Mackerel: great for kids

One of my best fishing memories was from around 1990 when I went fishing near Belfast, Maine with my two brothers-in-law for mackerel. One mackerel rig, available anywhere around here, consists of several hooks all tied to a stout central leader. I thought it odd that the design of this rig was so optimistic; after all, how likely would you be to have more than one fish on at a time? I was to find out. The fishing was great, and we did indeed get more than one on at a time. Mackerel are splendid fighters and they are beautiful too. Their streamline shape and iridescent coloring are however, better than their performance on the dinner plate. Many recipes attempt to improve upon the sad reward for your fishing effort. Figure on one meal per year, and keep them alive or as cold as possible. Mackerel are a little mushy, fishy and oily. They can be caught at mid summer right from the dock at Lamoine State Park, a mile away from here.

There are other options for the Acadia visitor to experience salt water fishing. Right from Bar Harbor you can take a 4 hour fishing trip aboard the fifty foot Tiger Shark. According to their website you might catch one or more of the following:  “cod, cusk, pollock, mackerel, cunner, sculpin, black sea bass, red fish, and the occasional wolf fish.” All tackle is provided. Presented as fun for the whole family, a half day of fishing aboard the Tiger Shark will set you back $45 for adults or $35 for children or non-fishing adults.

One anonymous board poster recommends avoiding Bar Harbor’s Tiger Shark in favor of Southwest Harbor’s Vagabond. (207.244.5385). The prices are a little higher but apparently there is greater likelihood of fishing success, and they haul lobster traps too. Their fish: “cod, cusk, cunner, school pollock, mackerel, sculpin, redfish and occasionally a wolf fish or a mako shark”. One fun part of this trip is a trap lottery, where you are given a number corresponding to a lobster trap, and you get to keep any legal lobsters in that trap when it’s hauled. Find out more here.

Neither of these options are the white-knuckled alpha male versus man-eater fishing experience you might be used to in other places. But don’t despair! If that’s your thing, how does shark or tuna fishing sound? To “tussle with the bad boys” (not my words), you need to shell out bigger bucks for private charters. Try http://www.obsessioncharters.com/ME_fishing/maine.htm, http://www.mainefishingcharters.com, http://www.gofishmaine.com, http://www.biggernbetter.com, or http://www.fishinganddiving.com. All of these charters are outside of the Acadia area but within a few hours’ drive.

Finally, if you just want to get an educational cruise with sight seeing and contact with sea life, consider the following options. Island Cruises leaves from Bass Harbor and for $29/$18 offers sight seeing and trap hauling. Find out about hauling lobster aboard  Lulu here and especially for kids, check out Diver Ed’s story here. There are many more opportunities for experiencing nature, but if it’s saltwater fishing you want these are the choices. Two other fish should be mentioned, bluefish and striped bass. Stripers are tightly regulated and deserve a post of their own. It is against the law to catch them beyond 3 miles from shore and so they are thought of more as a river fish, where they spawn.

Bluefish from wikipedia.com

Bluefish seem to be usually further south. I have fished for them out of Rockland and can attest to the fun of catching them, but like mackerel, they are not a tasty fish. In fact they’re even less tasty! Do not associate Bar Harbor’s Cafe Bluefish with bad tasting fish. It’s just a name!

Hey, that’s Elvers, not Elvis. Still, there’s just about as much excitement this spring caused by the baby eels as The King caused back in the ’70s. What is this all about?

Elver is a name given to a small baby eel (American eel, Anguilla rostrata) which is craved by the Japanese. The local sources of their version of the snake-like sea creatures (Anguilla japonica) have all but disappeared. They like to get them from nature and raise them in captivity and then eat them. What makes everyone excited these days is that the price per pound has now exceeded $2,000, so those lucky 400 with licenses to catch eel babies in Maine can often make their entire year’s income in a few days.

from BoatingLocal by Tom Richardson

Catching elvers consists of staking out a good spot on a riverbank at night. You need a small dipnet, a 5 gallon bucket and a Colman lantern. Besides the license, that’s it. The other trick is to get your catch to a broker while they’re still alive and healthy. Once you get to know your buyer however, he can arrange to come to you. The translucent, pencil-like eels squirm like a young Elvis on stage, but each one is worth $5. Our preference in food may be more like Elvis’s fried peanut butter, banana and bacon sandwiches, but eel is quite a delicacy in the Orient, and some Mainers are very happy about that.

The American eel starts its life in the Sargasso Sea, that huge swath of the mid-Atlantic east of the Bahamas and south of Bermuda. It also returns there to spawn and die in the fall. In between, it lives in fresh water, but it takes a year before the tiny larvae become elvers, also known as glass eels. It is these glass eels which are sought after now, and which the Japanese, Koreans  and Chinese raise to adulthood for the dish pictured on the top right. I have also had smoked eel from Larsen’s fish market in Menemsha, Martha’s Vineyard, MA., but I’m pretty sure it was caught at sea. It was boney, but good. A quick check of Larson’s webpage showed no smoked eels for sale now. So it’s off to the nearest Japanese restaurant if you want some. Otherwise it’s Heartbreak Hotel.

Dear MLA,

I just wanted to voice a concern about an advertisement of Maine Lobster. I again just saw the Red Lobster commercial depicting them as selling Maine lobster. The most recent commercial even portrays Maine lobstermen on it.

I have boycotted this business for the past few years after eating at two separate Red Lobsters while on vacation in Florida because every lobster I saw there had “product of Canada” bands on the claws…..

Mike Drake

Cuddy’s Harbor

Reprinted in shortened form from the Maine Lobstermen’s Association newsletter, April 2012.

Another letter in the same issue is from Mainers who took a Carnival cruise out of Florida and were served “Maine lobsters” without claws! Clawless lobster species are from warmer waters and could be a number of other lobster species, but not Homarus americanus, our north American lobster. Why should we care about whether a lobster is from Maine or not?

First, let’s hear from Red Lobster’s parent company, Darden Corporation:

….we are also the largest buyer and promoter of North American lobster in the world.In order to meet our annual usage needs, we must source North American lobster from both the United States and Canada. The term “Maine lobster” is commonly used interchangeably with North American lobster and Atlantic lobster. The USFDA also refers to the Homarus americanus species as “Maine Lobster”. Given that “Maine Lobster” is the most recognized and accepted term among consumers, that is the term we use.

Rich Jeffers

Directer of Communications

Darden Corporation, Orlando, FL

Also reprinted in shortened form from the Maine Lobstermen’s Association newsletter, April 2012.

The industrious journalists at MLA did some research and found Mr. Jeffer’s claim to be wanting; the FDA uses the word “lobster” as the “Acceptable Market Name” and “American lobster” as the Scientific common name. In fact, according to the FDA you can legally use the word “lobster” to describe Homarus gammarus, the European lobster. The word “Maine” was not mentioned anywhere. When Melissa Waterman from MLA wrote back to Mr. Jeffers with these observations, she got no response by press time.

So why should we care about this? After all, New Brunswick lobster is every bit as good as Maine lobster…probably. Why then would Red Lobster find it necessary to attach the Maine brand to Canadian lobster? Why would Carnival try to pass off spiny lobster as Homarus americanus? Could it be our reputation for clean cool waters? Our remarkable sustainable fishery? Or maybe they just want to evoke happy memories of that last time you came to Maine. I’m not advocating a boycott of anyone, no one wants a collapse of the lobster market, but a few words to the manager of your favorite lobster restaurant might be in order.

Excuse me, I need to go dig in my garden for a few Idaho potatoes and stop in my greenhouse to water my Florida oranges and prune my Georgia peach tree.

One of the nice things about living in Maine is that you can often get given stuff for free just by asking. This predates craigslist by several hundred years and is still going strong. All you need to do is be in contact with the right people and be willing to trade work or favors in return when needed. In most cases, the person to be in contact with is not necessarily the owner of what you need, rather the town extrovert, the person who likes to talk and talks to a lot of people, usually in the course of business or volunteer work.  Just mention, “I need some good used lobster traps,” and for a favor, a bottle of wine or the promise of a few lobsters next summer (and the required few months of waiting while your request makes the rounds) you will hit paydirt.

I hit paydirt yesterday when my friend Chuck called to say he negotiated a deal for me. These traps look like they’ve been barely used and if I were to go out and buy new ones, they’d be close to $100 each. They even come with buoys and line. Count me one step closer to pulling in dozens of lobster dinners this summer! In addition, they lend a certain Downeast ambiance to my yard in the off season.

I’ve been reassured by several people that my gear will not be molested by other fishers, which is a big relief. Apparently a local state cop also puts out traps, and in an incident involving underwater cameras, the sole bad boy was caught and will not be re-offending. This is coupled with the growing awareness that traps are lobster feeding stations and more traps means more lobsters. Undersized lobsters come and go for free meals and notched or egg-bearing females and all under- or over-sized lobsters are let go when traps are hauled.

This means I need bait. At least two pounds per pound of legal lobster, at least according to what I’ve heard. Currently in the Maine Legislature there is a bill which will outlaw any bait which “is not part of the lobster’s natural diet”. This limits my bait choices to over-fished herring, which is the usual commercial bait, or whatever I can catch myself. Herring as bait is not willingly sold to 5-trap people like me, so if this bill passes I may be opening tins of tuna or frantically fishing for mackerel. Whatever happens, I’m one step closer now!

Simply stated, “Why do Maine lobster landings keep going up?” The shaky economy and the high cost of fuel have failed to make lobster fishers into millionaires, but  lack of lobster is not an issue. In 1994 we thought the record-breaking 39 million pound harvest, exceeding the previous record by 26%, was a fluke. By 2009 the harvest soared to 78 million pounds, in 2010 93 million pounds, and some predict even higher numbers for 2011. What is going on?

A while back I summarized the prevailing theories about why landings continue to increase. Reduction of predators (the cod fishery collapse), increase of kelp beds due to sea urchin fishing (kelp beds protect young lobsters) and finally, the inspired way lobster harvesting is managed by our Maine laws and fishermen. This last reason is kind of self-serving; after all, you don’t create an historic population boom by eating less of something.

Meanwhile, the scientists were baffled. For many years they warned that the fishery was on the verge of collapse, calling it “overfished” (Stock Assessment Review Committee Document 93; 18 July, 1993) . It’s easy to see how they would think this. For about a century, data suggested that a healthy harvest level was somewhere in the 20 million pound range. But a publication written in 1996 and available at the Maine Government website here proposes an interesting theory. While mentioning the usual reasons, lower predation, increased minimum size as amended in 1988,  and warmer water temperatures, it also presents a unique calculation. In 1994 lobster fishers raised their traps 39 million times:

If we assume each newly set trap contains on average about 2 pounds of bait, we can then calculate that Maine fishers used about 78 million pounds of bait in 1994.

In 1994 the lobster harvest was 39 million pounds, so that’s two pounds of bait per pound of lobster. The lobsters know how to work a handout. They enter the traps (underwater videos show them doing this with little difficulty) and unless they are big enough to not fit through the escape vent, they will not stick around until the trap is hauled. If they are too big, a notched female or an unnotched egg bearing female, they will be returned to the water. The few whose carapace measure from 3-1/4″ to 5″ are retained.

from Maine lobsterguide.pdf

So if this theory is correct, what we have here in Maine is a semi-domesticated fishery! They come into shallow waters in the spring, eat “our” food, mate, shed and grow. Without the artificial food input would there be nearly 100 million pounds of lobster? Think of it this way: a quick and dirty google search (USA Today) brought up a ratio of 5 pounds of feed for one pound of chicken and two pounds per pound of catfish, so it’s not unreasonable to think that bait is a significant factor in the increase. More landings result in more traps. More traps mean more feeding stations, and so more lobsters. In Nova Scotia traps are limited by law, and the harvest has leveled off.

While it’s hubris to suggest that our fishing methods are so well designed that we are able to produce more lobster than we can harvest, it does appear that an unintended byproduct of this fishing method (the bait) could be doing just that. So keep eating lobster. There are hungry mandibles to feed.

Late Word: The Ellsworth American reported on Feb 1, 2012 that the 2011 lobster harvest was 100 million pounds! Wow! The same article also reported that the 2010 total just for our Hancock county was 31.1 million pounds. Compare this to 11.6 million pounds caught in Massachusetts  waters in 2009. For our part of Maine, that’s 576 pounds of lobster for every resident!

Amelia made this for Christmas 2010

Get Ready Lobsters, ‘Cause Here I Come

(apologies to Smokey Robinson)

I never met a clam who makes me feel the way that you do. (You’re alright)

Whenever I’m asked what makes my meals real, I say crustaceans do. (They’re outta sight)

So, fee-fi-fo-fum
Look out lobsters, ’cause here I come.

And I’m bringing you some fish that smell.

So get ready, so get ready.

You’re gonna love it in my wire hotel.

So get ready, so get ready ’cause here I come.

(Get ready ’cause here I come) I’m on my way. (Get ready ’cause here I come)

If you wanna play hide and seek with me, let me remind you (It’s alright) The meal is free if you’re too big or small, I just release you (It’s outta sight)

So, Fiddley-dee, Fiddley-dum Look out lobsters, ’cause here I come.

I’m bringing you a life with no risk.

So get ready, so get ready.

I’ll make your friends into a lobster bisque.

So get ready, so get ready ’cause here I come.

(Get ready ’cause here I come) I’m on my way. (Get ready ’cause here I come) (Get ready)

[Instrumental]

If all my friends should want you too, I’ll understand it. (Be alright)

I hope to trap enough for them, the way I planned it. (Be outta sight)

So twiddley-dee, twiddley-dum Look out lobsters, ’cause here I come.

And if you’re a lady that’s just full of roe.

So get ready, so get ready.

I’ll notch your flipper and just let you go.

So get ready, so get ready ’cause here I come.
(Get ready ’cause here I come) I’m on my way. (Get ready ’cause here I come) (Get ready ’cause here I come) (Get ready)

Humpback whale, from C. O. A.

One of our recent guests to SeaCat’s Rest wanted to come in early October, but was concerned that the whale watching cruises would be over by then. I contacted Bar Harbor Whale Watch Co. and they told me that the usual end point for whale trips was anytime after the middle of  October, and the reason is that the whales pack up and leave, and arrive again in May (cruises start in June).

The twenty-first century “whaling industry” is much different from the 19th century, when whales were hunted for their fat content in pre-petroleum America. Besides the whale watch trips, which are not as disruptive and invasive as you may think, College of the Atlantic has a major program of whale study, including the  Adopt-A-Whale program and stranding rescue. Both these programs are done by Allied Whale, and more can be learned by visiting the Bar Harbor Whale Museum. Whale adoption helps to fund research and is quite affordable. For $30 you can adopt a finback or humpback whale and for $40, a mother and calf pair. You get adoption papers too! A great Christmas gift idea.

You may think the whale watch boats chase down the whales and bother them. Actually, once the boat is in the area, the whales like to come by for a visit. They like to roll around and show off, seeming to enjoy the encounter. Whales are very intelligent animals, a finback’s brain weighs 6.9 kilograms, five times a human’s. If the boats were bothering them I think they’d let us know, and the College of the Atlantic (C.O.A.) and Allied Whale would not accept funding donations from the cruise operators.

Besides smaller marine mammals and birds, the whales you are likely to see on the whale watch boats leaving from Bar Harbor are finback, humpback and minke. Occasionally the endangered northern right whale is sighted. At 130 tons and a length of up to 89 feet, the finback is the biggest in the area, second only to the blue whale. Humpbacks come in second with a length of 56 feet and a weight of 45 tons, but they’re the most athletic, as the above sequence of pictures reveals. Finally, the minkes weigh 5-10 tons and are up to 35 feet long.

The trip out to the whale habitat is long, about to the middle of the Gulf of Maine, or halfway to Nova Scotia. This is serious ocean out here and the waves are often big swells. Until the new catamarans (twin hulls) were adopted, the journey was unpleasant for folks with sensitive stomachs. Now it’s much better, but the motion can still be a factor. The twin hulls also mean a faster trip so more time is available for watching and less for getting there.

Most of the activities in and around Acadia National Park are environmentally benign and the whale watch cruises are no exception. At around $62 for adults ($11 for kids under 6 and $31 for older kids) the price for a trip is not cheap but also not outrageous. Spend the following day on a hike for free (scroll down for one) and the daily cost averages lower. Thanks to youtube poster Richard for this fine video:

One of the sore points of our beautiful state of Maine has been the collapse of the ground fishing industry. This has been even worse in Newfoundland, where the human population had dropped from its peak in 1991 at 568,475 to 505,469 in 2006, a 9% drop. A neighbor recently bought a house in a fishing village there for $1. While the trend may be finally reversing due to new mines and oil exploration, here in Maine there’s new hope for groundfishing.

from the Portland Fish Exchange website, http://www.pfex.org

First, a definition. Groundfishing refers to fish with fins, not lobsters, shrimp or shellfish, caught in nets.  Here in the northeast these are mostly haddock, cod, hake and pollock. The resource collapsed due to overfishing. Blame for this situation varies depending on who you ask; fishers, the government, foreign factory ships, healthy eating trends or homeowners with leaky septic systems, take your pick. In a very long and detailed article in Maine Coastal News Jane Lubchenco (see below for her title, it’s a whopper)* writes that the new fish management scheme is resulting in a turn-around. Previously, implementation of the Magnuson-Stevens  Act (the federal law enacted to manage fish stocks) focused on limiting days at sea and landing limits. This was not embraced by the fishing industry, as it resulted in fishing during bad weather and dumping lots of by-catch. Now, the new way of rebuilding our fish stocks involves participation of the fishers themselves. In an earlier article, we explored how Maine’s lobster industry has successfully worked with science and government to maintain health, now it seems the government is more willing to trust the groundfishing industry to self-manage.

from the Portland Fish Exchange website, http://www.pfex.org

Instead of limiting days-at-sea, the new scheme is called “sector management”. The sectors are actually volunteer groups of fishers in given areas which are charged with meeting certain catch limits. How they do it is up to them. Like farming, each fisher is limited by his territory and responsible for its productivity.  The results are encouraging. Dr. Lubchenco writes,

We are finally on track to end overfishing. For the first time ever, we have catch limits and accountability measures in place and clear ability to track progress. In 2010 fishermen fished within the limits for 18 of the 20 stocks. This is excellent news.

Stocks are being rebuilt and therefore catch limits are up….in the 2011 fishing year catches have gone up for 12 of the 20 groundfish stocks…

Atlantic Cod from http://www.nero.noaa.gov

Dr. Lubchenco goes on to praise the new cooperative system for resulting in more selective fishing and “fishing smarter” to avoid the taking of bycatch of weaker stocks.

While early signs are encouraging she warns that there are many tweaks to the system which may be required. Better data collection, more nimble reaction to stock levels and more trust building between government, science and fishers will need to be done in the next few years. And even if stocks are on the upward trend, the cost per pound needs to provide a decent income, something that can’t be guaranteed by anyone.

The article I have presented is at best a brief summary of this complicated issue. I will continue to report on the groundfish situation, and I expect the news to be good in the next few years. Yet another reason to love the state of Maine. Get the full story in November’s issue of  Maine Coastal News.

*Jane Lubchenco, Ph.D., Undersecretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere and Administrator National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U. S. Department of Commerce Before the Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, U. S. Senate, Boston, MA.

Thanks to google for this image

It’s been a month now since I launched Eleccentricity, my electrically powered boat and perhaps primary symptom of mental illness. After all, who does stuff like this? Why can’t I just mow my lawn like normal people? Anyway, I’ve had a lot of fun cruising around and trying to figure out how far I can go on a charge. I still don’t know. I had the bright idea of setting out into the wind for a set distance and heading back, figuring that if I ran out of juice I could just blow back. I could do this multiple times until I ran out of power, thereby arriving at my range for one charge.

But I got bored, and the wind kept changing, and I started to stray off course. After all, the reason for building the boat was to experience the water and I was succumbing to the rapture. Besides, I was going back and forth and the boat was showing no sign of pooping out. So for now, the range will remain a mystery. After 5 or 6 days of light use I still got 37.5 volts, which translates to around 70% charge, so I am unsure of the range. Best estimate is about 20-25 miles.

A big beautiful fisherman's anchor!

On one of the days I decided to pull up an abandoned mooring I spotted close to shore. I knew it was abandoned because the orange ball was only visible at low tide. It sank under as the tide rose. So at low tide I tied Eleccentricity’s bow eye to the mooring and hoped it would not pull her down as the tide rose. I set about painting the interior to pass the time. Eventually I noticed  the stern was lifting higher. With just a little sinking of the bow the mooring was off the bottom! Now I could wait for high tide and move the mooring close to shore until it grounded. I was hoping the spot where it hit the bottom would be visible at low tide. Next day at low tide I surveyed my treasure. A big fisherman’s anchor had become tangled with a lobster trap and both were completely colonized by marine growth. I untangled and cleaned up the anchor and put it to use as a close-to shore mooring for charging Eleccentricity’s batteries. So far the scheme has worked fine. I have about 6 hours during which the tide affords me the water depth to keep the boat off the bottom for a full charge.  Next year I hope to charge using photovoltaics on a canopy.

The final entry in this story is Irene, the hurricane. I have seen lots of fizzled hurricanes in Maine, but on Saturday I was cruising about and noticed a very empty harbor at Lamoine State Park. The lobster boats were all in the parking lot. This caught my attention. There’s something quite unsettling about being one of the few boats left in the bay. Even the whale watch ship was booking it toward protected waters.  My friend Chuck (the veggie farmer, find his wagon at Lamoine Corners) was anxious, and had already pulled his sailboat. He offered to pull mine, I agreed. So now Eleccentricity sits in the park’s lot, waiting Chuck’s return. Irene was powerful, even up here. We lost power for a short while; the wind howled and the rain hammered. No telling what could have happened if I had left the boat in. Thanks Chuck.

On July 31, 2011, a day ahead of schedule, we launched Eleccentricity, my electric launch (and someday, lobster boat) from the ramp at Lamoine State Park. My friend Chuck Weber, the veggie farmer at Lamoine Corners towed my trailer the mile to the park and the launch proceeded without incident. What happened after was a little off-script, but in a funny way.

Author/builder on right

Once the boat became afloat and upright (an achievement in itself, I might add) all that remained was to drop in the electrified outboard and connect the big thick wires providing 36 volts of current to the permanent magnet motor. This I did while chatting with Ben Fuller, curator of the Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport, ME. He and many other small/wooden boat enthusiasts were present for the Small Reach Regatta winding up at the park for the second year. My frenetic preparations prevented me from attending the event, but I was bathed in attention from the crowd during my launch.

Connecting steering with Ben Fuller

Once I got a push off shore from the helpful crew I encountered the reason why my friend Dr. Jim counselled me to launch the first time in the dead of night. I twisted my throttle (actually, a little knob like you’d find on an old transistor radio),  I noticed the motor humming but no forward motion. In fact the boat was moving in reverse, back toward shore. OK, easy enough. Just reverse the big wires on the motor. It took about a minute, and I managed not to drop the nuts in the ocean.  Now everything was set for a spin around the harbor. I goosed the throttle and away I went. But the steering was weird…I turned the wheel and the boat went the other way. BACKWARDS STEERING!! I had connected the steering backwards and never noticed! I was so confused I steered the boat into the shore and my alert shore crew prevented me from grinding on the bottom as I cut the power.

Cruising with electrons

So the steering’s backwards! OK, just deal with it. I steered my boat to the dock and picked up three more friends and we took a cruise into Frenchman Bay. Among them were several who were sure the batteries would go dead within seconds of departure, but they were proved wrong. We cruised back and forth to Mount Desert Island and around the bay without depleting the batteries more than 30% from a full charge. I brought along my car’s GPS so I could see my speed and managed to top out at about 6.1 MPH, real close to the calculated hull speed (note: “hull speed” is used in reference to “displacement hulls”, which have a maximum theoretical speed, based on the square root of their waterline length. Speed boats have planing hulls which rise out of the water and can go much faster. Eleccentricity is a displacement hull design).

Prop wash

In the week since I have been working on getting power to recharge the boat and putting together a mooring. Currently Eleccentricity sits at anchor, slowly discharging as batteries do. Soon I will take her mackerel fishing.