Saving Seafood

NEFMC tables ropeless gear proposal following pushback

October 2, 2025 — The New England Fishery Management Council has tabled an alternative gear marking proposal that could enable more Maine lobster fishers to use ropeless gear in closed areas following public opposition from commercial fishing groups and a Maine legislator.

“A packed house of fishermen – with NEFSA members making up the strong majority – made their concerns loud and clear both in person and through the flood of public comments leading up to the vote. This is another major win for American commercial fisheries,” New England Fishermen’s Stewardship Association (NEFSA) said in a social media post.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Management council votes to postpone rope-less lobster gear rule in Maine

October 2, 2025 — At its meeting on September 25 in Gloucester, Mass., the New England Fishery Management Council voted to postpone its decision allowing lobstermen fishing in federal waters to use alternative, rope-less gear.

The decision was welcome news to the lobster industry and to congressman Jared Golden, who urged NEFMC to abandon the proposal in a letter dated September 23.

“Maine’s lobstermen are facing tremendous uncertainty, with various agencies operating in parallel considering new regulations that would fundamentally alter what it looks like to haul traps off the coast of Maine,” Golden said. “Congress enacted a moratorium on requiring this kind of gear, and that moratorium is still in effect while more data is gathered and studied. This framework, if adopted, would muddy the waters about what is required of Maine’s harvesters, and there’s no need for it.”

The moratorium Golden referred to was adopted in the U.S. congressional budget for 2023 with the unanimous support of Maine’s senators and representatives. The moratorium at the federal level paused the development of new lobster gear requirements until 2028.

Read the full article at Penobscot Bay Press

NOAA council reels in proposal to encourage ‘ropeless’ fishing gear

September 29, 2025 — The New England Fishery Management Council tabled a proposal last week to encourage the use of “on-demand” and “ropeless” fishing gear in the Atlantic Ocean to protect right whales after industry groups and a Maine lawmaker argued the plan would unduly burden lobster fishermen.

At a Thursday council meeting in Gloucester, Massachusetts, fishermen and industry representatives decried the framework proposal, saying the new fishing gear remains unproven and would further disrupt an industry already facing heavy regulation in a difficult economy.

Earlier in the week, Rep. Jared Golden, a Maine Democrat, had also written a letter to NEFMC Executive Director Cate O’Keefe charging that the framework intended to protect endangered right whales from fishing gear entanglements was “premature and unnecessary.” Golden said it runs counter to a congressional mandate that the federal government should suspend any regulations targeting fishing gear until 2028.

Read the full article at E&E News

US representative Jared Golden urges New England regulators to abandon proposal that could expand ropeless gear use

September 25, 2025 — U.S. Representative Jared Golden (D-Maine) is urging regulators not to take any action that would enable the use of more ropeless gear in the Maine lobster fishery, arguing that it would undermine other regulatory efforts.

In a letter to the New England Fisheries Management Council (NEFMC), Golden asked regulators to abandon the Joint Alternative Gear-Marking Framework, a proposal that could eventually allow fishers to use ropeless, or on-demand, gear within its jurisdiction.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Ropeless fishing gear for catching crabs shows positive results

August 8, 2025 — Ropeless fishing gear is proving effective at avoiding whale entanglements without sacrificing yields for commercial fishermen harvesting Dungeness crabs, according to research findings released by the State of California, nonprofit groups and and industry partners.

In a third consecutive year of state-sponsored trials where Northern California fishermen used what is often called “pop-up gear,” researchers found that 12 boats landed more than 217,000 pounds of Dungeness crab with an estimated value of about $1.4 million, or 18,100 pounds per vessel. Each boat made an average 12 fishing trips along a roughly 130-mile coastal region otherwise closed to Dungeness crab fishing due to risk of whale entanglements, according to researchers.

“The results of this spring’s pop-up gear testing are nothing less than wildly successful. Even with a vast increase in the amount of gear each fisherman was allowed to use, not a single string of fishing gear was lost,” said Geoff Shester, a senior scientist and campaign director with Oceana California, in a news release.

Read the full article at E&E News

NOAA Issues Ropeless Gear Advisory to Mariners as Testing Begins

March 29, 2025 — NOAA Fisheries is testing ropeless fishing gear for lobster and crab around the Gulf of Maine and around Cape Cod.

The testing is being carried out in areas that are otherwise restricted to fishing for certain portions of the year.

The gear does not have a marking buoy on the surface to avoid entanglements with sea life, instead only utilizing ropes when it’s time to be collected.

Read the full article at CapeCod.com

More fishers will get their hands on ropeless gear in 2025

March 18, 2025 — More commercial fishers in the U.S. will get to try out on-demand fishing gear in 2025 as the industry continues to evaluate the technology as a viable solution for preventing whale entanglements.

NOAA Fisheries counted 67 instances of whale entanglements in U.S. waters in 2022, 40 percent of which were confirmed to have involved commercial or recreational fishing gear.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Exploring ropeless gear for sustainable lobster fishing

October 1, 2024 — On Thursday, August 29, 2024, NOAA Fisheries hosted a webinar looking at the future of ropeless, or pop-up, gear for the New England lobster fishery. NOAA’s Jennifer S. Goebel pointed out that the Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Team had recommended that large swaths of the Gulf of Maine and waters south of Cape Cod be subject to emergency closures and open to fishing with ropeless gear only.

Goebel noted, however, that the lobster and Jonah crab fisheries are currently in compliance with the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act; “the recommendations from the team were put on hold.” Goebel cited other legislation that calls for innovation in the adoption of gear technology as justification for efforts aimed at developing ropeless gear. “That seems to support the development of ropeless gear,” Goebel said, before outlining a 4-year plan to develop the technology and have final rules in place.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

CALIFORNIA: Ropeless gear trial divides California crab fishery

September 24, 2024 — A recent trial of innovative ropeless crab fishing gear off the California coast has sparked a heated debate within the Dungeness crab fishing community. While some accept the technology as a breakthrough in reducing whale entanglements, others view it as another complication in an already struggling industry.

Many commercial crabbers remain angry about the trial because it allowed a minimal number of fishermen to fish during the end of the Dungeness breeding season when crabs would typically be biting. This trial, the most extensive testing of pop-up fishing gear to date off the coast of California, allowed select participants to fish during restricted times from April 9 to June 30.

Fishermen who have faced years of economic setbacks from shortened crab seasons and the closure of the king salmon fishery are wary of embracing new gear. Concerns about conversion costs, reliability, and the risk of unintended consequences have created significant pushback among many crabbers.

Read the full article at National Fisherman 

‘Ropeless’ fishing gear nets crabs without whale entanglements

September 3, 2024 — A three-month trial of whale-friendly “ropeless” fishing gear off central California resulted in a 229,000-pound harvest of Dungeness crabs valued at $1.6 million with zero whale entanglements, according to results released Friday.

The study was the most extensive field test to date of the gear, which avoids entanglement risk by storing a crab trap’s vertical line and buoy on the ocean floor until a fisherman sends an acoustic “pop-up” signal releasing the gear.

Nineteen commercial crab fishermen participated in the trial that deployed pop-up gear systems under an experimental fishing permit issued by the California Fish and Game Commission. The central coast Dungeness crab fishery has been closed for five years after regulators found increased entanglement risk for both whales and sea turtles in the lines and buoys of conventional crab gear.

Read the full article at E&E News