Tag Archives: reduce the number of buoy lines

Lobstermen tell regulators: Give us fewer buoy lines, but let us fish them how we want

Brian Tripp, a Sedgwick lobsterman, urged Maine to adopt a buoy line tagging system to help reduce the number of lines that link a fisherman’s buoys to his traps by 50 percent, which is what federal regulators say it will take to protect the endangered right whale from deadly entanglements. Under current state law, most Maine fishermen have a right to fish up to 800 of these surface-to-seabed lines. To meet the federal risk reduction goal, Maine can issue each fisherman 400 buoy line tags, Tripp said – half the number they are allowed to have now. Fishermen could live with that if they had the freedom to fish those 400 buoy lines how they want, he said. >click to read<11:21