{"id":11685,"date":"2016-06-16T18:14:06","date_gmt":"2016-06-16T22:14:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/?p=11685"},"modified":"2016-06-16T18:14:06","modified_gmt":"2016-06-16T22:14:06","slug":"oversexed-overfed-over-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/oversexed-overfed-over-here\/","title":{"rendered":"Oversexed, Overfed, Over Here."},"content":{"rendered":"

Summerguide 2016 | view this story as a .pdf<\/a><\/p>\n

Sweden bristles at \u201cinvasion\u201d of Maine lobsters, asks EU for ban\u2026<\/span>
\n<\/span>But China can\u2019t get enough.<\/span><\/h3>\n

From Staff & Wire Reports<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\"SG16-Oversexed,-Overfed,-Over-Here\"That, in a nutshell, is what the Swedes think of the American lobster from Maine, New England,\u201d writes the Guardian<\/em>. \u201cIt may be much sought after in restaurants, but Sweden does not want the American crustacean to darken EU waters in case it spreads diseases and kills off its smaller cousin. The Swedish environment ministry on Friday asked the EU to list the Maine lobster as an invasive species and ban the import of the live creatures.\u201d Speaking off the record, a Maine lobster industry official quips, \u201cYou\u2019d think Sweden would be more worried about other things overrunning it than Maine lobsters.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Here in Maine, it\u2019s flattering that the country that released Anita Ekberg, Ingrid Bergman, Ann-Margret, Greta Garbo, Lena Olin, Britt Ekland, and Maud Adams into the wild would consider anything from Maine oversexed. But the rest of the comments seem off-target. The refrain from the Maine lobster industry is, Where\u2019s the science?<\/span><\/p>\n

The Guardian<\/em> quotes the Swedes as saying Maine\u2019s critters \u201cpose several potential risks for native species. Competing for space and resources, they can interbreed with local species and produce hybrid species, which we don\u2019t know will be viable or not,\u201d said Dr Paul Stebbing of the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture science.\u201d Specifically, there have been complaints from the Swedish environmental ministry that \u201cmore than 30 American lobsters have been found along Sweden\u2019s west coast in recent years, and they can carry diseases and parasites that could spread to the European lobster and result in extremely high mortality.\u201d But they haven\u2019t. And how many is \u201cmore than 30\u201d? <\/span><\/p>\n

As for the United Kingdom,\u00a0 <\/span>according to the Guardian <\/em> \u201cBritish experts say there have been 24 confirmed reports of the American lobster in UK waters in recent decades. They are not believed to be reproducing, although this is possible. Sightings are believed to be as a result of the deliberate release or escape of specimens from captivity.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

American Invasion<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

How did Maine\u2019s lobsters get there, however small their number? It\u2019s a long swim from Damariscotta. The Guardian<\/em> quotes Sweden\u2019s environmental ministry\u2019s theories: \u201cWe have reason to believe that lobsters are put in coastal waters perhaps for later consumption. Some of the American lobsters found by fishermen in the sea outside the west coast of Sweden were still wearing rubber bands round their claws with the exporting company name on the rubber band.\u201d New England lobster groups take this most seriously. \u201cThe Massachusetts Lobstermen\u2019s Association is jittery at any European ban as the export of lobsters to the EU is worth $134m (\u00a393m) annually.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Ready Seafood Co., Lobster Trap Seafood, and East Coast Seafood, along with several other wholesalers from Maine, went to Brussels to ensure there is no European Union-wide ban. In all, according to the Press Herald<\/em>, \u201c75 people met for 90 minutes to talk about how to avoid the all-out ban that Sweden asked the European Union to adopt.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

Huge demand from china<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI started working with Maine Coast in January of 2016,\u201d says Annie Tselikis of The Maine Coast Company in York, an international wholesaler of lobsters. So deep are these connections, Tselikis is headed for China in the coming months. The company has been aware of the country\u2019s love for the lobster\u2019s seductive, \u201causpicious\u201d shade of scarlet, \u201cfor as long as we\u2019ve been marketing that resource [in China].\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Asked about the infamous 30 Maine lobsters slithering at the bottom of Sweden\u2019s claim, and whether these doughty examples of Homarus Americanus<\/em> escaped from holding tanks after shipment from the US, Tselikis says, \u201cNo. The way that lobsters are stored in various parts of this industry, if you are receiving product in Europe, you are not storing that product in the water. You\u2019re storing it in a tank on the mainland.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

European lobsters are Homarus gammarus.<\/em> They are blue in the water. They\u2019re slightly smaller than Maine lobsters. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt is all of our opinion that these [30 Maine] lobsters have been liberated [at various times] by private citizens who think they\u2019re doing something right. You can see evidence of this on the internet. A couple of weeks ago there was someone from Scotland who posted a YouTube about releasing a lobster back into the wild.\u201d Except it wasn\u2019t the \u201cwild\u201d the Maine lobsters were used to. \u201cThe Scottish posting was taken off Youtube\u201d amid a derisive chorus of \u201cYou\u2019re an idiot.\u201d \u201cWhy are you returning it to the ocean,\u2019\u201d and on an on. \u201cThe thing is,\u201d Tselikis says, \u201cyou\u2019re releasing it in waters that are not native to it.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

After all, how helpful is it to release a lobster into the wild with bands around its claws? Here, enjoy your freedom! Naturally, this speaks to individual, sadly misinformed \u201crescues\u201d of Maine lobsters. It may be more a matter of sympathy than science. Apparently, Sweden has yet to prove a new malignant horde has successfully bred in European waters. The Maine lobster industry is working hard to make this case and others to the European Commission. Does Jeff Bennett of the Maine International Trade Center subscribe to the Mary Tyler Moore buy-and-release theory?<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSomehow they got out there, and they certainly didn\u2019t get there on their own. There are numerous stories,\u201d but it all comes down to this: \u201cI think they were released either intentionally or were mishandled, one or the other.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

As we go to press, lips are tight, because there\u2019s a lot of maneuvering behind the curtain. \u201cWe\u2019re trying to do a lot of things behind the scenes that we don\u2019t want to disclose to the press yet. There will be more news in July.\u201d If that news goes Sweden\u2019s way, it will be boiling hot.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Summerguide 2016
\nSweden bristles at \u201cinvasion\u201d of Maine lobsters, asks EU for ban\u2026 But China can\u2019t get enough.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11689,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[106],"class_list":["post-11685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","tag-summerguide-2016"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11685"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11685\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11690,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11685\/revisions\/11690"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}