October 30, 2025 — The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Council (ASMFC) has voted to continue a ban on female horseshoe crab bait harvesting in the Delaware Bay for two years.
Horseshoe crabs are both harvested for bait and bled for their blood, which is valued in biomedical testing for its unique ability to clot when exposed to bacterial toxins.
March 4, 2019 — A Maine lobsterman and machinist believes he could have the solution to North Atlantic right whale entanglement issues in the state’s lobster fishery.
Ben Brickett of Blue Water Concepts presented – or more accurately re-presented – his idea for a “Time Tension Line-Cutter” at the Maine Fishermen’s Forum on 1 March. The technology, which he invented over a decade ago, provides a solution for whale entanglements that doesn’t compromise rope strength or require any electronics.
“I got started in this in 2003. A good friend of mine who works on an offshore lobster boat came by and was very concerned with having to put weaker lines on his gear,” Brickett said. The friend in question was fishing in deep water, with hauling tensions that can approach 10,000 pounds on large lobster trawls. “They wanted to know if we could put in some kind of timed weak link.”
Currently, the lobster industry in the Northeast U.S. is facing pressure after a number of entanglement-related deaths of North Atlantic right whales – an endangered species with just over 400 individuals left – occurred in 2018. Both NOAA fisheries and the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Council have been investigating methods to prevent potential entanglements by the lobster industry.
January 31, 2017 — President Donald Trump is going to reverse (“undo”) job-killing, industry-destroying regulations in dozens of huge federal administrative agencies like the EPA, the FCC and the National Labor Relations Board.
Trump campaigned on the promise to help us all take our country back by eliminating these business-stifling rules put in place by Barack Obama and his minions.
We need help in New Jersey right now since the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversees the managed fisheries, is getting ready to cripple the New Jersey fishing industry when it receives a recommendation from the Atlantic States Fisheries Commission and the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Council that will vote Thursday to reduce the flounder quotas in New Jersey, crippling the fishing business on “bad facts” presented to the agency.