Maine’s quota for an increasingly important lobster bait will rise dramatically next year, reflecting recent shifts in the Gulf of Maine’s fisheries.
The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission last week upped the Pine Tree State’s baseline quota for menhaden — known as pogies — from 0.5 percent to almost 5 percent. The exponential increase could free Maine from its past reliance on special allowances to keep lobstermen’s bait bags full throughout the season.
Over the past few years, Maine lobstermen have turned to pogies as the schooling fish’s populations grow in the Gulf of Maine and herring — a once major piece of the bait industry — continues to diminish. But fishermen were hampered by how much pogie they could catch because quotas were based when pogies weren’t as abundant in Maine.
Fishermen lobbied for Maine’s quota to better align with what they are seeing in the water now, and the commission’s new quotas drew praise from fishermen and state officials alike.
“Anything that can be thrown in our direction would be welcomed,” said Jason Lord, a lobsterman who fishes for pogies out of New Harbor. “Usually fish quotas don’t go up — they go down. This is a rarity.”
Maine Department of Marine Resources Commissioner Patrick Keliher said the additional quota would provide “much-needed certainty” to the lobster fleet.
“Given the abundance of menhaden available to Maine harvesters in recent years and the need for a reliable bait source for Maine’s lobster industry, it was vital that Maine have additional state quota so we don’t have to continue to rely on quota transfers from other states,” he said.
The overall catch limit for the entire eastern seaboard is also about 20 percent higher than last year’s. Maine’s new 4.8 percent quota equals out to about 24.7 million pounds of pogies in 2023.
The pogie quota system is intricate, and Maine may still catch a similar percentage of the pogie pie as it did before. But it won’t have to rely on agreements with other states and approvals from regulators to get there.
Under the old system, Maine received less than 1 percent of the East Coast’s entire quota, and then could ask for permission to fish more or get quota from states that didn’t use up all of theirs. After those options were exhausted, fishermen could continue certain types of fishing on a small scale.
These provisions were designed to be used in rare instances, but Maine started to use them regularly over the past few years, partially prompting regulators to reconsider the quota system.
Through all the provisions, Maine actually caught 6.3 percent of the East Coast landings in 2020. The new system will still allow Maine fishermen to catch more than the new 4.8 percent quota, but they won’t have to go through as much red tape.
Earlier this year, the Maine Department of Marine Resources worried that the number of lobstermen getting into pogie fishing would create a “derby” scenario, where the quota would be filled in mere days and caught well before the bait was actually needed for the height of lobster season.
The Legislature passed a law this year that limits the number of fishermen who can get a license.
Keliher said the amount of fishermen trying to get into the pogie fishery will still necessitate these limits, as well as other possible restrictions.