June 17, 2019 — For Maine lobstermen, 2019 is likely to bring a summer of discontent.
Fuel prices are high. Cuts in herring fishing quotas — with further cuts likely — mean that bait is likely to be extremely scarce, and whatever’s available extremely expensive as the season develops. And that’s the good news.
What really has lobstermen worked up is the demand by federal regulators that they reduce the risk of death or injury to endangered right whales in the Gulf of Maine by 60 percent. To do that, Maine lobstermen will have to reduce the number of vertical endlines in the water — the lines that link traps on the bottom to buoys on the surface — by 50 percent.
Despite the harsh restrictions, the recommendations of NOAA’s Large Whale Take Reduction Team were a victory of sorts. For the time being, there is no suggestion of closing areas of the Gulf of Maine to fishing and the demand by some conservation organizations for the use of “ropeless” fishing gear was quashed.
Last Thursday, Department of Marine Resources Commissioner Patrick Keliher drew a packed house to a meeting of the Zone C Lobster Management Council, held at the Reach Performing Arts Center in the Deer Isle-Stonington Elementary School, to explain the regulatory process and to hear suggestions from lobstermen as to how best to meet the line reduction goal in the area where they fish.
It was the second of seven meetings Keliher has scheduled with the state’s seven zone councils this month. Carl Wilson, DMR’s chief scientist, and most of the department’s upper echelon, were on hand as well.
DMR is working on a very tight timeline, Keliher said.