May 4, 2022 — Arguing before a skeptical First Circuit, an attorney representing a group of Maine lobster fishermen said a federal rule designed to protect the endangered North Atlantic right whale targets a portion of the ocean where there are no right whales.
“We need to figure out where the whales are and target those areas,” said attorney Alfred Frawley IV at oral arguments Tuesday before the federal appeals court in Boston.
But the First Circuit appeared to give Frawley a frosty reception, saying at one point that the record lacked evidence that the seasonal closure would lead to lost lobster boats and jobs across the coast of Maine.
The National Marine Fisheries Service issued the rule at issue in 2021, closing a 967-square-mile strip of ocean off the coast of Maine to the use of vertical line buoys, a method of fishing most common with lobster fishermen, between the months of October and January.
Regulators say the move is meant to protect the endangered North Atlantic right whale, whose population is hovering at about 336. One of the biggest threats to the animal is entanglements, with some of the most common entanglements involving lines and buoys.