January 25, 2021 — In China, 2021 is down as the Year of the Ox. In the cold waters off the coast of New England, it is shaping up as the Year of the Whale. The North Atlantic right whale.
Federal regulators, through the Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction team, and the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries have proposed a series of overlapping new protections for the imperiled species that will have a significant impact on the region’s lobster industry.
In Massachusetts, lobstermen will find out next week whether the state will implement DMF’s recommendations for state waters that include a new seasonal closure on all lobstering from February to May — the time period of the annual migration and feeding along the Massachusetts coast by the whales whose numbers are estimated to have dropped below 400.
The Massachusetts Marine Fisheries Advisory Commission is set to meet Thursday morning via zoom. DMF Director Dan McKiernan will present the agency’s recommendations — which also include the utilization of weaker, break-away vertical buoy lines to help mitigate gear entanglements — and the commission will vote.