Fishermen's Forum

The Maine Fishermen's Forum is coming up at the Samoset Resort in Rockport next weekend. I'm planning to go, because it is the event in Maine to go to if you want to find out what is happening with commercial fisheries in the state. There's been plenty of changes (some might say 'upheaval') in Maine's fisheries this past year - lobster, herring and scallops are just a few examples (see earlier posts) - and all will be discussed at the forum. There also will be seminars on ocean energy, aquaculture, groundfish, shrimp, and many things lobster. Maine Lobstermen's Association has flown in a group of lobstermen from around the world to talk to Maine fishermen about what they do back home and to compare notes. You can check out the forum Web site if you want to see what's on the schedule.
Here's a press release from forum organizers, for those of you that are interested:

"The Maine Fishermen’s Forum, which takes place at the Samoset Resort in Rockport on March 4, 5 and 6 this year will have a vastly mixed offering in both seminar subjects and trade show exhibitors this year. From the introduction of Eric Schwaab, the newly appointed Assistant Administrator of NOAA Fisheries to a well rounded Gubernatorial Candidate Forum featuring a number of the political contenders, the Forum has multiple options. Seminar offerings will include a discussion of an Experimental Summer Shrimp Fishery, Atlantic Herring and River Herring seminars, Permit Buyout information, and Sectors and the Common Pool, among others.
On Thursday, March 4th, there is a comprehensive Clam Day seminar addressing issues from Red Tide, Pollution Abatement, Conditional Classifications of Shellfish and Shellfish Management. Also, there is a rare opportunity for Maine fishermen to meet lobstermen from around the world including New Zealand, Australia, Ireland and Puerto Rico.
The annual Scholarship Benefit Auction will take place on Friday, March 5; all proceeds will go to students from Maine families involved in the seafood industry. A huge assortment of items are to be auctioned from lobster traps, transducers, and paintings to Samoset gift certificates and DeLorme Gazetteers! Participation is free and highly encouraged!
The Maine Fishermen’s Forum is free to attend, as is the Trade Show and the Auction. For more information, please check the website at www.mainefishermensforum.org or contact Forum Coordinator Chilloa Young at (207) 442-7700."

If you can't make it, keep an eye on Downeast Denizen to get a glimpse of some of the forum's happenings. As always, it should be interesting.

The harbor of Corea in Gouldsboro on Feb. 23, 2010.

Where'd the Snow Go?

Scenes like this one have been few and far between this winter. I'm not a meteorologist, nor have I ever studied weather patterns, but I do know it is a weird winter when Washington D.C. gets socked with snow and Maine gets little to none. We have had some snow this winter but nothing of substance since Jan. 20, when eight inches fell at Bangor International Airport, according to stats from Vantage Point Network. Today being Feb. 21, that means we've gone a whole month without any snow, except for a few isolated dustings. In that same period of time, the nation's capital has gotten three feet of snow. Even Atlanta has gotten three inches of snow, all on Feb. 12.
Since New Year's Day, the snowshoes, x-c skis, and skates have sat in the garage unused. I don't miss not having to shovel the driveway, and the weather has been nice (no rain) but it wouldn't be so bad to have something to do outside other than just going for a quick walk before it gets dark. If there's not going to be decent snow cover on the ground, I'd rather it be 70 degrees out. But it's still February, and there's plenty time for Old Man Winter to return. As long as it's not in April, I'll be okay with it.

Canned

Dark times in Prospect Harbor? Well, it doesn't exactly create a bright outlook when the largest local employer announces they're eliminating 130 local jobs and leaving town. In this case, they are leaving the country, too. The Stinson's Seafood sardine cannery is the last of its kind in the United States. Bumble Bee announced last week that it plans to close the plant down for good on April 18.
Some employees at the cannery - which was first acquired by the Stinson family in 1927, more than 70 years before it was purchased by Canada's Connors Bros. and then by San Diego-based Bumble Bee - think it could be rehabilitated into a multi-species processing facility, incuding lobster. And some Maine lobster industry officials have said there should be more lobster processors in the state, because so much of what is caught here ends up being processed in Canada. Keeping the product in Maine for processing would boost the value of the lobster industry to the state's economy.
The lousy global economy, however, would seem to be a big hurdle to investing millions of dollars in a significant renovation at the plant. Especially when the global demand for lobster has fallen off (see previous post). But I've also heard it said in the past week that many businesses that are established during recessions succeed. I don't know if that is true or not.
In any event, the cannery's closure will mean a profound change for the people who work there, and a profound change for the Schoodic Peninsula if nothing can be found to take its place.
NOTES: The cannery has been there for at least 100 years, according to local residents. The big yellow fishermen sign (above photo) hasn't been there as long, but long enough to become a local icon. Dana Rice, Gouldsboro's first selectman, said the sign is a little over 30 feet tall and has been there since the 1980s sometime. Before that, it was in Kittery, where it had been erected by the Maine Sardine Council to greet people as they drove over the Piscataqua River from New Hampshire. There's a photo of the sign trimmed with Christmas lights and with a huge Santa Claus hat on the fisherman's head in the Gouldsboro town office just down the road from the cannery. In the selectmen's meeting room of the same building, the sign is depicted along with other locally prominent structures on a blanket hanging on the wall. Outside, town employees have posted a sympathetic message on the town office sign: "Our hearts are with you Stinson's employees."

Lobster Prices

The lobster industry is probably the biggest year-round industry on the coast of Maine (the seasonal tourism industry is said to be the state’s biggest), and the single most important indicator of how well it is doing is the price fishermen get for their catch, also known as “the boat price.”
For four of the past six years (2009 stats are not yet available) the average annual boat price in Maine has been at or above $4 per pound, according to figures compiled by Maine Department of Marine Resources. In 2008, it dropped to $3.50 after having been $4.43 the year before.
As a result, the value of lobster brought ashore in Maine dropped from $283 million in 2007 to $244 million in 2008, even though the volume of landings during those same two years went up from 64 million pounds to nearly 70 million pounds.
According to Maine Lobstermen’s Association, its latest survey of lobster prices in Maine indicates that boat prices currently are about $4 per pound. On the surface, this would seem to be a good thing, based on past annual averages.
But it might not be. Most lobstermen either stay ashore or fish for other species for the winter, which usually results in prices increasing in late winter and spring as the supply of lobster drops. The current boat prices are about $1 to $1.50 per pound lower than they were a year ago, according to MLA.
The steep reduction in boat prices since the end of 2008 has put the pinch on many fishermen, with a good percentage of them having difficulty making boat payments on bank loans that had seemed sensible only a few years before. As prices lobstermen have received for their catch have sunk over the past 18 months, the cost of diesel fuel and bait have stayed high. At the same time, fishermen have been ordered by the feds to use more expensive sinking (and presumably whale-safe) ground lines on trap trawls they set roughly three miles or more offshore. It's been a double whammy of cheaper prices and higher expenses, and it has given many fishermen trouble with keeping their heads above water, financially speaking.
If prices don't climb higher by April, even if they do so for only a few weeks, it likely won't inspire a lot of confidence in the 2010 season.
But the price of lobster now or two months from now might not have any effect on prices that the market might dictate this coming summer and fall, according to industry officials. Tourists have a huge influence on the summer lobster market, and tourism frequently is affected by unpredictable factors such as weather.
So the price of lobster now may not be all that important. It's the prices fishermen get from July through November that really matter.
In other words, stay tuned. For many small towns and harbors along the Maine coast, lobster fishing is the only reliable means of full-time employment. For many inhabited offshore islands, it is the only thing keeping their year-round communities alive. The lackluster prices no doubt have spurred many Maine fishing families to make financial adjustments, but if 2010 proves to be another year of low lobster prices, it won't be good for fishermen or for Maine's coastal economy.

Sold?

Tony Young's house may have been sold.
I say this because it is no longer listed at the Sotheby's real estate Web site. But Young still is listed as the owner in the town of Mount Desert's official assessor's database. It was listed on the Sotheby's site as recently as Jan. 25 (when I last posted on this subject).
The house at 30 Tennis Club Road has been for sale as Young's former creditors seek to get some money back from the Georgia native, who last April was charged with securities fraud by the Securities & Exchange Commission (see the complaint).
Young also has/had assets in Coatesville, Pa., where he was active in the polo-playing crowd, and in Palm Beach, Fla., where he has a home only a few dozen yards down the road from a home owned by Bernie Madoff. But Young's alleged theft of $23 million from his investors isn't in Madoff's league. Madoff stole an estimated $65 billion before his Ponzi-style scheme unraveled at the end of 2008.
One of Young's boats still seems to be for sale, though his house in Northeast Harbor may no longer be. The day sailer Sagara, an International One design, is listed by Yachtword.com as being on the market for $72,000.
The other boats of Young's that were seized by the SEC are an inflatable fabric dinghy and a hand-crafted wooden rowing skiff.
For more about Young and his life before he was accused of fraud, there's this story that appeared in Fortune magazine last November. For a more local angle about what has happened since, there is this story that was in the BDN a few weeks later.

Mount Desert Island from Grindstone Neck, Winter Harbor, on Saturday, Feb. 6, 2010.

Follow The Money

I’ve been spending a lot of time lately at Recovery.gov, the federal Web site that lists all the financial awards (contracts, grants and loans) authorized by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA).
More than $750 billion is being distributed nationwide by the federal government in the hopes of reinvigorating the economy, and a few billion dollars are expected to make their way to Maine. I wanted to see which organizations and people in Maine were getting some of the funds. As the saying goes: “Follow the money.”
Not surprisingly, state agencies are getting more of the stimulus funds than any other entity in Maine. They are spending the money on state programs and are redistributing much of it to not-for-profit entities and other governmental agencies such as towns, counties and tribes. Info about how the state is disbursing federal stimulus money is available at a state-run Web site about the stimulus program.
The feds are giving money directly to some of those same recipients, and through agencies such as Small Business Administration and U.S. Department of Agriculture the federal government is loaning hundreds of millions of dollars more to businesses and others.
But the Recovery.gov Web site is not so easy to navigate, mainly because of the huge amount of information posted there. It has summaries and pie charts and maps, and in more obscure parts of the Web site has complete lists of financial awards, who is getting them, and which agency is giving them out. For the general public, it is not that accessible or transparent.
For example, the Web site doesn’t total up multiple awards that are going to any single recipient, it doesn’t specify who the “multiple recipients” are in Maine that are getting more than $184 million in USDA loans, and it doesn’t explain why some of the awards are listed for zero dollars or even for negative monetary amounts. And it presents the awards from two different perspectives – from the recipients and sub-recipients that are getting the funds, and from the agencies that are doling them out. Because of different reporting deadlines and procedures, the two perspectives don’t always add up to the same financial totals, which can be confusing.

So I’ve tried to simplify the presentation a little bit by copying some of the award data into my own list. I’ve included all the awards reported by federal agencies for coastal counties east of Bath, and a sprinkling of others from around the state for comparative purposes. But still, it represents only a fraction of the data available at Recovery.gov, totaling up only 286 awards out of nearly 1,300 granted directly by federal agencies to recipients in Maine.
I’m only relying on data reported by federal agencies because, well, it’s easier. The number of recipient reports at Recovery.gov has been about 5,000 (though that number seems to have been mysteriously reduced in recent days) and, having a job and a family, I just haven’t had that kind of time. Also, because recipients have to file reports only on a quarterly basis, while federal agencies tend to file reports every couple of weeks, the agency-reported data tends to be more up-to-date.
To make it relatively easier to digest than the data at the federal Web site, my list does not include awards going to any state agencies. It also does not include awards made by state agencies that are redirecting federal stimulus money to not-for-profits or other governmental agencies. The money has to go directly from the federal government to a recipient in order to make my list. Also, It does not include federally-funded contracts between the state and private firms, or the loans being made by USDA to “multiple recipients.”
It does add up totals going to single recipients, such as the $8.3 million the feds are giving directly to Jackson Lab as a result of ARRA. And, when called for, it resolves positive and negative award values going to an individual recipient so that you can see how much that individual recipient actually ends up with. Essentially, I hope it condenses some of the info available at the federal Web site and makes it easier to digest.
If you want to see the info for yourself at Recovery.gov, you can see it listed either under recipient reported data or agency reported data.
The Bangor Daily News published a story about some of the recipients and summarized some of the information posted at Recovery.gov. Another BDN story explains how the information is posted online. If you want to hear what some officials and recipients have to say about the program, you may want to read them.
I'll admit, it's all rather clunky. It’s not like reading a 19th-century novel or even a Harlequin romance. Nonetheless, it is illuminating and worthwhile to see where some of this public money is going.

Winter Light

Sunset over Clark Cove, MDI, Tuesday, Feb. 2, 2010.

Allen's Reigns Supreme (Still)

Waiting for these figures each year is as about as suspenseful as wondering what day comes immediately after New Year’s Eve. And if you happen to be drinking liquor in Maine as you stay up late to find out, the booze most likely to be sloshing around in your glass is Allen’s Coffee Flavored Brandy.
For as long as anyone can remember, Allen’s has been at the top of the bottle heap each year when the state Bureau of Alcoholic Beverages releases its annual list of best-selling brands in Maine. In fact, Allen’s sometimes captures the number two spot, too, and for the past several years has taken up four of the top 10.
That’s because the state bureau keeps separate statistics on different bottle sizes of liquor. For Allen's and many other brands of booze in Maine there are four to chose from: 1,750 ml, 1,000 ml, 750 ml and 375 ml.
Not surprisingly, Allen's full quartet is back on the list again in 2009. In terms of number of cases sold, different sizes of Allen’s were ranked first, fourth, sixth and eighth. No other brand appears more than once in the top 10.
According to M.S. Walker, the Somerville, Mass. company that makes Allen's, their libation has been the liquor of choice in Maine for more than two decades.
Allen’s half gallon (the common name for the 1,750 ml bottle) usually drowns out the competition. Last year it outsold Orloff Vodka’s half gallon, the second best selling unit, by nearly 2-to-1 in volume and nearly 3-to-1 in gross revenue.
But what I find more impressive than Allen’s lock on Maine livers is the fact that its sales always seem to increase, regardless of the economy. Most anyone with a balance sheet or a monthly payment of any kind can tell you 2009 was not a stellar year for individual incomes, and yet Allen’s sales in Maine went up, if only by slightly more than 2,000 bottles. Allen’s totals for both volume and dollar value have gone up every year since at least 2004, which is the earliest year from which I have the stats.
In 2008, Allen’s sold 1,062,931 bottles (the total for all four bottle sizes) in Maine. Last year, that number rose to 1,065,108. In terms of dollar value, $12,953,850.39 worth of Allen’s was sold in Maine in 2009, up from $12,844,561.63 the prior year.
Relatively speaking, Allen’s sales did slip a little from 2008, however, when its bottles ranked first, third, sixth and seventh. The brand’s 1,000 ml bottle size slipped a notch, as did the 375 ml bottle, also known as a “pocket rocket” (a nickname not unique to Allen’s).
But in terms of brand totals among the top 25, no one came close. Orloff’s overall bottle volume (two of its bottles sizes made the top 25) was 277,998, nearly 800,000 bottles less than Allen’s total. Captain Morgan’s Spiced Rum, with three sizes in the top 25, finished in second-place brand in terms of revenue with $5,165,036, which is only about 40 percent of Allen’s statewide take.

There is one way, perhaps, to skew the stats to make Allen’s seem less dominant.
Each year since 2005, more than 1 billion (with a "b") milliliters of Allen’s have been sold in Maine. Allen’s pocket rocket – the only bottle of this size to appear in the top 25 – is at a distinct disadvantage in helping its larger siblings maximize the brand’s overall liquid-measurement volume. If you judge that bottle on its liquid volume alone, it falls to 11th place and gives Allen’s only three of the top 10 spots.
But, yeah, that’s a bit of a stretch.
I am sure there are even more meaningless ways to dissect the stats, but it is the revenue and bottle totals that are the most impressive, and easiest to identify with. In all categories, Allen’s reigns supreme, as usual.
As predictable as all this is, I still find the annual results fascinating, given that most people outside of New England have no idea that coffee brandy as we know it exists.
There is one more thing I’d really like to know, however. Which stores in Maine sell more bottles of Allen’s than anyone else? I’d divide this into two categories, chain stores (a la Hannaford) and smaller independent owner-operators. That info has the potential to be a fairly strong demographic indicator, I would think. I know it is popular Downeast, but I bet it sells pretty well everywhere in Maine. At the very least, it would give somebody some pretty decent bragging rights.