Courtesy office of Jared Golden
U.S. Rep. Jared Golden, D-Maine 2nd District
3 hours ago
Golden: More time needed to study any impact lobster industry has on right whale population
Courtesy / Northeast Fisheries Science Center
Protection for the endangered North Atlantic right whale from Maine's lobster fishery continues to be controversial.
Citing the need for more accurate data on how Maine’s lobster fishery might be affecting the North Atlantic right whale, U.S. Rep. Jared Golden, D-Maine 2nd District, urged the House Natural Resources Committee to extend a moratorium on fishing regulations designed to protect whales until 2035.
An existing moratorium enacted in 2023 is set to expire in 2028.
Golden made his case yesterday in a hearing with the the House subcommittee on Water, Wildlife and Fisheries.
“It was only three years ago that Maine’s lobster industry was on the verge of shutting down because of a regulatory process that was based on flawed interpretation of the Marine Mammal Protection Act and biased modeling that relied heavily on hypothetical threats that fisheries posed to the right whale,” Golden said.
The extension would give the government more time, Golden said, “to craft regulations based on real science, reliable data and input from Mainers. And it would give lobstermen the time they need to prepare for whatever additional costs and changes to their harvesting practices may be required by new regulations.”
Golden said there has only been one instance where Maine lobster gear has been attributed to a right whale death, during the decades for which data is available, “though even that linkage is tenuous at best.”
“The premise behind the original regulations has since been struck down by the courts,” Golden added. “In 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that the National Marine Fisheries Service had distorted the science and relied on egregiously wrong interpretations of the Marine Mammal Protection Act in crafting its proposed rules. The court admonished the agency for basing its edicts on arbitrary, worst-case scenarios that were ‘very likely wrong.’
“Fishermen need more time. In part because the court order forced regulators to go back to the drawing board, the Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Team won’t hold its first meeting on new regulations until 2026. If the moratorium expires in 2028, lobstermen will have insufficient time to plan for new regulations and may well find themselves unable to comply and forced to stop fishing entirely.
“Maine’s lobster fishery has most recently been valued at more than half a billion dollars,” Golden said, noting that it supports tens of thousands of jobs and is an integral part of domestic and international supply chains.
Mainebiz web partners
Most Recent
Most Recent
0 Comments