January 27, 2021 — At what cost does saving the North Atlantic right whale come?
A Jan. 20 public meeting on the latest proposal to reduce the risk of whale entanglements in fishing lines focused on northern and eastern Maine lobster fishing. The virtual meeting continued discussions between the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and lobstermen that began in 2019. The Maine Department of Marine Resources submitted its own risk-reduction proposal in January 2020 that NOAA said did not fully meet its goals.
At this latest meeting, local lobstermen echoed similar concerns they aired when discussions started two years ago: NOAA is relying on incomplete and outdated data, and fishermen are not seeing right whales in Maine waters. NOAA scientists agree that more data would be useful.
“We don’t have a lot of recent data to let us know that they’re not still going there,” said Colleen Coogan, a NOAA biologist who is part of its whale Take Reduction Team (TRT). “Maine has been working pretty aggressively trying to get more data.”