September 13, 2021 — Federal officials are working on a road map for the implementation of ropeless fishing in the Atlantic Ocean after announcing a seasonal closure of a large swath of prime lobstering ground last week.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said it was expecting to have the guide for the developing technology available in May 2022.
The agency announced that it would be closing a 967-square-mile area largely off the Midcoast to lobstering between October and January, some of the most lucrative months for offshore lobstering. The move is part of an effort to reduce the number of vertical lines in the water in order to protect the endangered North Atlantic right whale.
Lobstermen, however, could continue to fish in the area if they used ropeless fishing equipment that doesn’t use the persistent vertical lines that traditional lobstering does.
“The primary goal behind having these restricted areas open to ropeless fishing is to test it so that we can figure out how it might be able to be implemented in the fishery in the future,” said Marisa Trego, an Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction team coordinator at NOAA. “This will help us deal with different issues like gear conflicts and figuring out how to locate here and have everybody on the same page.”
Traditionally, lobstermen have a buoy on the surface to mark the location of their traps on the ocean floor. The traps are connected to the buoy by a vertical line.
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