health Action Coalition (seafoodnutrition.org/eat-seafood-america).

The coalition has formulated a marketing campaign called “Eat Seafood, America.”

The nonprofit organization Seafood Nutrition Partnership organized the Seafood4Health Action Coalition, according to its website. The free marketing campaign focuses on seafood as a healthy food. The website encourages industry representatives and consumers to post and utilize messages, photos, and other assets for social media marketing.

The University of Maine Cooperative Extension in Orono is also compiling a directory of Maine seafood and farm products (extension.umaine.edu/agriculture/farm-product-and-pickup-directory), with the goal of connecting consumers directly with producers using alternative pick-up options. The website lists other resources, too, such as The Maine Food Atlas and Local Catch Network Seafood Finder.

The Local Catch Network (localcatch.org) is a community of fisherman, organizers, researchers, and consumers from across North America “committed to providing local, healthful, low-impact seafood via community supported fisheries and direct marketing arrangements in order to support healthy fisheries and the communities that depend on them,” according to its website. “Direct marketing provides a platform for fishermen and consumers alike to engage in a dialog about community, fisheries, and marine stewardship.” Maine-based members on its executive committee include Joshua Stoll, an assistant research professor of marine policy at the University of Maine.

In her April post, McCarron said that MLA has teamed up with four other industry associations asking Maine’s Congressional delegation to ensure the stimulus package has the flexibility needed so that both self-employed and incorporated businesses can benefit from federal programs.

“Maine’s independent fishermen, harvesters, aquaculturists, shoreside and supply chain businesses are being dramatically impacted by this disaster and we need both short-term economic relief and long-term investment to protect, promote, and preserve Maine’s iconic seafood industry and the working waterfront that supports us,” the letter said.

With the poor market outlook, McCarron noted that it’s up to fishermen, as individual business owners, to decide whether or not it makes sense to fish.

March is one of the least important months of the year for lobstermen, ranking second to last on number of lobstermen fishing, number of lobster trips made and proportion of annual value and landings for Maine, McCarron said.

April to June are also fairly slow for Maine lobstermen, she said.

“While the number of active lobstermen increases each month as gear is set, (69% of active fishermen have their gear out by the end of June), these three months rank low for overall landings and value, and are lowest for average earnings by harvester each month and the average value of each trip by month,” she wrote.

“The situation changes dramatically from July to September,” she continued. “August ranks as the month with the most active lobstermen, the highest number of trips, and the highest landings and value. While August ranks lowest for average boat price, it represents the third-highest earning month for individual harvesters. Overall, the five-month period of July to November accounts for 84% of landings and 80% of value for Maine.”

The natural ebb and flow of the industry, she said, provides some time to plan before the economic crisis engulfs the industry.

On the optimistic side, she said, lobsters not harvested will stay on bottom and gain value for future harvest.

A post on the Maine Lobster Marketing Collaborative’s (MLMC) said the organization is shifting program resources to ensure they have the maximum impact on demand as markets re-open.

“As our industry grapples with the impacts of this crisis, we are continuing to work to protect the Maine lobster brand, provide crisis communications services to support the Maine lobster industry and develop materials to promote Maine lobster,” MLMC said.

MLMC noted that businesses that have been in the online lobster-shipping business for years are seeing an uptick, and others are pivoting to an online platform.

In 2019, Maine lobster fishery was worth $485 million in ex-vessel revenue. The associated supply chain provided an additional $1 billion in economic impact.

Since the start of the pandemic, some harbors have reported that dealers will not accept the landing of any product, and those that are buying are paying as little as $2 per pound, a 75 percent reduction in price from the month previously.

Lobster landings in the first half of 2019 were over 10 million pounds. Continued market loss could result in a roughly $50 million loss in value for the first half of 2020, Mills wrote.

Other fisheries are similarly impacted, she wrote. Average prices at the Portland Fish Exchange are down 30 percent compared to the first quarter of 2019. At least 50 percent in revenue losses are expected in shellfish aquaculture. The price of softshell clams has dropped as much as 75 percent.

Elvers, which earned as much as $2,000 per pound in 2019, have fallen below $500 per pound since the start of the season on March 30, according to the Department of Marine Resources. The DMR delayed the start of the elver season by eight days, from March 22, in order to first implement COVID-19 protections.