February 5, 2020 — The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries Service will hold off on announcing new rules aimed at protecting North Atlantic right whales from entanglement with fishing gear, including Maine lobster fishing gear, until at least July.
The agency, also known as the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), had been expected to release proposed rules by late last fall or possibly in January. But in a filing with the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., last week, Jenifer Anderson, an assistant regional administrator at the NFMS Greater Atlantic Regional Office in Gloucester, Mass., said the delay was the result of fisheries managers from Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts submitting proposed state-specific lobster fishing rules to the agency for review later than expected.
According to Anderson, NMFS anticipated receiving proposals from the states last fall, but the Maine Department of Marine Resources didn’t file its proposals until Jan. 3. Those proposals differed, she said, from proposals the state tentatively agreed to last April at a meeting of the agency’s Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Team. According to Anderson, Massachusetts and New Hampshire were expected to file their plans “on or about” Feb. 1.