Tag Archives: vertical buoy lines

Despite threats from fellow fishermen, Mass lobstermen press to allow ropeless fishing in closed areas

The lobstermen viewed themselves as trailblazers, even calling themselves “Pioneers for a Thoughtful Coexistence”. In an effort to prove that there’s a way for their industry to resume fishing in coastal waters where Massachusetts banned lobstering to protect endangered whales, they have asked regulators to allow them to set their traps without vertical buoy lines. “I’ve been trying my best to get our guy’s back fishing,” said Michael Lane, 46, a lobsterman who fishes 800 traps out of Cohasset. But when Lane’s group presented at a recent public hearing their proposal to fish with experimental rope less gear, which would use remotely triggered inflatable balloons or other devices to surface the traps, they were pilloried by their fellow fishermen. >click to read< 19:20

Judge dismisses case to ban lobster lines, but opens door to future right whale protections

A federal judge may have delivered the legal roadmap to ban lobstermen from using vertical buoy lines in a long-awaited ruling this week. The case centered around concerns that the lines, authorized by the state of Massachusetts, entangle and kill critically endangered North Atlantic right whales. But Judge Indira Talwani dismissed the case because, she wrote, the plaintiff Max Strahan, a controversial whale advocate, had questionable credibility in some instances and failed to prove that he has a personal stake, or standing, in the case, a critical component of the lawsuit. >click to read< 12:37

Con groups propose total lobster fishing ban

According to the Center for Biological Diversity and several other plaintiff conservation groups, the area “has increasingly become important right whale foraging and socializing habitat in recent years. The conservation groups filed their request last Friday, three weeks after the judge ruled that the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) violated the federal Endangered Species Act when it continued to allow lobster fishing with gear that used fixed vertical buoy lines in which whales could become entangled. As a practical matter, a ban on the vertical lines that connect traps on the sea floor to marker buoys on the surface would amount to a total prohibition against lobster fishing in the area south of the two Massachusetts islands. While scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and a few others have experimented with “ropeless” lobster trap gear (laughter and scorn, erupts from the crowd),,, >click to read< 09:18

Are the ENGO’s pushing propaganda to pressure your Representatives and sway the public against you?

From the article: What evidence is there that Maine contributes towards right whale entanglement? The Maine congressional delegation has also suggested that the state’s fisheries do not contribute to right whale entanglements. Yet, Maine has almost three million licensed traps and logic dictates the high density of vertical lines associated with those traps poses a significant risk of entanglement. An encounter between a whale and even a single vertical line can result in a deadly entanglement. >click to read<   Who supports these ENGO’s, anyway!

Lobstermen face more gear restrictions to protect whales

Nearly everywhere but up inside Maine’s many bays, fisheries regulators have forced lobstermen to use sinking rather than floating rope for the groundlines that connect traps on the sea bottom, to limit the number of traps set on a trawl to reduce the number of vertical buoy lines in the water and to install “weak links” in those vertical lines so an entangled whale can break loose. All those mandates, which arose out of discussions at NOAA’s Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Team (ALWTRT), were hard-fought, expensive and largely unpopular. >click to read<11:22