Saving Seafood

State and federal officials for the first time allow ropeless lobstering in areas closed to protect right whales

March 2, 2023 — For nine years, Rob Martin spent winters with most of his 800 traps stacked in his front yard, struggling to stay solvent over the long three months when regulators closed the region’s lobster fishery to protect critically endangered whales.

Over the years, the 58-year-old lobsterman has attended countless public meetings, pleading with officials to find a way that would allow him and others to resume fishing during those hard months.

Now, after years of controversy, state and federal officials are allowing Martin and more than a dozen other lobstermen to fish in closed areas off Massachusetts. The only caveat: They must use a new kind of fishing gear that uses limited amounts of rope and aims to eliminate the threat that lobstering poses to North Atlantic right whales.

Read the full article at the Boston Globe

Federal bill would undo six-year right whale regulatory pause championed by Maine delegation

March 2, 2023 — The bill has a long name: The Restoring Effective Science-based Conservation Under Environmental Laws Protecting Whales, or the RESCUE Whales Act.

But the legislation, introduced earlier this week by Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Arizona, would have a simple outcome. It would eliminate a provision that pauses the development of new federal right whale regulations on the lobster and Jonah crab fisheries for the next six years, a measure that Maine’s congressional delegation slipped into the latest federal spending bill during the final days of 2022.

In joint statement, all four members of the Maine delegation defended the provision, which they described as a “lifeline” to the state’s lobster industry that provides “time to pinpoint the true cause of the decline in the right whale population.”

The Rescue Whales Act, they said, would “unfairly target Maine’s lobster industry without any data or taking into account the reality in the Gulf of Maine.”

Read the full article at Maine Public

Maine Lobstermen’s court appeal heard; new attempt to rescind gear delay

March 1, 2023 — A federal appeals court in Washington, D.C. is considering the Maine Lobstermen’s Association appeal of the government’s fishing gear restrictions aimed at saving endangered whales.

In arguments Feb. 24, the MLA’s lead attorney Paul Clement, a former U.S. solicitor general during the Bush administration, laid out the fishermen’s case, arguing the National Marine Fisheries Service went overboard in making worst-case assumptions about the danger of Maine lobster gear entangling whales.

The North Atlantic right whale is highly endangered, with fewer than 350 animals believed to be surviving, with ship strikes and fishing gear entanglement leading causes of mortality. Clement made the MLA’s case that none in recent years have been documented to involve Maine lobster gear.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Rep. Allison Hepler: More and better data can protect lobstering and right whales

February 28, 2o23 — The word “reprieve” is being used to describe the late-December federal action that produced a 6-year delay in implementing federal whale rules, as well as new funding for research and gear innovations in the lobster fishery. A reprieve is welcome, but it does not mean that the industry can step back and go about business as usual. Fortunately, that’s not what is happening.

This past summer, the National Oceanic and Aeronautical Administration (NOAA) had fast-tracked its implementation of rules around the endangered North Atlantic Right Whales, which would have made immediate and dramatic changes to Maine’s lobster fishery in two years rather than 10. In response, in the midst of our early-winter coastal storm that occurred just before Christmas last year, Maine’s federal delegation secured a 6-year pause in the implementation of those regulations, and also provided $55 million in funding for research and monitoring. This action was a welcome break for Maine lobstermen.

Science is at the heart of the work that needs to be done. Some of the funding will allow for continued research into better understanding the behavior and distribution of right whales as a result of the changing environmental situation in the Gulf of Maine. It is dramatically warming, and the whales’ favorite food is shifting east into Canadian waters. Organizations such as Bigelow Laboratories are likely to receive some of this funding to continue its research on the impact of this shift.

Read the full article at the Press Herald

 

Federal court hears arguments from Maine lobstermen appealing right whale regulations

February 27, 2023 — A federal appeals court heard arguments Friday from the Maine Lobstermen’s Association, which is challenging a government plan to regulate the fishery and conserve endangered right whales.

The Maine Lobstermen’s Association had promised to take its latest appeal of federal fishing regulations all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, if necessary.

But lobstermen hope they’ll avoid that prospect, especially with Paul Clement, an attorney with more than 100 past Supreme Court appearances, representing Maine.

Read the full article at Bangor Daily News

Lobster fishers sued federal government over closure to help whales

February 13, 2023 — A group of Massachusetts lobster fishers has sued the federal government over an emergency closure of fishing grounds that are designed to protect a vanishing species of whale.

The closure, enacted Feb. 1, blocked off about 200 square miles (518 square kilometers) of Massachusetts Bay from lobster fishing until the end of April. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said the closure was necessary to protect North Atlantic right whales from dangerous entanglement in fishing ropes.

Read the full article News Center Maine

Northeast ropeless gear experiments start off Massachusetts, Rhode Island

February 10, 2023 — In the coming weeks, up to 30 New England commercial trap and pot fishing vessels will be involved in testing experimental on-demand gear systems – so-called ropeless gear that the National Marine Fisheries Service hopes could be one long-term solution to reduce the danger of whale entanglement in vertical trap lines.

The cooperative program with NMFS and its Northeast Fisheries Science Center began on Feb. 1 and continues through April 30, in areas closed to vertical lines and buoys to reduce entanglement risk.

The federally permitted trap vessels will fish up to 10 trawls each, using different designs of on-demand gear, activated by acoustic signals for retrieval, in federal waters of the South Island Restricted Area and the Massachusetts Restricted Area while those areas are otherwise closed to lobster and Jonah crab gear that use vertical lines.

“During this time, on-demand trap/pot gear set on the bottom will not be marked at the water’s surface because on-demand gear does not have surface buoys,” according to a fisheries science center summary of the experiment plan.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Maine lobstermen are clawing to keep livelihoods afloat amid push to sink industry

February 8, 2023 — The U.S. lobster industry is clawing to keep their livelihoods and sounding off on a potentially “devastating” legal battle against environmental groups funded by big bucks from liberal, dark money groups.

“It seems like there’s always a battle in this industry,” Lobster 207 CEO Mike Yohe said on “Fox & Friends First” Tuesday. “They have deep pockets, so they just file another lawsuit to get us out of the water or change gear or change how we fish in the state of Maine.”

“The lobster industry is all we have here. And a lot of our coastal towns in my town, that’s pretty much what everybody does,” fourth-generation lobsterman Dustin Delano added on “Fox & Friends.” “If you’re not a lobster boat captain, you work on a lobster boat or you are involved in the supply chain, or you sell bait to the lobstermen, or you sell vehicles to lobstermen or in their crews. It’s just one of our number one things here in Maine, and this coast would be completely devastated without it.”

A recent Fox News Digital review of tax filings found environmental groups that have led litigation targeting the lobster fishing industry have been heavily funded by various liberal dark money groups that don’t disclose their individual donors.

Read the full article at Fox Business

MAINE: Wave of changes hitting Maine’s lobster industry all at once

February 8, 2023 — Even with congressionally-approved six-year reprieve from economically restrictive rules related to preserving the remaining population of critically endangered North Atlantic right whales, the lobster fishery in the U.S. Northeast is facing an inflection point.

The Maine Lobstermen’s Association is continuing to battle the National Marine Fisheries Service in court, challenging the agency’s May 2022 biological opinion for right whales.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Despite a pause on new regulations, U.S. and Canadian lobstermen see big challenges ahead

February 7, 2023 — After a two-year hiatus, members of the U.S. and Canadian lobster fisheries met in Portland over the weekend to discuss challenges facing their industry. Top of mind is how the industry will prepare before new federal regulations designed to protect endangered right whales begin in six years.

Fisheries in Maine had late last year expressed relief about the years-long delay in the rules change included in a federal spending bill, as it bought the industry more time to research and test new fishing techniques and other measures aimed at protecting North Atlantic right whales.

Read the full article at wbur