Finally, some good news for Maine’s lobster industry.

Today, the U.S. House of Representatives followed the lead of the U.S. Senate and voted to approve the omnibus spending bill to fund the federal government.  This budget package includes a six-year pause on new federal whale regulations, money to gather needed data including the presence of whales and phytoplankton, and funding for the development of innovative gear technology that will keep the fleet fishing. We expect the President to sign this legislation in the coming days.

Here are the major provisions:

• Postpones implementation the next phase of federal rulemaking for the lobster fishery under the Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Plan (ALWTRP) for six years. New regulations will need to be in place by December 31, 2028. This is a much-needed pause in a process that was setting this industry up for serious economic hardship.
• Provides $2,000,000 for partnerships among State agencies, academia, and industry to address American lobster research in the Gulf of Maine, Georges Bank, and southern New England. The research will explore the impact of whale protection measures on the resource and the fishery.
• Provides $6,000,000 for NARW-related research, monitoring, enforcement, and conservation efforts. A better understanding of NARW abundance and distribution will be critical to the development of future regulations that protect whales without unnecessarily impacting industry. At least half of this funding will be used for vessel surveys, passive acoustic monitoring, habitat and plankton monitoring, habitat modeling, and potentially whale tagging in the Gulf of Maine. This is the type of research and monitoring that we believe will lead to better modeling and more targeted risk reduction measures in the future. Along with aerial surveys, it may also enable dynamic management of closed areas based on whale presence, which would be a better, more targeted solution than large, static seasonal closures.
• Provides $1,500,000 to support continued development of ropeless gear technologies. The research will focus on issues important to industry such as gear location, gear conflict avoidance, and enforcement.
• Provides $26,000,000 through the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission for distribution among affected States. This funding can be used for a range of purposes, including offsetting costs of compliance with the 2021 rule and electronic monitoring requirements, or research to inform future regulatory actions, including development of a dynamic management program or new gear technologies.
• Authorizes and provides $20,000,000 in funding for Fiscal Year 2023 for a new grant program to be administered by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. Funding will be available for research and development of new gear technology that will reduce lethal and sub-lethal effects of human activities on right whales, development of dynamic management approaches, and training on how to use newly developed technologies. Eligible recipients include states as well as nonprofits, research institutes and universities who partner with states or fishing industry members and groups.
• Directs NOAA to work with States and other stakeholders to improve the Decision Support Tool (DST), with a goal of reducing the uncertainty that has hampered the effectiveness of the DST in determining risk.
• Encourages NOAA to revise whale population models using “most reasonably certain to occur” rather than “worst case” scenarios and assumptions, and to incorporate better data that allows more accurate predictions of future NARW populations before issuing any new regulations.

Thanks to the extraordinary efforts by Senator Collins, Senator King and Representatives Pingree and Golden, who coordinated closely with Governor Mills to accomplish this legislative action, this package provides the time and resources needed to gather better data and develop workable gear changes before further regulations are implemented.

I need to give special thanks to the staff of our congressional offices who worked tirelessly day and night, well into the wee hours of the morning, for many days, to help make this all happen.  I also want to thank MLA’s Patrice McCarron and MLU’s Ginny Olsen who made themselves available, day and night, for us to bounce language off and verify if the MLA and MLU could live with compromises as the playing field changed by the hour and sometimes the minute. MLA and MLU both played critical roles over the last few weeks that helped get this effort over the line.

I would also be remiss if I didn’t thank DMR staff, most notably Deputy Commissioner Meredith Mendelson, who was working with me on this during every waking hour.

This Congressional action also does not mean that this is the end of our work in the courts.  We are still actively developing our brief for the appeal in the MLA lawsuit and will keep you apprised on both cases as they progress.

What it does mean is that now we have the time we’ve needed to work on the future of the fishery.  This win doesn’t mean we can sit back and wait for things to change – we must actively work on gathering data, challenging the science, improving the models and developing gear that works.

Yes, there is much work to do over the coming months and years– we can’t rest yet.  The federal laws will still be used to develop rules that will be implemented in 2028 and beyond, so in the meantime we must ALL WORK TOGETHER and determine the path forward.

I will continue to provide updates as these issues progress, but I’m happy to be able finally to share good news with you as we head into the holidays.

I look forward to seeing you in the new year and in the meantime wish you a healthy and safe 2023!

Merry Christmas!

Pat

Patrick Keliher
Commissioner
Maine Department of Marine Resources

Northeast Lobster Fishermen: LMA 1 Restricted Area Now in Effect

Fishermen must remove all trap/pot gear from this area, and may not set new gear in this area as of today.

On November 16, 2021, the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit stayed the preliminary injunction issued by the lower court that prevented the roughly 967-square-mile LMA 1 Restricted Area, established by the 2021 amendments to the Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Plan, from going into effect.

Lobster and Jonah crab trap/pot fishermen fishing in the LMA 1 Restricted Area must remove all trap/pot gear from this area, and may not reset trawls being actively fished, or set new trawls in this area as of today. The area will remain closed through January 31, 2022.

Given the capacity of offshore fishing vessels to remove and relocate trawls as well as potential weather and safety concerns, we anticipate it could take up to two weeks for all lobster and Jonah crab trap/pot gear to be removed from the LMA 1 Restricted Area.

The LMA 1 Restricted Area was created to protect endangered right whales from the risk of entanglement from buoy lines in an area of high co-occurrence. Therefore, fishing with traditional persistent buoy lines is not allowed in this area from October 1 through January 31 each year, when right whales are in this area. See recent right whale sightings and acoustic detections on our WhaleMap.

Fishermen who are part of a research project and have obtained the appropriate state and federal permit exemptions may fish in this area with ropeless gear.

Under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, NOAA Fisheries is responsible for implementing Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Plan measures that reduce mortality and serious injuries of right whales in U.S. commercial fisheries to levels below the stock’s MMPA-defined Potential Biological Removal level, which amounts to less than one North Atlantic right whale per year.

The agency is also responsible for conserving and recovering the North Atlantic right whale under the Endangered Species Act and for ensuring that federally permitted fisheries are not jeopardizing the continued existence of this critically endangered species.

For more information, read the bulletin posted on our website.

Questions?

Media: Contact Allison Ferreira, Regional Office, 978-281-9103

For information about gear changes: Contact John Higgins, Northeast Fisheries Liaison, 207-610-3282

For information about Take Reduction Team process and regulations: Contact Marisa Trego, Take Reduction Team Coordinator, 978-282-8484

“Fishing without vertical lines is what is going to save this
species.“ says CT Harry of the IFAW who work hand in hand
with NOAA.
A ridiculous statement in view of the 18 cruise ship strikes in
the GSL in the past few years. Read the text, top right, Those
are 6 cruise ship strikes in the Gulf of St Lawrence that are
deceptively used as entanglement advertising. Not all whales
were necropsied and at the end of 2019. There were 10
reported deaths. 3 were entanglements. So whose doing the
math. This is a Ropeless gear advertisement and Pew Trust
is in over their heads as a nonprofit constantly slandering the
lobster industry. They are ruining our pristine product while
feeding the public a red herring. Cruise Ships win. CLIA
wins. The Whales go extinct and the lobster industry goes out
of business. It’s $2000 bucks for each trap and 2000 for the
sending unit. A guy with 800 traps has to cough up $
1,602,000.00. That is what Pew’s one red herring will catch
with their hopeless ropeless clap trap. Pew has no problem
saying the word lobstermen, but when it comes to saying
Cruise Ships, Ha !! They are more than likely receiving
millions in donations . It’s hard to get someone to understand
something if their funding depends on them not understanding
it.

Most likely Carnival Cruise Lines is responsible for 18+ Right Whale deaths in the past 3 year, at which rate they would soon be extinct. >click to read<

2/25/2020

By Jim O’Connell

“Fishing without vertical lines is going to save the species” “A recent study attributes nearly 60% of diagnosed North Atlantic Right Whale (NARW) deaths over a 15 year period to entanglement” The second statement 60% is pathetic! It may be 80% ships 20% entanglements over a 15-year period.

This blame game is out of hand when in fact the NARW which are not reproducing have in the last 5 years have found copious copepods in the South West Gulf of Saint Lawrence (GSL) underneath a dedicated cruise ship corridor which feeds fecal matter nutrients to the little crustaceans, nutrient rich black water discharged at a constant rate of nearly 50 gallons a minute while 12 miles offshore. Copepods eat fecal matter. It’s their favorite food. Whales eat copepods it’s their favorite food. Cruise ships run down Right Whales at night when they are likely sleeping near the surface as they must breath air. apparently Carnival Corp favors killing whales than spending 15,000 extra bucks to reroute around that isolated area where there is a good plankton bloom year to year. The reason I hold them responsible is they took out 3 in 2015 up to 10 whales in 2017 and yet they still sailed through that same area in 2019 and took out 6 or 7 more.

If this International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) thinks 1|4 whale per year from lobster fishing over 22 years is wiping out the species then they will be culpable in misdirecting the effort to stop the cruise ship industry from taking out 6 whales per year in the GSL. It looks to me like IFAW could care less about saving a species and more about selling a totally unnecessary and impractical ropeless lobster trap. Ignorance is bliss. If they succeed in diverting attention from the real problem they should be sued for causing the avoidable deaths in the SW Gulf of St Lawrence.

7 dead ship strikes were found in the wake of the Zaandam between May first and the end of July last year. The Zaandam begins to once again on 4/29 “accept the guilt for the necessary murder of the Right whale to sell tee shirts on PEI.

Connect the dots. CLIA, Cruise Lines International Associates, Disney Cruise Line, Disney Corporation owns Disney Cruise lines and National Geographic. Disney Cruise is probably well connected under the CLIA umbrella where all cruise lines collaborate.

In October 2019 after it looks like Carnival has killed up to 7 or 8 more whales National Geographic launches 2 page well done shock art of a whales entanglement dance of death, with a trawl of lobster traps, done in collaboration with the IFAW International Fund for Animal Welfare artists. They should be drawing a new cruise ship route around the feeding area in the Gulf of St Lawrence, before May 1st. Pew trust, totally misdirected, is funding rope less lobster traps, that are impractical and will only save ¼ whale per year killed by the lobster industry, Pew Charitable Trust’s partners , CLF Conservation Law Foundation and Earth Justice filed suit 2/8/2018 against NOAA to take action against the fishing industry meanwhile one Cruise ship takes out 7 more whales in the Gulf of St Lawrence the following year, 2019. CLIA then launches new 2 page ad pictured below in latest 2/20 Geographic showing a Holland American Carnival Corporation ship whale watching in Alaska, The very cruise line who is most likely responsible for 18 Right Whale deaths in the past 5 years in the Gulf of St Lawrence.

The outright hypocrisy is criminal. It’s a total denial for what they are getting away with under the wandering eye of economic Canadian “priorities”. CLIA, the dirtiest most non-transparent tourist industry in the world fights back with it’s most powerful tool, its advertising campaigne. The Pew Charitable Trust kills off the whole Right Whale species throwing a red herring at the public by blaming the lobstermen while Canada under the illusion of millions pouring into PEI: Ay it’s just another dead squirrel beside the road. The Zaandam makes 13 passes through there starting April 1st 2020. A little bump in the night and a 50 ton animal is dead. Enjoy your cruise.

There have been no Maine Lobster Industry caused Right Whale deaths since 2002 according to this NOAA Document. 5 in all of New England since 2000. That is ¼ whale per year. Well within the tolerable zone.

Why isn’t NOAA sharing this data in support of the lobster industry?!!

In reaction to a birthrate plummeting to 0, and a few shocking photos of trussed up whales Earthjustice sued NOAA to tighten the reigns on the lobster industry. All you had to do is follow the numbers north and the answer becomes obvious. 18 possible Carnival cruise ship strikes by several of it’s ships over a 3 year period. It looks to me like someone has to call for an emergency Cruise Ship Course change before 4/29/20.

When they took out 7 last year. The lobsterman took ¼. That is a 28 to 1 vote to get rid of cruise ships.

It looks like Earthjustice is the harm we can avoid and we shouldn’t tolerate that chain of thinking. Emotional money dictating science. Back off!

You are defaming the lobster industry. Thousands of tightly bound community members, whom are the true stewards of their sea.

Recent record catches proves they are the best conservation minded people around. They are not responsible in this. Their effect is tolerable. Yet now they have been given a black eye. The blame looks like it is on Carnival Corporation for its negligence. And Boston for allowing such poisonous air pollution industry that makes it’s money trampling mother nature to berth right down town violating its 5 minute idling code around the clock to the tune of 10,000 idling semi trucks emitting one gallon of 15 ppm diesel per hour.

I bet there is more asthma attacks there as it only takes .02 ppm to kick off an attack. I read the fine is $500. for repeaters. So if the Zaandam is berthed at the Black Raven idling away it is burning at least 100 gallons or more of, at the minimum 600ppm per hour to power it’s huge hotel. 600 has 40 times the sulfur as the 15ppm semi truck. So if your getting fined each time you idle 15ppm for 5 minutes @$500. Then the Zaandam should be paying 240 Million dollars for 10 hours . That marine diesel they burn is classified as a Group1 carcinogen. Not what you should burning right in town.

So, do you want to crush the only thriving conservation minded fishery out there, worth well over $100 Million, and watch mother nature get trampled into extinction to make a buck? Of course not! Kick the cruise ships out of this country.

By Jim O’Connell