May 3, 2019 — Inshore lobstermen will get a break when the federal government adopts new whale protection rules, but it remains to be seen for how long.
On Thursday, May 2, Department of Marine Resources Commissioner Patrick Keliher announced on the DMR website that the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission will delay imposing any whale protection rules to see whether measures likely to be adopted by NOAA Fisheries offer sufficient protection to endangered right whales.
Late in April, NOAA’s Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Team (TRT) recommended a 50 percent reduction in the number of vertical endlines (which connect lobster traps on the sea bottom to marker buoys on the surface) in the water. The TRT also called for the use of weaker rope, likely for the upper 75 percent, of the endlines that remain so that if whales swim into the rope it will break.
According to DMR spokesman Jeff Nichols, while the 50 percent reduction in endlines applies to both inshore and offshore fisheries, “the weak rope provision targets federal waters,” outside the three-mile limit.