Tag Archives: Bay State lobstermen
Legal’s Berkowitz backs lobstermen in battle against Calif. aquarium
Roger Berkowitz, the previous president and CEO of the regional seafood restaurant chain, is supporting the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association during its months-long dispute with groups that say lobster fishing is killing too many North American right whales. Because of what they say are risks to the endangered species, California’s Monterey Bay Aquarium and the international Marine Stewardship Council last September made a plea for people to stop eating lobster. A group of four Bay State lobstermen in early March filed a class action lawsuit against the groups, seeking $75,000 in damages for disparagement of their product and interference with their proprietary rights. >click to read< 11:40
New buoy marking changes in the works for Bay State Lobstermen
In late January, the Massachusetts Fisheries Advisory Commission approved a package of new protections for the imperiled North Atlantic right whales, including an extended state-water closure, required breakaway ropes and new rules for applying identifying markings on lobster trap buoy lines. The new gear requirements went into effect May 1, but commercial lobstermen may not want to get too comfortable with the buoy line marking rules. DMF already is looking to change them after this fishing season. The proposed new buoy line marking rules, if enacted, would go into effect Feb. 1, 2022. >click to read< 14:28
Massachusetts Lobster Catch Declines, Boat Prices Rise
As the summer of 2017 wore on, the word from local lobstermen was that the behavior of their prized catch had grown more unpredictable and landings were down. Well, they were right: Landings and the value of the catch declined slightly across coastal Massachusetts in 2017, but a late fall run and higher off-the-boat prices helped mitigate the damage and keep declines well below those suffered by their lobstering contemporaries in Maine. According to data supplied by the state Division of Marine Fisheries, Bay State lobstermen landed 16,565,126 pounds of lobster in 2017 with a total value of $81.54 million — for an average boat price of $4.92 per pound. >click to read<10:57
Mass. lobstermen press pols to ease access to restricted area protecting endangered whales
Bay State lobstermen want federal fishing regulators to work with them to ease restrictions on lobstering in Massachusetts Bay and two areas east of the South Shore, proposing new safety measures that would allow boats to continue to operate while also protecting endangered whales. Local lobstermen and leaders of the South Shore Lobster Fisherman’s Association met Wednesday at the State House with legislators and representatives for members of the state’s Congressional delegation to discuss their pitch for preventing whale entanglements without having to remove all traps from February through April. John Haviland, president of the association who lobsters out of Green Harbor, said lobstermen are proposing to open three sections – representing a fraction of the larger 2,965 square nautical mile restricted area – for parts of the three-month ban as long as traps are retrofitted with sleeves for their vertical lines that would break every 40 feet under 1,575 pounds of pressure. Haviland said the line-safety improvement proposal is based on research done by the New England Aquarium and Wood’s Hole Oceanographic Institute showing that right whales would be as much as 85 percent less likely to become entangled in lines engineered to break at those specifications. Read the story here 11:24
