Saving Seafood

Maine political leaders promise to press Trump for state’s lobster haulers opposed to new rules

July 23, 2019 — Mainers who haul lobsters for a living do not kill right whales.

That was the message from a rally at Stonington’s commercial fishing pier on Sunday attended by more than 500 people, including Gov. Janet Mills, U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, and U.S. Reps. Jared Golden and Chellie Pingree.

At issue are pending federal regulations aimed at protecting the endangered right whale, which can be killed by getting tangled in lobster trap-lines, but would force state lobstermen to cut the number of lines they can put into the water by 60 percent.

Rally speakers said that the rule would devastate the state’s lobster industry, which contributes an estimated $1 billion to Maine’s economy, while doing nothing to protect the whales, which, as a recent scientific study shows, seldom stray into the lobstering waters of the Gulf of Maine.

According to the National Marine Fisheries Service, no right whales have died from entanglement in Maine fishing lines in many years, as increasingly rising ocean temperatures have driven the whales and the food they eat into Canadian territory.

Mills and the congressional delegation, plus speakers representing former Gov. Paul LePage and U.S. Sen. Angus King, told rally attendees that they would support the state’s approximately 4,500 lobstermen and continue to press President Donald Trump to oppose the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s proposed new regulation.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

MAINE: Lobstermen, politicians rally in Stonington to protest whale rules

July 23, 2019 — The sun was blazing hot, but tempers were moderate Sunday when hundreds of lobstermen gathered at the Municipal Fish Pier at noon for a rally to protest proposed federal rules aimed at protecting right whales.

The rules would force Maine fishermen to cut by 50 percent the number of lines in Gulf of Maine waters that connect lobster traps on the sea floor to their marker buoys on the surface.

Sunday’s rally drew perhaps 300 fishermen, family members, other supporters and politicians to Stonington. Some came from as far away as Corea and Winter Harbor and other Downeast ports, others from as far away as Harpswell. Many came by boat.

“This Governor has your back,” Gov. Janet Mills told an assembled crowd that was adamant in its opposition to the rules.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

MAINE: Rally over whale rules planned

July 19, 2019 — It was almost 45 years ago when a fictional news anchor named Howard Beale, played by Peter Finch in the film “Network,” shouted out to listeners “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not gonna take this anymore!”

Last week, Stonington lobsterman Julie Eaton, speaking for most members of her industry said just about the same thing in a posting on Facebook announcing plans for a rally on the Stonington Fish Pier at noon this Sunday to protest a proposed NOAA Fisheries rule that would force Maine lobstermen to remove half their buoy lines from the Gulf of Maine to reduce the risk that endangered right whales might become entangled in the fishing gear.

“It is official,” Eaton wrote. “We are holding a Lobstermen’s Rally … on the Stonington Commercial Fish Pier.”

Last March, NOAA Fisheries announced that the risk of harming right whales in the Gulf of Maine had to be reduced by 60 percent. Not long afterwards, the regulators adopted a “consensus” recommendation by a stakeholder group including representatives from the Department of Marine Resources, other state and federal fisheries regulators and several conservation organizations — the Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Team — that to reach the risk reduction target, Maine lobstermen would have to reduce the number of vertical buoy lines in the Gulf of Maine by 50 percent even though evidence showed that Maine fishing gear was not the primary cause of most of the right whale deaths over the past several years and that the vast majority of recent whale mortalities had occurred in Canadian waters.

According to Eaton, Sunday’s gathering is emphatically not a protest of the whale rule proposal but is intended “to inform the public that we are not killing whales in Maine, voice our concerns about the proposed whale regulations and how they will not only affect our own futures and safety but the future of our children and our coastal communities.”

Read the full story at The Mount Desert Islander

BANGOR DAILY NEWS: Finding the right way to protect right whales

July 18, 2019 — Last week, Gov. Janet Mills’ administration made it clear that Maine does not support proposed federal regulations aimed at protecting endangered right whales. The issue is not whether right whales are worth protecting — they certainly are and are required to be under the Endangered Species Act — but instead how the federal proposal looks to reduce risk to the whales in part through a significant reduction in underwater lines used by Maine lobstermen.

All four members of Maine’s congressional delegation have also asked President Donald Trump to intervene on the proposed regulations, and together with Mills, have taken heat from environmental groups as a result. One wildlife advocate went as far as to say that Mills’ decision to have Maine pursue its own risk reduction plan amounts to playing “an active role in the right whale’s extinction.”

That’s strong stuff. But let’s be clear: justified concern about the impact of proposed rules on Maine’s lobster industry, and the incomplete data and largely unproven modeling underlying it, doesn’t make Maine officials unsympathetic or complicit to the undisputed plight of the right whale. It makes them appropriately skeptical representatives voicing concerns of their state, and one of its significant industries.

The worrisome decline of the Atlantic right whale has been well-documented in recent years. A once-growing population has dropped to an estimated 411 total whales. Data relative to whale mortality, however, is much less conclusive in terms of the role that Maine’s lobster fishery has played in that recent and troubling dip.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

Maine lawmakers say new rules will come at lobster industry’s expense

July 16, 2019 — Maine elected officials are pushing back with gusto against new federal measures to protect the imperiled North Atlantic right whales because of the impact of the new regulations on the state’s vital lobster industry.

The moves by Maine Gov. Janet Mills, who characterized the whale protection measures as “foolish” and an “absurd federal overreach,” and the state’s congressional delegation ultimately could have repercussions on Massachusetts’ lobster industry.

Or not. No one seems to know right now.

“The actions by Maine were a bit of a surprise, but nothing has been determined yet,” David Pierce, director of the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, said Monday. “At this point, we don’t know what the federal government is going to do in response. There will be upcoming meetings and discussions, but right now it’s really wait and see.”

On Friday, Mills penned an open letter to the Maine lobster industry in which she said federal regulators have not provided specific evidence that the nation’s largest commercial lobster fleet is a primary threat to the remaining stock of North Atlantic right whales, now estimated at about 410.

“There is a disturbing lack of evidence connecting the Maine lobster industry to recent right whale deaths,” Mills wrote in the letter. “The Maine lobster industry is not the primary problem for right whales.”

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

MAINE: Governor pushes back at feds on protection for rare whales

July 15, 2019 — A directive for new protections for endangered right whales represents an “absurd federal overreach” that places an unfair burden on Maine’s signature lobster fishery, Gov. Janet Mills said.

She ordered the state Department of Marine Resources to draft an alternative plan that would reduce the impact on lobstermen.

“My administration will not allow any bureaucrat to undermine our lobster industry or our economy with foolish, unsupported and ill-advised regulations,” she wrote in a letter this week to the lobster industry.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration wants the state to present a plan in September for reducing the lobster industry’s threat to right whales by 60%.

The plan would mean reducing by half the number of lobster trap lines that could entangle whales. It would also require weaker rope for traps in federal waters.

But the Democratic governor says that Maine’s lobster industry isn’t the “primary problem” and that there’s a “disturbing lack of evidence” connecting it to recent right whale deaths. Six have died in recent weeks in Canadian waters.

Read the full story at the Associated Press

Maine lawmakers ask Trump to intervene against lobster trap rules

July 12, 2019 — All four members of Maine’s US congressional delegation are asking president Donald Trump to personally intervene against the implementation by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of new lobster trap rules that they say could impose unnecessary economic hardships on harvesters in the state.

The rules, which are intended to preserve endangered North Atlantic right whales, are expected to go into effect in two years, forcing a 50% reduction in lobster trap lines. However, the members of Congress suggest in a three-page letter sent to the White House on Wednesday that “there is no credible evidence indicating the rules would have real impacts on the agencies’ stated goals”.

“Your administration has made a point of targeting regulations that you believe are ill-conceived or overly burdensome,” says the letter, signed by Democratic representatives Jared Golden and Chellie Pingree and senators Susan Collins, a Republican, and Angus King, an independent. “By applying the same logic to Maine’s lobster industry and intervening in the implementation of NOAA’s regulations on Maine lobstermen, you can prevent unfair harm to an iconic Maine industry and save many good American jobs.”

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

MAINE: Mills comes out against ‘foolish’ federal regulations to protect right whales

July 12, 2019 — Gov. Janet Mills is directing the Maine Department of Marine Resources to come up with an alternative to a federal plan to protect the endangered right whale from the state lobster industry, saying she won’t allow “foolish” regulations to make life harder for the state’s fishermen.

“I stand with you,” Mills wrote in an open letter to the lobster industry Thursday. “I will do everything I can as your governor to protect your rights and your livelihoods, and defend Maine’s lobster industry in the face of absurd federal overreach.”

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has ordered Maine to craft a detailed plan to reduce the lobster industry’s threat to right whales by 60 percent by September. Federal regulators say entanglement in fishing gear and ship strikes are driving the whale’s decline, with just over 400 of them left.

But state regulators, and now Mills, say Maine isn’t to blame for the decline.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Canada Announces New Protections for Rare Right Whales

July 11, 2019 — The Canadian government is announcing new protections for endangered North Atlantic right whales following a string of deaths and entanglements involving the marine mammals.

Six of the whales have died in Canadian waters in the last several weeks, and necropsies show three of them appear to be due to vessel strikes. The Canadian government said three more whales have been found entangled in rope, and it’s unclear whether they will survive.

Cape Cod Bay is home to most of the species during part of the year.

Read the full story at CapeCod.com

Federal regulations to save whales could hurt Maine’s lobster industry

July 11, 2019 — New federal regulations aimed at saving endangered whales could have unintended consequences for Maine’s lobster industry.

Now Maine’s congressional delegation is trying to stall them.

Maine’s lobstering industry will soon have to drastically change how they operate.

“It could put a few of the smaller guys right out of business, because they can’t compete with it,” lobsterman George Anderson said.

New federal regulations are forcing them to cut the number of buoy lines in the Gulf of Maine by half this September.

“Yes they do have to cut down on some of their end lines, but on the other hand it’s going to put a hardship on some of us,” Anderson said.

Read the full story at WGME