January 6, 2021 — A proposed rule released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on Dec. 30 aims to lower North Atlantic right whale entanglements in commercial fishing lines. Its release follows two years of research, public meetings and comment.
Federal regulators found the Maine Department of Marine Resources (DMR) proposal submitted last January to be lacking — by 8 percent.
NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service seeks a 60 percent risk reduction to whales while the Maine DMR plan would only achieve a 52 percent reduction, NOAA informed Maine DMR in January 2020. Both proposals increase the number of traps per trawl line to reduce the number of vertical lines in the ocean, allow for gear marking to identify which state a whale fatality occurred in, require weak links in lines that would allow an entangled whale to break free and provide for seasonal closures in one lobster management area (LMA).