June 6, 2022 — Federal fisheries officials are proposing a special permit to allow up to 100 New England lobster and crab boats to use experimental high-tech systems to retrieve their traps. That would mark a big expansion in the development of fishing systems that could help protect endangered North Atlantic right whales.
The technology uses remote-control systems to locate and trigger traps or buoy lines to the surface, reducing the use of vertical rope lines that can entangle the right whales.
Henry Milliken supervises a prototyping program for the so-called “ropeless” gear at the Northeast Marine Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole.