Lobstermen, like any small business owners - certainly like lawyers - grumble or more about any regulation that adds cost or hassle. To the great relief of the guys at our homeport - Brian's wharf, Hatchet Cove, Friendship, Maine - the Department of Marine Resources has recommended to the federal government a sensible compromise regarding of right whale protection.
Basically that changes of line will significantly affect only those who fish in deep waters. We have only one boat in that class - the owners of the wharf whose 55 foot boat Harvester fishes far offshore. - gwc
Maine finalizes right whale protection plan for lobster industry - Portland Press Herald
The Maine Department of Marine Resources has finalized a proposal to protect endangered right whales from entanglement in lobster fishing gear that would reduce the number of buoy lines in deeper waters, but also give it the freedom to adopt alternative protections to keep those fishermen and regional fishing practices safe.
The heart of the state plan is similar to one panned by the lobster industry last fall – cutting the number of buoy lines that could entangle a whale by setting a minimum number of traps fished on each line and requiring the use of lines with weak points to help entangled whales break free.
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***Keliher said the proposal focuses the whale protections on where right whales are most likely to be, and spares the large section of the Maine lobstering fleet that sets traps outside of the whale’s recently changing habitat. The whales follow the copepods it likes to eat, and the copepods are moving into deeper waters.
The bulk of Maine’s 5,000 state-licensed commercial lobstermen, or about 3,800 of them, would not be affected by the increasing trap counts on buoy lines, a practice known as trawling up, because they fish inside state waters, where trawling up is generally not required in Maine’s proposal.
About 1,200 have federal permits to fish in offshore waters, and most don’t fish there all year.
Maine’s proposed trawling-up requirements increase as a lobsterman sets traps farther from shore, including:
• Four traps per single-buoy trawl or eight traps per two-buoy trawl between 3 and 6 miles from shore.
• Eight traps per single-buoy trawl or 15 traps per two-buoy trawl between 6 miles and 12 miles from shore.
• 24 traps per two-buoy trawl from 12 miles from shore to the federal boundary, which varies across the state.
