Saving Seafood

MAINE: DMR puts hold on whale rule meetings

August 27, 2019 — Hold everything.

Early last week, the Department of Marine Resources published a list of tentative dates for a second round of lobster zone council meetings relating to the measures Maine intends to submit to the National Marine Fisheries Service to reduce risk to right whales supposedly posed by lobster gear.

At the end of the week, DMR postponed the meetings scheduled for Zone C in Stonington and Zone E in Wiscasset.

On Tuesday, DMR sent out a notice postponing all the zone council meetings until further notice.

“At this time, DMR is advising the industry that the entire schedule of meetings is currently on hold,” the notice from DMR Lobster Resource Manager Sarah Cotnoir said. “The commissioner (Patrick Keliher) regrets the delays but wants to ensure that we develop a proposal for submission to NMFS that reflects a thorough review of all data.”

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American

MAINE: Whale rule changes coming on two tracks

January 9, 2019 — Maine lobstermen and their representatives, along with state fisheries regulators, continue in the trenches of debates about how much the Maine lobster fishery is implicated in the decline of the North Atlantic right whale.

Ongoing efforts to protect the whales from entanglement with fishing gear may result in two different new sets of regulations, Sarah Cotnoir, resource coordinator for the Maine Department of Marine Resources, and Patrice McCarron, executive director of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association, told the Zone B Council last week.

The two sets of regulations come from parallel processes under two federal laws, the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) and the Endangered Species Act (ESA).

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American