May 12, 2026 — Pop-up gear has been promoted as the best way to protect whales from entanglement, but there are other options.
For Dustin Delano, a former lobsterman from Friendship, Maine, and current executive director of the New England Fishermen’s Stewardship Association (NEFSA), the idea of using pop-up buoys, also known as ropeless or on-demand gear, is a complete non-starter. “I won’t test it,” Delano said. “I’m not going to get involved in something that’s just going to allow a few fishermen to fish. And then there’s the safety issue. If somebody gets tangled in ropeless gear and goes overboard, you’re not going to get them back.”
Delano’s message is echoed on the NEFSA Instagram account, with four recent posts on the safety issue. “That’s our biggest concern,” said Delano. “Everyone knows of somebody who got hauled overboard, and we got them back because we had an endline.”
In addition to the safety of fishermen, Delano is also concerned about the workability of ropeless gear that would require fishermen to determine the position of other gear based on acoustic signals that the gear would send. “For that to work, the accuracy would have to be a small fraction of a mile,” he said. “And our plotters are not perfect. This will require very high-tech equipment that we don’t have yet.”
When the weather becomes an issue, Delano pointed out that many fishermen will be going out at the same time when there’s a good day, and with everyone hauling and shifting gear, the chances of setting over each other increase. Hauling up tangled 25-trap trawls presents yet another safety issue. “Ropeless gear is not going to work with the number of fishermen we have now,” he said. “They’re going to have to eliminate people from the fishery. A lot of fishermen won’t survive this.”