Gov. Janet Mills is pressing President Donald Trump for immediate federal assistance to Maine’s seafood industry, pleading on behalf of independent fishermen, aquaculture farmers, wholesale dealers and seafood processors hurt by the ongoing crisis.
“The markets for their products are collapsing both locally and globally,” she wrote in a three-page letter to Trump dated March 20, cc’ing U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Minuchin and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross.
“The men and women who ply our waters harvesting lobster, groundfish, herring, countless other species, and farming aquaculture products are the very backbone of our rural coastal economy,” she added.
She notes that in the short term, harvesters have only limited opportunities within their communities to sell small quantities of product in hopes of earning enough money to buy weekly necessities, and that none are eligible for unemployment benefits because they work independently.
“In the long term,” she adds, “it is clear that the collapse of the international and larger domestic markets will devastate Maine’s commercial fisheries.”
To remedy the situation, Mills strongly urges the Trump administration to marshal federal resources and work with Maine’s Congressional delegation to provide tools that will help Maine’s seafood industry survive.
She specifically mentions direct financial assistance, subsidies, operating loans or loan deferment and making accessible programs more accessible to fishing and seafood businesses.
$2B industry in terms of value
In 2019, Maine’s fishing industry generated a value for harvesters and aquaculture operators of more than $673 million, which translates to approximately $2 billion in overall value when accounting for the value added by dealers and processors.
Maine lobster harvesters, who in 2019 generated more than $485 million in landed value, are facing severely reduced prices due to market loss which could total $50 million for the first half of 2020, and more as the loss of markets grows, Mills noted.
She also observed that ground fishermen face the potential loss of leased quota during one of the most lucrative periods of the year, while shellfish aquaculturists and Maine’s softshell clam harvesters, whose 2019 harvest was valued at $18 million, anticipate revenue losses of least 50%.
Maine’s elver fishery, the second most valuable in 2019 at $20 million, is facing market disruptions that Mills explained are projected to reduce the value by 90%. The northern Gulf of Maine scallop fishery will also be impacted by market loss with a projected 50% decline in value.
“I hope you can appreciate how reliant our coastal communities are on the revenues these resources produce. It is the lifeblood of our rural coastline, and these individuals have no other options to sustain their way of life,” she wrote.