Support surfaces for troubled lobster industry
File photo / Laurie Schreiber
Maine lobstermen will see a six-year reprieve in the form of a "regulatory pause" that will be included in the appropriations bill expected to pass the Senate and House this week, the state's congressional delegation announced.
Machias Savings Bank announced Wednesday that it would donate $250,000 to the Maine Lobstermen’s Association after a federal court agreed to expedite the association’s appeal of a decision in its lawsuit against National Marine Fisheries Service.
It's one of several recent developments in the difficulties the lobster industry is tackling in response to federal policies over the endangered North Atlantic right whale.
The association seeks to reverse what it called "a scientifically flawed federal whale plan that could cripple Maine’s lobster industry and negatively impact the economy of Maine and coastal communities."
“This isn’t about choosing our hard-working lobstermen and women over whales,” Larry Barker, president and CEO of Machias Savings Bank, said in a news release. “This isn’t about choosing the economy over conservation. This is about choosing common sense.”
Barker said the post-pandemic economic climate for the lobster industry has been challenging, a situation exacerbated by the uncertainty of new federal whale regulations.
“Maine’s lobster fleet directly supports more than 12,000 jobs on the water,” said Kristan Porter, the association’s president and a commercial fisherman from Cutler. “In addition to the harvesters, the shoreside wholesale lobster sector, that is, the lobster supply chain supports an additional 5,500 jobs and generates an additional $1 billion annually – which just begins to touch upon the real value of the fishery to the state.”
Lobster connects with myriad sectors of Maine’s economy, including real estate, hotels, restaurants, trucking companies, auto dealerships and banks, Porter said.
“The Maine lobster industry is in utter shock and disbelief that their own federal government has set a course to eliminate a fishery that has never been known to kill a single right whale," said Patrice McCarron, the association’s executive director. “Lobstermen are already mourning the loss of their industry. These are good people who care deeply about the ocean, lobsters and right whales. They want to be part of the solution but, without action by the court, this is not possible.”
Established in 1954, the association is the oldest and largest fishing industry association on the East Coast. In 2021, it launched its #SaveMaineLobstermen campaign with a four-pronged approach to preserve the industry and protect the endangered whales. The plan includes aggressive legal and policy strategies, ensuring decisions are based on sound science, innovating effective conservation strategies, and communication.
Click here for more information on the campaign.
Expedited appeal
Earlier this month, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia granted the association’s request for expedited consideration of its appeal in Maine Lobstermen’s Association v. National Marine Fisheries Service — the association’s lawsuit to reverse what is called a federal whale plan that would cripple Maine’s lobster industry.
The court laid out a timeline that requires all briefs to be submitted by Jan. 10, 2023.
The association retained former U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement on its behalf. Clement has argued more than 100 cases before the Supreme Court.
In a separate news release, Clement said statute requires the service to apply “the best available evidence” in its formulation of the whale plan, but instead “is inflicting unprecedented hardship on Maine lobstermen, while explicitly acknowledging that all this suffering will do nothing to restore the right whale so long as they continue to die in Canada.”
The association filed its lawsuit in September 2021. The suit challenges the federal government’s 10-year whale protection plan and argues that the service has overestimated the lobster industry’s risk to right whales by “cherry-picking the science and using unsupported assumptions and ‘worst-case scenarios’ to justify its mandate for Maine's lobster fishery to reduce its already minimal risk to right whales by 98%.”
The association also said the service “failed to follow mandatory legal requirements to assess the economic and social costs of their actions.”
Last month, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., ruled against the association in an opinion that deferred to the federal agency on all counts without disputing the validity of MLA’s concerns.
As a result, the Marine Fisheries Service is now fast-tracking the 10-year whale plan and will require Maine’s lobster industry to implement a 90% risk reduction as quickly as possible or the federal lobster fishery could be shut down.
‘Cautiously optimistic’
This week, Department of Marine Resources Commissioner Patrick Keliher said he was “cautiously optimistic” about the expedited appeal and about a new filing in a separate case.
Of the association’s case, Keliher said its importance “can’t be overstated, as this is where the arbitrary use of the data is being argued, which could modify the risk reduction target, if successful.”
The second case that’s underway was brought by the Center for Biological Diversity, also against the National Marine Fisheries Service,
The Center for Biological Diversity’s first filing asked the court to implement new rules to achieve the required risk reduction within six months.
The enter entered a new filing last week that asked the court to implement a two-year process to develop and implement the rules. The center also asked the court to vacate the current “biological opinion” – a conservation recommendation to further the recovery of endangered species – so that it can be rewritten while new rules are being developed.
“We expect a decision on this case in November,” said Keliher.
“There is no single silver bullet in our efforts to gain some relief from new whale regulations.”
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