Hailed as 'good news for the lobster industry,' Congress approves six-year delay on whale regulations
File photo / Laurie Schreiber
Congress passed legislation last week postponing new federal restrictions on the lobster industry until 2028.
Both houses of Congress passed legislation last week that includes a six-year pause on new federal regulations that are expected to have a widespread effect on Maine’s lobster fishing community.
“Finally, some good news for Maine’s lobster industry,” Patrick Keliher, commissioner of the Maine Department of Marine Resources, said in an email message to the industry.
The U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate late last week voted to approve an omnibus spending bill — the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023 — that postpones implementation of the next phase of federal rulemaking for the lobster fishery under the Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Plan. New regulations will need to be in place by Dec. 31, 2028.
“This is a much-needed pause in a process that was setting this industry up for serious economic hardship,” Keliher wrote.
The regulations were initially scheduled for 2024.
The bill also includes money to bolster the industry and to study the migration of the endangered North Atlantic right whale, as follows:
- $2 million for partnerships among state agencies, academia and industry to address American lobster research in the Gulf of Maine, Georges Bank and southern New England. The research will explore the impact of whale protection measures on the resource and the fishery.
- $6 million for North Atlantic right whale-related research, monitoring, enforcement and conservation efforts.
A better understanding of the whale’s abundance and distribution “will be critical to the development of future regulations that protect whales without unnecessarily impacting industry,” Keliher wrote.
At least half of the funding will be used for vessel surveys, passive acoustic monitoring, habitat and plankton monitoring, habitat modeling and potentially whale tagging in the Gulf of Maine.
“This is the type of research and monitoring that we believe will lead to better modeling and more targeted risk reduction measures in the future,” Keliher said. “Along with aerial surveys, it may also enable dynamic management of closed areas based on whale presence, which would be a better, more targeted solution than large, static seasonal closures.”
- $1.5 million to support continued development of ropeless gear technologies. The research will also focus on issues such as gear location and avoiding potential conflicts with whales. Ropeless gear, also called “on-demand” fishing, uses a remote retrieval system to trigger the release of a buoy line, or some other mechanism such as an inflatable float, allowing fishermen to haul their traps to the surface when needed. It would eliminate the need for vertical fishing lines that connect traps on the sea floor to buoys at the water’s surface.
- $26 million through the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, an interstate regulatory body, for distribution among states that would be affected by the federal whale regulations. The funding can be used for a range of purposes, including offsetting costs of compliance with the rule and electronic monitoring requirements, or research to inform future regulatory actions, including development of a dynamic management program or new gear technologies.
- $20 million for fiscal year 2023 for a new grant program, to be administered by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, for research and development of new gear technology, development of dynamic management approaches and training on how to use new technologies.
The legislative action was coordinated by the offices of U.S. Sens. Susan Collins and Angus King, U.S. Reps. Chellie Pingree and Jared Golden, Gov. Janet Mills, Maine Department of Marine Resources, Maine Lobstermen’s Association and Maine Lobstering Union.
“MLA and MLU both played critical roles over the last few weeks that helped get this effort over the line,” Keliher noted.
He added, “This win doesn’t mean we can sit back and wait for things to change — we must actively work on gathering data, challenging the science, improving the models and developing gear that works.”
A National Marine Fisheries Service plan calls for reducing the risk to right whales from fishing gear by at least 90%. The plan is based on the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act, which allows less than one death per year of the endangered animal, based on its estimated population of fewer than 350.
The service said potential risk reduction measures could include weakened gear to allow whales to break away from entanglements; reducing the amount of fishing gear in the water column where right whales travel, either by closing fishing areas or reducing the number of buoy lines; improving identification of the source of entangling gear through increased gear marking; and/or establishing or modifying seasonal hotspot management areas.
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