August 2, 2023 — The second phase of a multi-year project evaluating the operational, technological, and socioeconomic impacts of ropeless lobster gear was released yesterday by the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries (DMF). If the gear had been deployed fleet-wide last year, the loss of annual revenue was estimated to be $40 million and the foregone harvest was pegged at 3.5 million pounds less. An overall recommendation was to explore further using more variables.
Alternative or ropeless lobster gear consists of submerged buoyancy devices that are activated using time-release mechanisms or acoustic signals transmitted from the surface. This innovative design would replace traditional vertical buoy lines, which can result in entanglements with marine mammals including North Atlantic right whales.
Estimating the Cost of Using On-Demand Gear in Massachusetts Lobster Fisheries authors Noah Oppenheim of Homarus Strategies LLC, Dr. Robert Griffin of SMAST, and Dr. Andrew Goode of the University of Maine, took a deep dive into the financial impacts of using the gear onboard lobster fishing vessels. They present a new model that can be used to estimate these operational costs, providing important information that will assist in the consideration of fishery management scenarios involving entanglement risk-reducing fishing gear.