There have been times – boom times – when Maine shrimp was so plentiful, it was taken for granted.
Rick Frantz, owner of Andy’s Old Port Pub on Commercial Street in Portland, recalls going to Boothbay with his girlfriend in the late 1960s and buying Maine shrimp by the barrelful. For poor college kids, it was a cheap source of protein.
“It was very, very inexpensive,” he said. “We’d take it back to the fraternity and boil it.”
Fifty years later, the Maine shrimp season has become a casualty of warming waters because of climate change and, consequently, strict regulations. On Wednesday, regional fisheries managers voted to extend a moratorium on shrimping in northern New England through the 2018 season, which traditionally runs between December and April. For the fifth year in a row, the sweet little morsels likely won’t appear on Maine restaurant menus. At a time when chefs are more focused than ever on local ingredients, what will they do without these winter delicacies – especially when it looks as if they may never come back?
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