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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
November 29, 2023 — Maine lobstermen are signaling their hesitation to participate in a multimillion-dollar program the state is launching to test new ropeless technology that the federal government soon may require to protect the endangered North Atlantic right whale.
The Maine Department of Marine Resources has been awarded $5.1 million from the federal government and a national nonprofit to research alternatives to the traditional trap-and-buoy lobster gear that requires vertical lines that can entangle the whales. But amid criticism and cynicism from many in the lobster industry, the department and its partnering organizations may face challenges recruiting lobstermen to play a key role in the evaluations.
“There’s no sense of wasting a lot of time and effort on our part into something that is not going to work,” said Colin Grierson, a longtime lobsterman in Midcoast Maine, “It’s going to take time away from when you’re normally fishing in a more traditional method when the end (conclusion) is not going to be ‘this is going to work great.’ It’s not.”
The $5.1 million award comes from the federal National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the nonprofit National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, which are facilitating an $18.3 million grant program across New England. The 18 awards are intended to advance the development of “innovative fishing gear” as an alternative to vertical fishing lines, or ropes dangling in the ocean, that federal regulators contend are severely harming the right whale populations.
November 25, 2023 — A federal program testing the viability of “fishing on demand” technology – also known as ropeless buoys – is seeing growing interest and success off the waters of Massachusetts.
But even though the program is experimental, free, and voluntary – and allows fishermen to trap in seasonally closed waters and keep what they catch – many of the state’s lobstermen don’t like it.
The project was started by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in 2018, in response to federal court rulings and NOAA regulations that seasonally closes thousands of square miles of fishing grounds to protect critically endangered right whales from the risk of entanglement in fishing gear.
Research shows there are fewer than 350 right whales left in the world, a population that has fewer than 70 reproductive females living off the U.S. East Coast and Atlantic Canada. Their biggest threats are entanglements in fishing gear and vessel strikes. The legal and regulatory action to protect the whales through seasonal fishing and speed restrictions in critical areas stems from lawsuits brought by environmental groups and subsequent court rulings to enforce provisions in the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act and Endangered Species Act.
The seasonal closures prohibit lobster and Jonah crab fishing with traps and vertical lines in high-risk areas, covering almost 13,000 square miles in several restricted blocks off Massachusetts, with additional closures off New Hampshire and Maine. Fishermen who agree to participate in NOAA’s program and test the gear can access those areas under a special permit, using various ropeless buoy technologies being developed by NOAA, Whale and Dolphin Conservation, other non-governmental organizations and several marine technology companies.
“We acknowledge the tremendous impact these closures have on fishing communities and are looking for solutions that would allow fishing without increasing entanglement risk” when vertical line restrictions are in effect, said Henry Milliken, head of NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center’s Protected Species Gear Research Program.
“We are just trying to provide opportunities for fishermen who want access to those [restricted] areas. Nobody wants to close down the lobster fishery, especially in Maine and Massachusetts,” said Milliken.
November 6, 2023 — Canadian commercial fishermen are hopeful ropeless gear could be a solution to address concerns of right whale entanglements in snow crab fisheries, and recent trials are showing that innovative technology can work along the East Coast of Canada.
New ropeless gear that eliminates the vertical lines that can entangle right whales is one possibility, and fishermen have had positive experiences with it in trials along the East Coast of Canada.
August 24, 2023 — The following is an excerpt from an article published by Sustainable Fisheries UW:
Ropeless, also called “on-demand” fishing gear aims to reduce vertical lines in the water column for trap fisheries like lobster. These innovations have become a key component of ongoing fishery management efforts to minimize interactions with whales. We have reported on those interactions before, but we have not covered the gear innovations that may provide hope for critically endangered North Atlantic right whales while allowing fixed-gear fishermen and women to stay on the water. In this post, we will review the problems that ropeless fishing gear may solve, summarize the latest technology, and project what it might mean for the future of fixed gear fisheries.
The race to produce ropeless fishing gear has been sparked by the dire circumstances of North Atlantic right whales. With only about 340 left (approximately 80 are spawning females), just one unusual mortality event per year risks the species’ future—and fishing gear has been implicated in at least nine and up to 27 deaths since 2017 (ship strikes have been responsible for at least 11 deaths).
Traditional lobster gear uses metal cages called traps or pots. They are deployed into the water with a buoy attached to a rope, which hangs vertically in the water column until the trap is collected. Whales can entangle themselves if they swim through areas with ropes in the water. The entanglement and extra weight eventually wear them out, and they drown. Maine reported nearly 3 million trap tags in 2018, and Canada estimates 3,000 trap licenses are active each year with each license holder able to deploy up to about 300 traps. While not every single trap is attached to a vertical line, that still puts an incredible amount of hazardous ropes into the Northwest Atlantic Ocean. Those lines can be a deadly hazard for marine mammals, especially the North Atlantic right whale.
NOAA estimates that over 85 percent of right whales have been entangled in fishing gear at least once. But Maine has not reported a single right whale entanglement in its lobster fishery since 2004, and recent events suggest right whales are at greater risk farther north in Canada. Conservationists and lobstermen and women have disagreed on the best available right whale science for years.
SFUW first reported on this conflict in 2020 and warned of complicated market reactions if sustainability ratings and certifications changed for American lobster fisheries in the U.S. or Canada based on right whale threats. Sure enough, in September 2022, Seafood Watch downgraded all American lobster fisheries in both countries to red, “Avoid.” In December 2022, the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) suspended the Gulf of Maine lobster fishery’s certification because a federal judge ruled that lobster fisheries violated the Endangered Species Act (ESA).
Two recent reports have given some good and bad news to ropeless gear supporters.
The first report came from the Northeast Fishery Science Center and provided one of the first widespread measurements of ropeless gear retention. Ten lobster fishers set ropeless gear with EdgeTech technology in the Massachusetts Restricted Area and nearby federal waters. 527 traps were set, and 89.5% were retrieved on the first attempt without malfunction. Some of the 11.5% traps that did not return on the first attempt were recovered on subsequent attempts, so the study estimated the actual percentage of lost gear to be equal to or lower than the 5-15% average lost gear rate per season associated with traditional buoy lobster gear.
Each trap had an active acoustic modem sending alerts to all GPS devices in range, which successfully signaled to other vessels and mitigated any conflicts during the study. No gear conflicts were reported with traditional lobster harvesters, scallop dredgers, or other overlapping fleets.
But a second, more recent report from the State of Massachusetts found the expected costs of switching to ropeless fishing gear to be unviable. Currently, Massachusetts lobster harvest profits roughly 15 million per year after expenses. Switching to ropeless gear would eliminate any profit—the study estimated the state would lose 24 million in revenue per year, “and that’s with a 15-year loan to buy the on-demand gear with favorable interest rates.”
If all lobstermen were given ropeless gear for free, profits would still drop to 2 million per year due to the extra time required to harvest.
The disadvantage of using ropeless lobster gear would also be felt harder by smaller, more independent operators. Smaller boats usually fish with fewer traps per line, meaning a higher proportion of traps would directly use acoustic buoy deployments. According to the study, this would almost double the time it takes to retrieve all lobster gear for smaller boat operators.
Ropeless fishing gear is simply too expensive for widespread adoption in American lobster fisheries in the near future. Massachusetts has led the way in new gear testing, but only a fraction of the state’s lobster harvesters have handled the gear on the water. These fishers have been more willing than their counterparts in Maine to test gear because their Massachusetts fixed gear fisheries have been canceled or severely limited to avoid right whale interactions.
August 2, 2023 — The second phase of a multi-year project evaluating the operational, technological, and socioeconomic impacts of ropeless lobster gear was released yesterday by the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries (DMF). If the gear had been deployed fleet-wide last year, the loss of annual revenue was estimated to be $40 million and the foregone harvest was pegged at 3.5 million pounds less. An overall recommendation was to explore further using more variables.
Alternative or ropeless lobster gear consists of submerged buoyancy devices that are activated using time-release mechanisms or acoustic signals transmitted from the surface. This innovative design would replace traditional vertical buoy lines, which can result in entanglements with marine mammals including North Atlantic right whales.
Estimating the Cost of Using On-Demand Gear in Massachusetts Lobster Fisheries authors Noah Oppenheim of Homarus Strategies LLC, Dr. Robert Griffin of SMAST, and Dr. Andrew Goode of the University of Maine, took a deep dive into the financial impacts of using the gear onboard lobster fishing vessels. They present a new model that can be used to estimate these operational costs, providing important information that will assist in the consideration of fishery management scenarios involving entanglement risk-reducing fishing gear.