Senate advances bills to support Maine fisheries, MMA training ship

COURTESY / HERBERT ENGINEERING CORP. The U.S. Senate has approved funding bills that include $300 million for the acquisition of a new training vessel for Maine Maritime Academy, as well as support for Maine fisheries. Seen here is a National Security Multi-Mission Vessel of the type that was developed for use as a training vessel for the U.S. maritime academies.

Write a Comment

By Staff

The U.S. Senate last week approved federal funding bills that include key support for Maine fisheries and the acquisition of a new training vessel for Maine Maritime Academy in Castine.

The fiscal year 2020 Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies funding bill allocates $73.33 billion, $9.15 billion more than last year’s appropriation. The legislation includes provisions to support Maine’s lobster industry and fisheries, the National Sea Grant Program and Maine’s aquaculture research efforts. The bill took a key step forward when the U.S. Senate advanced it last week by a vote of 84-9.

The FY 2020 Transportation, Housing and Urban Development funding bill includes included $300 million for the acquisition of a new training vessel for Maine Maritime Academy.

Fisheries

The funding is expected to provide critical support for Maine’s coastal economies. The bill directs the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to act on a range of fisheries priorities, according to a news release.

“Maine’s fishermen have been careful stewards of our natural resources for generations,” U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said in news release. “This critical funding will build on their efforts by investing in our coastal communities and in the health of ocean ecosystems.”

The legislation includes provisions authored by Collins, a senior member of the Appropriations Committee.

The bill includes $75 million for the National Sea Grant Program, which is $7 million more than last year’s funding level. Earlier this year, Collins joined a bipartisan group of senators in rejecting the Trump administration’s proposal to eliminate funding for the program.

Within the funding for Sea Grant, $2 million is included to support Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank American lobster research priorities. This research will focus on overcoming reduced availability of herring for lobster bait and stock resilience in the face of environmental changes, and topics will include life history parameters, distribution and abundance, and species interactions, with the purpose of informing future management decisions.

The bill includes $10 million for right whale-related research, an increase of $2 million, and directs NOAA to work with the Canadian government to reduce risks throughout its range. Those efforts include continued collaboration on surveillance, cooperative research on the distribution of the whales and their food sources, and coordinated gear-marking efforts across jurisdictions.

The bill also urges NOAA to prioritize the development of long-term tagging methods for right whales, which would enable scientists to better track the whales’ location and distribution. The bill directs NOAA to evaluate the feasibility and economic implications of any management actions relating to the right whale and requires the agency to incorporate into its rulemaking recent research on the species’ primary food source, which has been shown to be decreasing in abundance in the eastern Gulf of Maine.

The bill encourages NOAA to work with Canadian and state fishery officials to develop a cooperative fisheries management plan for the gray zone. At a Commerce Subcommittee hearing in April, Collins urged senior administration officials to work to find an agreement with Canada on fishing gray zones.

The gray zone is a 277-square-mile area around Machias Seal Island, at the mouth of the Bay of Fundy, that is disputed by the U.S. and Canada. The island is a treeless, 20-acre rock about 10 miles from the Maine coast and 12 miles from Grand Manan Island, which is part of New Brunswick.

The funding bill passed the Senate Appropriations Committee by a vote of 31-0 in early October.

Training ship

The Senate also advanced a funding bill, authored by Collins, by a vote of 84-9 that included $300 million for the acquisition of a new training vessel for Maine Maritime Academy.

“This ship is a critical training asset for Maine Maritime Academy, which is why I fought to include this funding throughout the Appropriations process,” Collins said in a news release. “Maine Maritime Academy provides an exceptional education that fully prepares students to excel in the Navy, Coast Guard, and the maritime industry. This new ship will be capable of meeting the demands of the rigorous instruction students receive.”

The ship will be the third in the National Security Multi-Mission Vessel Program, which is replacing the aging fleet of training ships with purpose-built modern vessels. The academy's current ship, the TS State of Maine, is almost 30 years old.

Collins opposed a proposal earlier this year that requested $205 million to construct a training vessel for MMA. That ship would have been inferior to a ship funded in fiscal year 2019 for Massachusetts Maritime Academy despite the fact that Maine Maritime Academy has nearly the same number of Coast Guard-licensed graduates and the same need for at-sea training.

The Senate Appropriations Committee advanced the bill in September for consideration by the full Senate.