October 26, 2023 — Lawmakers and a federal appeals court last year defeated a federal plan to save endangered whales by eradicating New England’s lobster industry. With those plans undone, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is crafting a workaround scheme to regulate lobstermen out of the fishery.
Recent years have been brutal going for lobstermen, such that the survival of our trade is highly uncertain. Lobstermen are at once negotiating higher fuel costs, higher bait costs, higher shipping costs, and an agitation campaign from dark money nonprofits trained on major buyers of Maine lobster products. NOAA’s new regulatory plan is poised to decimate our inventory.
NOAA’s new plan – a rule promulgated under the Marine Mammal Protection Act – would expand an existing restricted area, where lobster fishing is banned for three months each year. The scope of the expansion is unclear as of this writing, but any expansion is unwelcome as a matter of precedent and a practical business matter.
As with the previous plan, NOAA is allegedly crafting its new rule to protect the endangered north Atlantic right whale. The agency maintains vessel strikes and entanglements with lobster gear are killing these marine mammals.
Read the full article at the Boston Herald