May 19, 2020 — The conservation groups that filed a federal lawsuit two years ago to force the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to do more to protect endangered right whales from entanglement with fishing gear have asked U.S. District Court Judge James E. Boasberg to ban lobster fishing gear with vertical buoy lines off the coast of Massachusetts.
The affected area would be south of the islands of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket.
According to the Center for Biological Diversity and several other plaintiff conservation groups, the area “has increasingly become important right whale foraging and socializing habitat in recent years.”
The conservation groups filed their request last Friday, three weeks after the judge ruled that the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) violated the federal Endangered Species Act when it continued to allow lobster fishing with gear that used fixed vertical buoy lines in which whales could become entangled.
As a practical matter, a ban on the vertical lines that connect traps on the sea floor to marker buoys on the surface would amount to a total prohibition against lobster fishing in the area south of the two Massachusetts islands.