November 19, 2021 — Lobster fishermen off the Maine coast must begin to remove gear from a new protected area intended to help whales, the federal government said.
New rules make an approximately 950-square-mile area of the Gulf of Maine essentially off limits to lobster fishing from October to January. A federal appeals court ruled this week that the ban is enforceable, despite legal challenges from the lobster industry.
November 17, 2021 — The Maine Lobstermen’s Association held a press conference announcing a fundraising appeal to the general public. The association wants to raise $10 million for what it foresees as endless, costly court clashes over right whale supporters and their industry.
Without the financial means to fight both the government and environmental activists, lobstermen said their very existence is at stake.
“We need to level the playing field and make this a fair fight,” said Lobstermen’s Association Vice President Dustin Delano.
President Kristan Porter said his association was assembling the best legal team they could find.
“It’s not cheap,” Porter said “but we need to be able to stand and fight.”
The offshore fishery currently in question covers 950 square miles of ocean, about 30 miles off the coast, from Mount Desert Island to Casco Bay. Federal regulators want it closed from October through January.
The closure is meant to protect endangered right whales traversing the Gulf of Maine from Canadian waters to the Florida coast. Maine lobstermen, who have already switched to non-floating and breakaway lines in an effort to protect the scarce mammals, said they are not to blame for increased mortalities seen in recent years.
Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News
November 17, 2021 — A federal appeals court is reinstating restrictions on fishing gear in a nearly 1,000 square mile swath of ocean off Maine’s coast. It’s a blow to Maine’s lobstermen and a victory for advocates for the endangered North Atlantic right whale.
In October, in an effort to protect the roughly 340 right whales remaining on the planet from potentially deadly entanglements with fishing gear, the federal government imposed a four-month restriction on the use of trap-rope in the area. Lobstermen consider the area prime winter fishing grounds, but the rope-ban would effectively bar 60 or more boats from fishing there. Before the restrictions took effect, the Maine Lobstering Union won a stay from a U.S. district judge in Bangor.
But late Tuesday, a federal appeals court in Boston ruled that the lower court overstepped its authority. The court said that while the stakes are high on both sides, Congress had “placed its thumb on the scales” for endangered species such as the right whales.
November 10, 2021 — In September of 2019, Tracy Pugh started getting phone calls about dead lobsters.
Pugh is a biologist with the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, and a handful of fishermen in Cape Cod Bay were reporting traps full of dead lobsters — “anywhere from several dozen to hundreds,” she recalled. “So way, way more than normal.”
Some reported dead fish and crabs in their traps, as well. One trawler came up with a bunch of dead scallops.
Pugh, working with scientists at the Center for Coastal Studies, found the reason soon enough: a roughly six-mile stretch of water in Cape Cod Bay almost completely depleted of oxygen. “It was pretty bad,” said Pugh.
The hypoxic zone — or “blob,” as it became known — ambled around the sea floor for at least a week. Any animals that could swim or crawl away from the blob did, said Pugh. But those stuck in traps or unable to move, died.
The hypoxic zone dissipated in October of that year, but a new one appeared in 2020, around the same time and place. The blobs left behind a mystery: what caused them? And were they going to come back every year?
November 8, 2021 — Senators Susan Collins and Angus King Maine’s say the state’s lobster industry will be strengthened with more than $650,000 in grant funding.
The money comes from NOAA’s Sea Grant American Lobster Initiative.
It’s to support the long-term health and resiliency of Maine’s lobster industry.
November 2, 2021 — The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has appealed a Maine judge’s order from last month that allowed traditional lobstering to continue in an area of offshore fishing grounds in the Gulf of Maine.
Two days before 967 square miles of fishing ground was supposed to be closed to lobstering to protect the endangered North Atlantic right whale, Maine U.S. District Court Judge Lance Walker granted the Maine Lobstering Union, Stonington-based Damon Family Lobster Co., and a Vinalhaven lobster dealer a temporary restraining order that allowed fishing in the planned closed area.
Last week, the federal government, who had come up with the rules, appealed that restraining order, arguing that the Trenton-based union, Damon Family Lobster Co., and the third plaintiff had “utterly failed” to meet the burden needed to necessitate the halt of the closure.
NOAA argued that the union and lobster dealers did not provide any evidence of irreparable harm and said that the National Marine Fisheries Service complied with the law and rationally based its decision on the best available science.
Read the full story at the Mount Desert Islander
November 2, 2021 — Researchers last week said the North Atlantic right whale population dropped to 336 in 2020, an 8 percent decrease from the previous year.
The latest population figure for the critically endangered species dipped from 366 individuals in 2019 and is the lowest population estimate in nearly 20 years, according to the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium. The organization has been studying right whales since the 1980s and announced the estimate at its annual meeting last week.
“We are obviously discouraged by this estimate, but quite frankly, not surprised,” said Heather Pettis, an associate scientist in the New England Aquarium’s Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life and the executive administrator for the consortium. “The right whale research and conservation communities know that while widespread efforts to change the trajectory of the species have been undertaken, they have not been enough.”
The species, which migrates up and down the east coast, was generally rebounding until 2011, when the downward trend started. That prompted new regulations on Maine’s lobstermen and other fisheries. At that time, there were an estimated 481 whales, but since then the population has declined by 30 percent.
November 1, 2021 — Maine Sea Grant staff and Maine-based researchers will advance a multimillion-dollar NOAA Sea Grant American Lobster Initiative, which announced its third round of funding.
Six newly funded research projects, three of which are led by Maine-based researchers, will address critical gaps in knowledge about how the American lobster (Homarus americanus) is being impacted by environmental change in the Gulf of Maine, Georges Bank and southern New England. The focus of this work is based on specific language in Sea Grant’s fiscal year 2021 appropriations language.
One of the most iconic modern American fisheries, the American lobster also represents one of the largest and most valuable single species fisheries along the Atlantic coast. In 2020, the landings value of the American lobster fishery was estimated at $524.5 million in the United States, according to NOAA Fisheries, of which the Maine fishery accounted for an estimated $408 million. Within Maine, lobsters make up roughly 80 percent of the landings value of all fisheries combined. However, ecosystem shifts, food web changes and ocean acidification all present threats to the American lobster fishery.
Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News
October 29, 2021 — The Atlantic State Marine Fisheries Commission could consider final approval of an electronic tracking requirement for lobstermen in federal waters as early as spring 2022, officials said last week.
The commission’s American Lobster Management Board went over a potential timeline for the action at its fall meeting and staff said that a draft of the requirement could be ready for public comment by December.
The board initiated the idea to collect spatial and effort data from lobster and Jonah crab fishermen.
The potential data could help address challenges with stock assessments, interactions with protected species and offshore enforcement. It could also be crucial to help record exactly how much space the U.S. lobster fishery covers, as officials look at the expanded use of aquaculture, protected marine areas and offshore wind energy.
Read the full story at the Ellsworth American
October 20, 2021 –Maine lobstermen will not have to stop fishing in an area slated to be off-limits from October through January.
A federal judge granted temporary relief to the Maine Lobstering Union Saturday.
The group sued in an effort to block the seasonal closure of the roughly 1,000-square-mile area.
Federal officials argued the closure is necessary to help protect endangered North Atlantic right whales from extinction.
“You’re not going to save a whale by closing down I-95 and we feel like that’s the same implication,” said Virginia Olsen of the Maine Lobstering Union.
The rules issued by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration through the National Marine Fisheries Service are part of a 10-year plan to reduce the risk of right whales getting tangled in lobster fishing ropes and dying.
The Maine Lobstermen’s Association filed a lawsuit in September to challenge the protections which, they argue, will “eliminate” the Maine lobster fishery.