Reduced herring quotas are forcing the last US remaining sardine cannery to close down, its parent company has announced.
The Stinson Seafood cannery in Prospect, Maine, employing some 130 people, will cease operations on April 18 after having been around for more than a century. Referring to lowered catch quotas for herring in American waters, the Bumblebee Foods parent company, said that was no longer economically viable.
Much of the US fisheries management power rests with eight Regional Councils, working at the coastal state level. Last November the New England Fishery Management Council voted in favor of reducing the annual catch limit for herring in U.S. waters for the next three years.
The yearly limit for all American fishing zones was 106,000 tonnes, down from 194,000 tonnes in 2009. Boats fishing in the inner gulf of Maine have been limited to 26,500 tonnes of the overall catch quota in 2010, nearly 17,000 tonnes less than fishermen could catch in that area last year.
About a century ago, there were as many as 75 canneries in roughly three dozen towns along the Maine coast, with thousands of workers producing hundreds of millions of cans each year. By 2000, however, that number had been reduced to only a handful, and Stinson Seafood, with “Beach Cliff Sardines” the signature brand, has been the only one remaining for the last five years.
Canned sardines are still produced in New Brunswick. Canada, the rest of the global consumption is satisfied from Europe and South America.