Even with congressionally-approved six-year reprieve from economically restrictive rules related to preserving the remaining population of critically endangered North Atlantic right whales, the lobster fishery in the U.S. Northeast is facing an inflection point.
The Maine Lobstermen’s Association is continuing to battle the National Marine Fisheries Service in court, challenging the agency’s May 2022 biological opinion for right whales. The MLA filed suit in September 2021, lost an initial ruling in September 2022, and soon thereafter filed an appeal. Oral arguments are scheduled to begin Feb. 24 in the U.S. Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia. The Maine Department of Marine Resources, the Maine Lobstering Union Lodge 207 and the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association are intervenors in the case, according to the Ellsworth American.
The MLA has thus far raised $2 million of its $10 million goal to support its lawsuit and related communications supporting lobster fishermen. MLA Executive Director Patrice McCarron said her organization wants clarity on what authority NMFS has to implement restrictions, and is seeking clarification on what it alleges are flaws in the agency’s biological opinion.
“The [six-year] pause doesn’t actually fix anything,” McCarron told the American. “It gives us time to fix some very significant problems. Lobstermen have peace of mind, but the edge of the cliff has just been pushed out.”
The start of 2023 also marked a change in how lobstermen in Maine must handle catch reporting. As of Jan. 1, commercial lobstermen in Maine – who were responsible for 80 percent of the U.S.’s lobster catch in 2021 – must now report all harvest electronically. Until the rule change, Maine had a 10 percent harvester, 100 percent dealer reporting rule.
In its most-recent meeting, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission announced it’s considering increasing the minimum size of lobsters allowed to be caught in coastal waters and a decrease in the maximum size of lobsters caught offshore.
“The proposed measures include an increase to the minimum gauge size and escape vent sizes in LCMA 1 (Gulf of Maine) and decreases to the maximum gauge size in LCMA 3 (offshore federal waters) and Outer Cape Cod,” ASMFC said in its proposal. “The proposed gauge and escape vent sizes are expected to increase the proportion of the population that is able to reproduce before being harvested by the fishery, and to enhance stock resiliency by protecting larger lobsters of both sexes.”
The commission is now accepting public comment on the proposal, and will hold public hearings beginning in March, according to the Associated Press. Recent surveys have revealed declining levels of young lobsters, creating a growing concern for the future of the fishery, according to ASMFC Senior Fishery Management Plan Coordinator Caitlin Starks said. The changes in legal catch sizes are designed to give lobsters a better chance to reproduce, according to University of Maine Lobster Institute Director Richard Wahle.
Some regional lobstermen can also expect money in the mail from ASMFC, according to Marine Resources Commissioner Patrick Keliher. Checks up to $3,500 will be arriving in the mail of fishermen who took more than 50 lobstering trips since 2019, with the money going to partially offset the expense of gear modifications required by 2021 North Atlantic right whale protections, according to Island Advantages. Fishermen who operate in state waters will receive $1,700 and offshore fishermen will receive $3,500.
The money originates from a $14 million appropriation approved by Congress in 2022, which is separate from the $55 million for research and development of new technologies for lobstering and for monitoring right whales included in the included in the year-end omnibus bill.
Separately, 30 federally permitted commercial lobster vessels in Massachusetts and Rhode Island are currently collaborating with the Northeast Fisheries Science Center Gear Research Team to test on-demand (also called ropeless) fishing gear in federal waters otherwise closed to fishing with static vertical lines, NOAA announced Feb. 7. The effort is part of a yearlong project funded by the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation “to comprehensively characterize the issues and challenges associated with the integration of on-call fishing gear technology into New England fisheries.”
“The use of on-call fishing gear has the potential to reduce the impact of entanglement on the right whale population. It also represents a sea change for the fishermen who would use the gear or interact with it on the fishing grounds. This diverse and complicated set of issues warrants a thorough analysis, and the urgency of this important conservation and economic issue is motivating DMF to act quickly. Our project will ‘close the loop’ on the subject by analyzing the unaddressed opportunities, challenges, and requirements for the use of on-call fishing gear,” Massachusetts DMF said in a statement.
“While a great deal of work has focused on how on-call fishing gear might be used to reduce risk to endangered marine life, our project will be the first of its kind designed to evaluate how implementation of the gear would impact our iconic fisheries and ocean management system from all perspectives. Our project will evaluate the issues using interviews with experts in the field, synthesize perspectives across diverse sectors including fishermen, scientists, and law enforcement officials, and analyze the technical, legal, regulatory, and socioeconomic challenges and opportunities of on-call fishing gear.”
The group is also studying a pilot project implementing the EdgeTech Trap Tracker app, which allows anyone within five nautical miles of set lobster gear to see it on an electronic map.
“The app is inexpensive and works on any smartphone or tablet,” NOAA said in a press release.
Regional lobster are also coping with the recent decision by the Gulf of Maine lobster fishery to temporarily withdraw from its effort to pursue Marine Stewardship Council recertification.
Maine Certified Sustainable Lobster Association President Craig Rief and MCSLA General Counsel John Whiteside did not respond to requests from SeafoodSource for comment. But Luke’s Lobster co-founder and chief innovation officer Ben Conniff said he’s confident the fishery can be recertified following “bureaucratic delays.”
“The client group has in no way ‘dropped,’ ‘abandoned,’ or otherwise given up its bid for recertification. We will recertify as quickly as we can get through the procedural timeframes. We just had to withdraw the current ongoing process, because the adjudicator was judging the fishery based on a moment frozen in time last year when the fishery's legal compliance was in question due to [U.S. District] Judge [James] Boasberg's decision last summer,” Luke’s Conniff told SeafoodSource.
“The language in the omnibus bill does clear up this issue, and when taken with the remainder of the 2022 audit, which showed the Maine lobster industry was not likely to cause harm to right whales, it definitely clears the path for recertification. It's just going to take longer than it should because we need to hit the restart button so we're being judged on today's facts and not the past.”
Conniff called on the NGOs that filed the original suit against NMFS –the Center for Biological Diversity, Conservation Law Foundation, and several other groups – to work closer with lobstermen and seafood companies to advance solutions that ensure the survival of both the fishery and the remaining right whales.
“I understand objecting NGOs are concerned with rope entanglements, as are we, but I don't understand why they are set on using Maine lobster as the punching bag rather than fisheries that actually entangle whales, and ships that strike and kill them,” Conniff said.
“Based on what they prioritize in their quotes, they could be spending time and resources going to the ropeless consortium and working with the science center and ropeless manufacturers, as many in the lobster industry are doing. That would be an actually productive way to promote an eventual solution for fisheries that do overlap with whales.”
This story originally appeared on SeafoodSource.com and is republished here with permission.
