Todays Maine Lobster News

Mercury contamination could permanently close lobster grounds at mouth of Penobscot River

Maine Lobster News From Abigail Curtis, BDN Staff

  BUCKSPORT, Maine — Lobstermen, concerned citizens and environmental activists all spoke up at a public hearing Monday night on whether to permanently close mercury-contaminated fishing grounds at the mouth of the Penobscot River.

   Many in the crowd at the Bucksport Middle School Performing Arts Center shared their thoughts, questions, and in some cases, outrage with officials from the Department of Marine Resources and Maine State Toxicologist Dr. Andrew Smith.

   But no one spoke against the department’s proposal to make the Feb. 22 emergency closure permanent. State officials made that decision to close the 7-square-mile area in upper Penobscot Bay after receiving documents last fall from a court case about the now-closed HoltraChem factory in Orrington, which produced 23,000 pounds of toxic mercury waste each year between 1967 and 1982.

    The closed area includes the mouth of the river above a line that starts at the Fort Point Lighthouse on Cape Jellison in Stockton Springs and travels southeasterly to Wilson Point in Castine.

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   “I commend the DMR for saying, ‘Look, we have an issue. We have to address it,’” Mike Dassett, a lobsterman from Belfast, said at the hearing. “It might be a bumpy road in the beginning, but it’ll be worth it in the end.”



  Dassett said he had used his boat to bring scientists from the Penobscot River Mercury Study Panel, ordered by the U.S. District Court in Bangor, to sites around the upper bay where they sampled lobsters, though not the rock crabs that fishermen say are the more productive fishery in the closed area. The scientists involved in that study found that levels of mercury in muscle tissue of lobsters caught in the now-closed area were similar to the amount of mercury found in canned white tuna.
    Smith said after the hearing that lobsters caught in this section of the upper bay averaged between 400 and 500 nanograms of mercury per gram. In comparison, white canned tuna contains an average of 340 nanograms of mercury per gram.

   Although he acknowledged that lobsters crawl freely around the bottom of the ocean and do not stay confined to the upper bay, samples taken from the closed area show immediate reductions in the amount of mercury in their muscle tissue. He said that he would be concerned about a person eating a lot of lobster caught in the upper bay, not about people eating lobster caught all over the Maine coast.

  “Are we concerned about a single lobster meal? The answer is no,” Smith said. “It’s the average exposure we’re concerned with. Not the individual meal.”
Mercury bioaccumulates in the food chain, meaning that predatory fish and mammals will have greater levels of the toxic substance than the amount found in the water or in plants. Smith said that it is located everywhere in the world “because we’ve been burning coal forever,” and it is a global issue in fish. Continue