Tag Archives: EdgeTech
Canadian and American lobster industry confronts ‘ropeless’ traps after whale entanglements
Injuries to endangered North Atlantic Right Whales ensnared in fishing gear have fueled a prominent campaign by environmental groups to pressure the industry to adopt on-demand equipment that only suspends ropes in the water briefly before traps are pulled from the water. To address the problem, the U.S. and Canadian governments have imposed new regulation on lobster and crab fisheries in recent years, including the use of weak links in rope that break if a whale swims through, color-coded rope for tracing, adding more traps per buoy line, and zone closures during whale migration. Washington and Ottawa are now promoting ropeless fishing as a possible long-term solution. But lobstermen, particularly in Maine where 80% of U.S. lobster is caught, are not enthusiastic. >click to read< 08:49
“What I’m reading now being proposed by NOAA will essentially put me out of business,,,”
Lobsterman John Drouin said in his 42 years of fishing around Cutler, he has never seen a right whale. Many other Maine lobstermen have said the same thing about their experience on the water. But that may not matter.,, he and Maine Marine Resources Commissioner Pat Keliher said the true threat in the NOAA documents would come in 10 years when scientists say the threat to whales should be reduced by 98 percent, effectively eliminating all lobster ropes and potentially ending the way they have fished for generations. “It’s devastating. Totally changes the face of the Maine lobster fishery,” said Keliher, “and we’d have no idea from an economic standpoint what it will mean in the long run.” >video, >click to read< 09:38
At the Ropeless Consortium’s second annual meeting
Scientists, fishermen and policy makers met on Wednesday in Maine to discuss this issue at the Ropeless Consortium’s second annual meeting. The North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium will continue the discussion of right whale conservation at their annual meeting Thursday and Friday.,,, “We here at the aquarium have been working hard on looking at reducing rope strengths and trying to get rope-less fishing as an option to reduce risk,” said Amy Knowlton, a Ropeless Consortium board member and senior scientist at the New England Aquarium. >click to read< 10:35
SeaWorld & Busch Gardens Conservation Fund Commits $900,000 to Protect Critically Endangered North Atlantic Right Whales – The announcement was made by Dr. Michael Moore of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, during yesterday’s 2019 Ropeless Consortium meeting, >click to read<
