Federal regulators are considering a rule that would allow Maine lobstermen to fish in an area that closes seasonally to protect endangered North Atlantic right whales. The catch? Fishermen would need use experimental ropeless fishing gear to do so.

The restricted area is a 967-square-mile stretch of the Gulf of Maine that runs from the New Hampshire border to Midcoast Maine. It’s closed to fishing each year from Oct. 1 to Jan. 31. because officials say it is a hot spot for the whales, which can be injured or killed if they become entangled in ropes lobstermen use to haul their traps. In those colder months, the whales travel south from their Canadian and New England feeding grounds to warmer waters to breed.

The New England and Mid-Atlantic fishery management councils are trying to expand access to the area “to ensure that fishermen are allowed as many fishing opportunities as possible,” while incentivizing what they consider safer gear.

But Maine lobstermen, who have previously taken issue with the seasonal closure, don’t seem to want those opportunities.

CLASH OVER GEAR 

Research from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s fisheries division indicates that fishing-gear entanglement is the primary cause of serious injury and death among right whales. The agency says entanglements have killed 10 right whales and severely injured 91 others since 2017. There are about 370 of the whales left, NOAA estimated in its most recent count last October.

NOAA has since mandated new gear-marking rules, a reduction in the number of vertical lines in the water, the insertion of weak points in the lines, and the seasonal closure of the area at the center of the new proposal.

There are more rules coming. But NOAA cannot begin drafting them until Jan. 1, 2029, when a six-year freeze on the agency’s ability to require stricter right-whale conservation measures in the lobstering industry expires.

Many suspect NOAA will have lobstermen swap their traditional gear — vertical ropes that dangle from a buoy at the surface to traps on the ocean floor — for the ropeless gear.

The new technology triggers traps on the bottom of the ocean floor to rise to the surface with the click of a remote control. Some have inflatable airbags that make the traps float, and others use magnets. Their locations, no longer identifiable by floating buoys attached to the traps by vertical lines, instead are tracked with an online mapping database.

‘NEAR-TOTAL LACK OF OUTREACH’

The proposal by the New England and Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management councils has largely flown under the radar.

The two regulatory boards oversee commercial fishing of over 40 marine species along the East Coast.

NOAA Fisheries, which oversees lobstering, worked with the councils to begin developing the rule last December. The New England council is expected to take a final vote next month, and the Mid-Atlantic council will follow suit in October, records show.

In draft rules published in July, the councils wrote the intent is to “reconcile fishery management plan regulations with recent and potential future changes to Marine Mammal Protection Act regulations,” referring to the right whale rules NOAA cannot update until 2029.

But NOAA and the councils said the proposal would apply to the lobster fishery, if approved.

The move has taken Maine’s lobstering industry by surprise.

Patrice McCarron, executive director of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association, said there has been a “near-total lack of outreach to the lobster industry,” and that she only learned about the proposal in May.

“The majority of the lobster industry is not aware that this proposal exists and deserves the opportunity to weigh in,” McCarron wrote in a letter asking for help from the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, a different regulatory board that oversees the Maine fishery.

BYPASSING REGULATORY FREEZE?

Lobstermen, who have largely opposed doing away with traditional trap-and-buoy gear, said they feel NOAA is bypassing the restrictions of the six-year freeze.

They also believe the ropeless gear is not developed enough for wide-scale use.

“The council should align with that timeline (to start drafting rules in 2029) — not override it — especially when the gear technologies under discussion are still in developmental stages, untested in real-world commercial use, and riddled with unresolved questions around safety, cost and feasibility,” Dustin Delano, a lobsterman and chief operating officer of the New England Fishermen’s Stewardship Association wrote in a separate letter to the Atlantic States commission.

The commission’s lobster board recently agreed to send NOAA and the councils a letter urging them to delay final votes on the rules until they reach out and receive input from the lobstering industry and alternative gear developers.

“I think the speed and the timing of it seems very premature,” said Maine Department of Marine Resources Commissioner Carl Wilson, who represents the state on the lobster board. “This is potentially a seismic shift in how fisheries would conduct business that needs a deliberative and step-wise approach before we jump right into saying ‘we can do this anywhere, anytime.'”