October 24, 2024 — Implementing a change in the legal size of lobsters caught in the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank was pushed back six months, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission announced this week, after determining that postponing implementation “would reduce negative impacts to the U.S. and Canadian lobster industries in 2025 and allow Canada more time to consider implementing complementary management measures.”
The ASMFC, the regulatory agency that oversees the fishing industry, voted Monday to delay the resolution from Jan. 1, 2025 to July 1, 2025.
This second postponement of the gauge change — it originally was meant to take effect this year — will at least temporarily assuage lobstermen, many who attended October union meetings held along the coast from Rockland to Ellsworth and Jonesport, where the gauge change was a top concern.
“[Lobstermen] are worrying that that’s going to price them out of a business that is precariously turning a profit,” said Virginia Olsen, Maine Lobstering Union Local 207’s executive liaison and political director. “For instance, my husband was going through some landing receipts from 1992 to today [and] there’s a 50 cents difference [more paid per pound]. But a trap that costs $70 now costs $200. Bait that was so inexpensive is now one of our biggest expenses. That margin of how much profit you have is shrinking for us every year.”