Saving Seafood

Maine Lobstermen’s Association won’t support new right whale rules

November 11, 2019 — After a week of hearings on a proposal to implement new rules to protect endangered right whales, a leading group has decided not support the plan.

The Maine Department of Marine Resources held three hearings on the plan, including one in South Portland Wednesday, to take public comments, most coming from lobstermen against the proposal.

On Thursday, the Maine Lobstermen’s Association voted “not to support” the plan “because it seeks reductions that exceed the documented risk posed by the Maine lobster fishery,” the association said in a statement posted on its website.

The plan calls for a reduction of the vertical lobster trap lines in the Gulf of Maine. Maine fishery officials say they would remove 25 percent of the lines, not including an exemption for lobstermen who fish inshore waters.

Read the full story at WPFO

BANGOR DAILY NEWS: Better marking for lobster gear can help answer important whale question

November 8, 2019 — “I don’t like this,” isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement for a government proposal — particularly when those words are coming from the head of the state agency making the proposal.

But that’s what Maine Department of Marine Resources Commissioner Patrick Keliher told lobstermen at a meeting in Ellsworth Monday night, where he outlined the department’s new plan to reduce the risk posed to endangered North Atlantic right whales from Maine lobster gear.

While Keliher’s presentation may have lacked enthusiasm, it included a healthy dose of pragmatic reality.

A couple of fishermen did signal a willingness to give the state proposal a try, but frustration seemed the prevailing response Monday night. Keliher clearly shared some of that frustration, but correctly pointed out that the industry and the state find themselves facing pressure from the federal government and in the courts, where conservation groups are suing for stronger action to protect the endangered right whale.

The state plan is a counter offer of sorts to a federal proposal that would require a 50 percent reduction in the vertical lines in the water that connect to lobster traps. Keliher said the state plan would amount to a 25 percent line reduction.

Read the full opinion piece at the Bangor Daily News

MAINE: Lobstermen weigh-in on new restrictions to protect right whales

November 7, 2019 — Lobstermen had the chance to weigh-in Wednesday night on potential new restrictions, designed to protect right whales.

The Maine Department of Marine Resources held the meeting in South Portland, to get feedback on the current plan, based on data from a federal team.

That plan calls for a reduction of the vertical lobster trap lines in the Gulf of Maine.

Maine fishery officials say they would remove 25 percent of the lines, not including an exemption for lobstermen who fish inshore waters.

The department says they working to find a balance, meanwhile lobstermen say they have done nothing wrong.

Read the full story at WGME

Slower Lobster Season Means High Prices, Worried Fishermen

November 7, 2019 — A drop in the catch of lobsters off Maine has customers paying more and fishermen concerned about the future.

Maine’s harvest of lobsters was about 40% off last year’s pace through September, and while October and November tend to be months of heavy lobster catch, wholesale prices have soared amid the slower supply. Live 1.25-pound lobsters were wholesaling for nearly $10 per pound in the New England market Nov. 1, an increase of nearly 20 percent from a year ago.

The drag in catch has also contributed to an uptick in price at some retail fish markets. Some stores in Maine, which is the center of the U.S. lobster industry, are selling lobsters for $12 per pound. That is about 10% more than a year ago.

The price of lobster is impacted by numerous factors, including foreign demand, beyond just the size of the catch. But such a precipitous drop in supply is bound to create “tremendous upward price pressure,” said John Sackton, an industry analyst and publisher of SeafoodNews.com.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The New York Times

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

Right whale named Snake Eyes died due to entanglement

November 7, 2019 — The probable cause of the death of a North Atlantic right whale found in September off Long Island is entanglement in fishing gear, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The 40-year-old male whale, known as No. 1226 and named “Snake Eyes,” died after being seen alive in July and August in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. In September, researchers performed a necropsy at Jones Beach State Park to determine the cause of death.

Critically endangered right whales — which spend late winter and early spring in Cape Cod Bay and nearby waters — are experiencing what is called an unusual mortality event along the Atlantic coast, given the high number of deaths since 2017, which currently stand at 30, according to NOAA.

There are currently about 400 right whales remaining.

“His death is testament to a couple of important issues,” said Regina Asmutis-Silvia, who directs Whale and Dolphin Conservation in Plymouth. First, the habitats of right whales have shifted both in the United States and Canada and government managers who protect the animals must also shift the areas being managed, Asmutis-Silvia said. Second, fixed gear fisheries, such as commercial lobstering, are an unintentional but lethal threat to the species’ survival, and the faster gear modifications can be implemented the more likely it is that the species and fisheries can both thrive, she said.

Read the full story at Wicked Local

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: Lobstermen at Ellsworth whale meeting ask state to resist federal pressure

November 5, 2019 — A growing number of Maine lobstermen are asking the state to resist federal pressure to change how they fish to protect the endangered right whale and called for state legal action to protect the $565 million a year fishery.

At a hearing in Ellsworth on Monday night, lobstermen chimed in on a state whale protection proposal that calls for a combination of weak rope, gear marking and more traps on offshore buoy lines to reduce the risk to right whales by about 58 percent.

It’s better than earlier plans, which called for the elimination of 50 percent of buoy lines, but it’s still dangerous for Maine fishermen who will be mired waist-deep in rope on deck, and won’t do anything to help the whales, they argued.

“It’s not going to work, there’s got to be a different way,” said Jim Hanscom, a Bar Harbor lobsterman who spoke out against adding more traps to weaker rope. “You’ve got to just buck up and say we can’t do this. it’s just not going to work.”

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

D.C. court rules fisheries remain closed to help right whales

November 5, 2019 — For all the work going into North Atlantic right whale conservation in Georgia and Florida ahead of another calving season, a political and legal battle continues where the whales live and feed most of the year — off the coast of New England. Thursday, a federal district judge ruled two lobster fisheries can remain closed to protect the lives of right whales moving through the area.

The case began nearly two years ago as a set of environmental groups — the Center for Biological Diversity, Conservation Law Foundation, Defenders of Wildlife and the Humane Society of the United States — filed a complaint against the federal government because they disputed the finding of “no jeopardy” to right whales in the lobster fisheries, despite the finding that an average of 3.25 right whales a year would die through gillnet fishing operations.

The National Marine Fisheries Service, also known as NOAA Fisheries, is working on new rules that NMFS states will provide additional protections to North Atlantic right whales in lobster fisheries, and that the rulemaking should be complete by around the middle of 2020. As such, the agency filed a motion to stay the case, which Judge James Boasberg denied.

Read the full story at The Brunswick News