Saving Seafood

Maine lobster industry, officials push back against federal right whale protection plans

November 7, 2019 — The U.S. state of Maine’s lobster industry, in addition to some state officials, are pushing back against proposals requiring fewer vertical lines in the industry in order to protect the endangered North Atlantic right whale.

At a meeting on 6 November, Maine’s Department of Marine Resources Commissioner Patrick Keliher called the state’s counter-proposal – using weaker rope and more traps per line in deep waters – the “line in the sand,” according to the Portland Press Herald. The state has been fighting back against the federal government’s proposal to reduce lines by 50 percent, a proposal that the state’s governor, Janet Mills, called “foolish.”

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Maine says data will prove lobstermen aren’t to blame in right whale deaths

November 6, 2019 — Calling a state proposal to reduce the amount of rope lobstermen use “a line in the sand,” Maine’s top fisheries official said Monday that he hoped the state plan generates data that absolves Maine’s lobster fishery from blame in right whale deaths.

Patrick Keliher, commissioner of the Maine Department of Marine Resources, told a group of fishermen Monday in Ellsworth that the state’s proposal for reducing the risk to whales of getting tangled in lobster fishing gear does not meet federal regulators’ goal of cutting the number of vertical buoy lines in the water by half. But he said the state’s plan focuses its fishing line reductions in deeper waters offshore, where whales are more likely to come into contact with fishing gear.

“The further offshore you go, the higher the [risk] goes up,” Keliher told roughly 100 people, most of them lobstermen, at The Grand Auditorium. “The way I look at it, this is Maine’s line in the sand.”

Monday’s meeting was the first of three the state is holding about its response to expected new federal regulations that would require lobstermen to use less fishing line and weaker rope from which entangled whales could more easily break free.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

Maine proposes targeted exemptions to help lobster industry weather whale crisis

November 6, 2019 — The state is proposing a modified plan to protect the endangered North Atlantic right whale while creating less hardship for the lobster fishing industry than a proposed federal plan.

Maine Department of Marine Resources Commissioner Patrick Keliher presented the proposal in Ellsworth Monday night, at the first of three meetings being held this week by the agency.

Maine’s lobster industry, many said, was being unfairly targeted.

“We’ve seen bad science against lobster fishermen in the state of Maine,” said Rocky Alley, president of the Maine Lobstering Union and a Jonesport lobsterman. “When will they come up with new science that makes sense? How many whales have we killed?”

“In the last decade, directly, with Maine gear on them? None,” responded Keliher.

But, he added, “as long as we’re 64% of all endlines on the East Coast, and 90% within all the lobster management areas, we’ll continue to have a bull’s-eye on our back.”

Read the full story at MaineBiz

MAINE: Lobster industry braces for right whale changes amid turbulent times

November 4, 2019 — Maine lobstermen have had a lot to juggle this year, with hugely fluctuating bait bills and a dismal start to the season, but nothing has caused as much anxiety for Maine’s most valuable fishery as the changes coming to protect the endangered right whale.

“Right now, we’re all fishing hard, so it’s taking our mind off it some, but it feels like we’ve been waiting and worrying about what whales might do to us for so long now,” said Jake Thompson, a Vinalhaven lobsterman. “We can manage the rest of it, but whales? Everybody’s worried about whales.”

Lobstermen will have a chance to weigh in on Maine’s plan to protect the endangered right whale from buoy line entanglements at Maine Department of Marine Resources meetings in Ellsworth, Waldoboro and South Portland this week. The state’s final plan will go to federal regulators later this month.

The proposal would require lobstermen to add more traps to buoy lines set farther from shore, use rope that whales can break free from if entangled, report where and how they fish on each trip out, and mark their gear purple and green so it can be identified as Maine lobster gear if it is found on a whale.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Lobstermen To Get A Look At New Plan To Save Right Whales

November 4, 2019 — Maine’s lobstermen are getting a look at new rules that will affect their fishery and are designed to protect endangered right whales.

A federal team has called for a reduction of the vertical lobster trap lines in the Gulf of Maine to reduce risk to the whales. Maine fishery officials say their latest proposal to meet the requirements would remove 25 percent of the lines, not including an exemption for lobstermen who fish inshore waters.

The Maine Department of Marine Resources is holding three meetings this week to discuss the proposal. The first is scheduled for Monday in Ellsworth, and it’ll be followed by meetings Tuesday in Waldoboro and Wednesday in South Portland.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at Maine Public

Decrease in Maine lobster catches this season raises concerns

October 31, 2019 — Early numbers show Maine’s lobster catch has declined as much as 40 percent this year; equaling roughly 50 million pounds.

State officials calculated these results using data gathered from September 2018 to September 2019. However, there are still a few months worth of data from lobster landings left out of these results.

The Maine Department of Marine Resources says that some locations had an uptick in catches after September, but as the season wraps up, lobstermen have reported that the pickings this year were substantially reduced.

Gene Robinson, a lobster captain off of Chebeague Island, has been fishing in Maine for the past 50 years.

“It was a wet, cold spring and the lobsters just never showed up,” said Robinson.

The cold spring may have stalled the shedding process in the early summer months when lobsters move toward the coast.

Read the full story at WCVB

Maine lobster landings ‘are way off,’ down 40% from last year

October 28, 2019 — The state’s year-to-date lobster catch is “way off” this year, according to Maine’s top fishing regulator.

As of the end of September, Maine fishermen had landed less than 50 million pounds of lobster, according to Commissioner Pat Keliher of Maine Department of Marine Resources. That is 40 percent less than what had been landed by September 2018, and 38 percent off from the five-year average.

Keliher told the American Lobster Management Board on Monday that some of the year-to-date decline could be because lobsters molted late this year. The bulk of Maine’s lobster fleet catches new shell lobster, or lobsters whose new shells are just starting to firm up after shedding their old ones.

“Maine lobster landings are down significantly, below 50 million pounds to date,” Keliher told the board. “Our landings are way off. Now that doesn’t mean the sky is falling. That means we certainly had a very big delay in the shed.”

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

MAINE: DMR’s answer to whale rules focus offshore

October 24, 2019 — As the battle over how best to protect endangered northern right whales continues to escalate, the Department of Marine Resources is proposing a new set of requirements for lobster gear that the department believes will help reduce injury to the whales without imposing severe, and some say dangerous, restrictions on fishermen.

Last week, DMR Commissioner Patrick Keliher announced that after “rigorous scientific analysis,” the department had come up with a new draft plan to address “both the risk to right whales and concerns of fishermen” that is “in keeping with the real risk the Maine fishery presents.”

Last March, the National Marine Fisheries Service announced that the risk of injuries to right whales in the Gulf of Maine had to be reduced by at least 60 percent.

To meet that goal, a group of fishermen, scientists and conservation group representatives known as the Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Team recommended that NMFS require Maine lobstermen to reduce the number of vertical lines used to connect their traps to the surface marker buoys by 50 percent.

The NMFS proposal was based on a scientific model that ostensibly showed the restrictions to be necessary to meet the 60 percent risk reduction goal.

Read the full story at the Mount Desert-Islander

Maine pushes own whale protection plan

October 24, 2019 — Maine’s fishery regulators, on behalf of the state’s vital lobster industry, appear to be willing to meet the right whale take reduction team halfway on the removal of lobster buoy lines — but only in federal waters.

The state’s Department of Marine Resources last week released its own draft plan as a counterweight to the take reduction team proposal to remove 50 percent of all vertical lobster lines from wherever Maine lobstermen set and haul — in Maine state waters and the federal waters three miles beyond.

The DMR proposal calls for removing 25 percent of vertical buoy lines set in federal waters by Maine commercial lobstermen.

It said it would eliminate the lines by mandating lobstermen engage in a fishing practice called “trawling up” in which more traps — in ascending numbers as they move further offshore — are attached to each vertical line.

DMR Commissioner Patrick Keliher said his agency’s plan protects the whales “by reducing risk where it occurs” and protects the state’s elemental lobster industry in the state waters where most permitted lobstermen ply their trade.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

MAINE: DMR floats new gear regs to protect whales

October 23, 2019 — As the battle over how best to protect endangered northern right whales continues to escalate, the Department of Marine Resources is proposing a new set of requirements for lobster gear that the department believes will help reduce injury to the whales without imposing severe, and some say dangerous, restrictions on fishermen.

Last week, DMR Commissioner Patrick Keliher announced that after “rigorous scientific analysis,” the department had come up with a new draft plan to address “both the risk to right whales and concerns of fishermen” that is “in keeping with the real risk the Maine fishery presents.”

Last March, the National Marine Fisheries Service announced that the risk of injuries to right whales in the Gulf of Maine had to be reduced by at least 60 percent.

To meet that goal, a group of fishermen, scientists and conservation group representatives known as the Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Team recommended that NMFS require Maine lobstermen to reduce the number of vertical lines used to connect their traps to the surface marker buoys by 50 percent.

The NMFS proposal was based on a scientific model that ostensibly showed the restrictions to be necessary to meet the 60 percent risk reduction goal.

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American