August 21, 2020 — A federal district court judge, in a decision issued on Aug. 19, gave the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) nine more months to craft new rules to protect endangered right whales from entanglement in lobster fishing gear.
Judge James E. Boasberg also denied a request by conservation organizations for an immediate ban on lobster fishing in a vast area of the ocean south of Nantucket Island in Massachusetts.
In April, Boasberg ruled that NMFS violated the federal Endangered Species Act in 2014 when it adopted new rules governing the lobster fishery by failing to adequately consider the risk that endangered right whales could be seriously injured or killed if they become entangled in the vertical end lines that connect lobster traps on the sea floor to marker buoys on the surface. The judge vacated the NMFS “biological opinion” required by the Endangered Species Act, which supported continuation of the lobster fishery. Two weeks ago, the court heard arguments on what should be done to remedy the situation.
The conservation organizations that originally filed the lawsuit in 2018 asked the court to give NMFS a Jan. 31 deadline to adopt a new biological opinion and to order an immediate end to lobster fishing in a vast area of southern New England waters. NMFS and several intervenors representing various segments of the lobster industry in Maine and Massachusetts asked for the court to delay its order vacating the biological opinion until May 31, 2021.