Saving Seafood

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

Legal sizes for lobsters could change to protect population

February 7, 2023 — The rules about the minimum and maximum sizes of lobsters that can be trapped off New England could soon become stricter, potentially bringing big changes to one of the most valuable seafood industries in the country.

Fishers are required to measure lobsters from eyes to tail and must throw back the crustaceans if they’re too large or too small. The rules, which can vary slightly based on fishing grounds, are intended to maintain a breeding population of the lobsters in key areas such as the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank.

The regulatory Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission is considering changing the standards by a fraction of an inch in some of the fishing grounds. The commission said it’s considering the changes because of a worrisome lack of baby lobsters growing off New England.

The changes would arrive at a time when the lobster industry is experiencing record highs in both catch and value, and consumers are paying more for lobsters — already a premium product — than they were just a few years ago. The industry is also challenged by warming oceans and new fishing rules designed to protect rare whales.

Read the full article at ABC News

Green groups targeting blue-collar lobstermen are largely funded by dark money

February 6, 2023 — 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, a Fox News Digital review of tax filings found.

The organizations — the Center For Biological Diversity, Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) and Defenders Of Wildlife — first filed a joint federal lawsuit against the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) in 2018, arguing a rule issued by the agency years earlier failed to properly protect the endangered North Atlantic right whales from lobster fishing equipment. In April 2020, a federal judge ruled in favor of the groups, ordering the NMFS to issue tighter restrictions.

“Right whales have been getting tangled up and killed in lobster gear for far too long,” Kristen Monsell, the oceans program litigation director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said at the time. “This decision sends a clear signal that federal officials must protect these desperately endangered animals from more painful and deadly entanglements before it’s too late.”

Read the full article at Fox News

MAINE: Maine lobster fishery withdraws from Marine Stewardship Council recertification process

February 6, 2023 — The Gulf of Maine lobster fishery has temporarily withdrawn its effort to pursue recertification under the Marine Stewardship Council sustainability standard.

The Maine Certified Sustainable Lobster Association (MCSLA), an industry group that has served as the fishery’s client group for the MSC certification process since it was first certified in 2016, decided not to continue to seek recertification, after it lost its certificate in November 2022.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Fishing Restricted Off Mass. to Protect Right Whales

February 1, 2023 — Citing threats to the endangered North Atlantic right whale, federal officials are invoking an emergency rule to ban lobster and crab trap and pot fishermen from working in a vast area of Massachusetts Bay over the next three months.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on Tuesday said the emergency rule, which was also deployed in 2022, means that trap and pot fishermen fishing federal waters in an area known as the Massachusetts Restricted Area Wedge “must remove all trap/pot gear from this area, and may not reset trawls being actively fished, or set new trawls in this area for the period from February 1 – April 30, 2023.”

Read the full article at NECN