Saving Seafood

MAINE: Environmentalists weigh in on right whale rules for lobster industry

August 16, 2019 — Environmentalists showed up in large numbers Thursday night to urge federal fishing regulators to defend the endangered right whale against what they claim is the looming extinction threat posed by the Maine lobster industry.

Some of the largest and most powerful animal and environmental groups – including Oceana, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Pew Charitable Trusts, the U.S. Humane Society and the Conservation Law Foundation – sent representatives to the National Marine Fisheries Service meeting in South Portland.

They urged the fisheries service to take immediate action to protect the species, which now numbers about 400, calling for actions such as offshore fishing closures and ropeless lobster fishing that even a team tasked with protecting the whale had dismissed as too drastic as recently as April.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Lobstermen: More data needed to determine if Maine gear is entangling right whales

August 15, 2019 — Lobster fishing gear needs to be made identifiable by location in order to indicate whether Maine-based gear is harming North Atlantic right whales.

That was the consensus of a crowd of over 100 fishermen and government officials who appeared at a federally convened meeting in Ellsworth last night.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is in the midst of holding eight meetings from Maine to Rhode Island to get input on proposed changes to the Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Plan. Based on the endangered whale’s current population, the agency’s overall goal is to reduce serious injuries and deaths from entanglements in lobster trap gear by 60% to 80%.

Read the full story at MaineBiz

MAINE: Lobstermen say whale rules threaten way of life

August 15, 2019 — Maine has more than 6,000 licensed lobstermen. If the 100 or so who gathered at Ellsworth High School Tuesday evening to discuss proposed whale protection rules are a representative sample, most of those lobstermen are angry.

The fishermen gathered for a National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) scoping session on proposed measures to protected endangered right whales. The rules would require a 50 percent cut in the number of vertical buoy lines in the water.

“You’re dealing not just with our livelihoods but with the life blood of our communities,” Stonington lobsterman Julie Eaton told the National Marine Fisheries Service representatives. With earlier whale protection efforts, Eaton said, “We’ve done everything you’ve asked us to do, but this ask is way too big. People will die.”

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American

DAN MORRIS: Maine Voices: Lobstermen threatened with the extinction of their way of life

August 15, 2019 — The word “extinction” has been thrown around a lot lately by environmental groups that believe that Northern right whales are on the verge of just that. Though right whales number more than 8,000 in the Southern Hemisphere, only 400 to 500 are believed to be in the Northern Hemisphere.

Fishermen, whose only master is Mother Nature, and who have been admired over the years for their tenacity and independence, now have been cast as the villain in the whale story. Large, well-funded, out-of-state environmental groups would have you believe that these whales are going extinct and that Maine fishing gear entanglement is a major reason why.

These groups have proposed things like ropeless fishing and refuse to believe that ideas like this are not practical in Maine. Can you imagine how a fisherman could set his 20- to 30-trap trawl into water 300 to 400 feet deep, not knowing where any of his competitors’ trawls might have been set days before? As if hauling long trawls in deep water isn’t dangerous enough, hauling up one’s trawl with another one or two draped over it can be life-threatening.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Maine Lobstermen To Feds: Our Industry Isn’t What’s Killing Endangered Right Whale

August 14, 2019 — Angry Maine lobstermen are telling federal fisheries managers they want definitive proof that their gear is entangling endangered North Atlantic right whales. Until then, they say, the feds should back off from proposed rules that could force them to modify their gear and remove half their rope from the water.

More than 60 lobstermen turned out in Machias on Monday night for the first of four federal “scoping” meetings in Maine to discuss the proposed gear changes. Federal officials had hoped to hear specifics about how the new rules might change the way they harvest lobster, and what it might cost them.

But what they met was a chorus of criticism.

Read the full story at Maine Public

Meetings About New Whale Protections Come to Maine This Week

August 14, 2019 — Representatives of the federal government are in Maine this week to gather feedback about the possibility of new protections for endangered whales.

The National Marine Fisheries Service is conducting meetings with the public this month about potential new protections for the whales. The effort is focused on North Atlantic right whales, which number only about 400.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at U.S. News

Sen. Angus King says the Maine lobster fleet is not a threat to right whales

August 14, 2019 — Federal regulators working to protect right whales need better data or they will hit the wrong target – Maine’s lobster industry, U.S. Sen. Angus King said.

A surprise guest Tuesday night at a meeting at Ellsworth High School, King joined Maine lobstermen in criticizing National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration officials for considering regulation changes that they say could make lobstering much more expensive and unsafe in order to save the endangered whales.

“There’s no question that I, and I suspect all of you, are concerned about the future of the species,” King said. “The question is, how do we save it? And how do you [hit] the right target? My problem is that when most of these rule changes affect the Gulf of Maine, where it doesn’t appear the whales are, it’s like bombing Brazil after Pearl Harbor.”

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

Maine lobstermen insist they are not the ones killing right whales

August 13, 2019 — Lobsterman Charlie Smith has already paid a steep price to protect the right whale, an endangered species that he has never even seen in a long career spent at sea, much less found entangled in his fishing rope.

When the Jonesport lobsterman raises his left hand, it is clear that he has lost the ends of several fingers, ripped off several years ago by a tangle of weighted rope that fishermen were ordered to use in 2009 to protect right whales.

“That’s what happened here to these fingers,” said Smith, holding up his hand, at a National Marine Fisheries Service hearing Monday night. “The rope got all chafed up. There’s all kind of stories from sinking ground line. What comes next?”

About 70 fishermen came to the first fisheries service public meeting in Maine on the latest round of lobster rule changes being considered to protect the endangered whales. They expressed safety fears and their mounting frustration.

The state’s $485 million-a-year lobster industry is facing a federal mandate to lower the number of buoy lines in the Gulf of Maine by 50 percent to protect right whales. Fishermen worry the rules will make their jobs less profitable and more dangerous.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Electronic Monitoring Can Provide Better Data: A Fisherman’s Perspective

August 12, 2019 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

Jim Ford has been fishing in the Gulf of Maine since he was in sixth grade. Ford’s first job was working as a deckhand on party boats. Later, he began operating a small gillnet vessel and a small trawler, in addition to longlining. He currently owns and operates the Lisa Ann III, a 50-foot dragger. He targets groundfish from his home port of Newburyport, Massachusetts.

In 2018, we issued an exempted fishing permit to the Gulf of Maine Research Institute to create a  pilot project to test electronic monitoring in the Northeast. Ford signed up as one of the first project participants, and currently uses electronic monitoring on 100 percent of his trips.

When I met Ford on his boat on a foggy May morning, he showed me the equipment he uses. In the wheelhouse, there’s a monitor with a four-way split screen that shows him the feed from the four cameras on his boat. In order to record all of the catch coming onboard, two cameras are positioned above the trawl net off the back of his boat. Two are above the deck to give a bird’s eye perspective.

Read the full release here

MASSACHUSETTS: NOAA to meet with public about possible new whale protection

August 12, 2019 — Federal officials will meet with fishermen and other members of the public in a series of meetings about possible changes to rules designed to protect vulnerable whales.

A federal team has called for gear modifications and a reduction of the vertical trap lines in the Gulf of Maine to reduce the risk of entanglement, injury and of death of North Atlantic right whales, which number about 400, by 60 percent.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says it’s looking for comments on the new management options, which have been highly criticized by some lobster stakeholders and public officials, particularly in Maine.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times