March 6, 2024 — “Every year, there is a new issue facing the industry,” Tristan Porter, president of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association (MLA), said as the trade organization opened its 70th annual meeting during the Maine Fishermen’s Forum on March 1.
For lobstermen and the commercial lobster fishery, there are three big issues facing the industry: protecting North Atlantic right whales, maintaining a sustainable fishery and the federal leasing in the Gulf of Maine for floating offshore wind energy — plus the myriad of federal and state regulations and public hearings and, at times, lawsuits, that go with them.
Lobstermen had been facing implementing measures to achieve a 90 percent risk reduction to right whales that would have curtailed fishing in 2023, but this was put on pause until 2028 through a federal omnibus spending bill in December 2022.
“You’re fishing now because of the Consolidated Appropriations Act,” Patrick Keliher, commissioner of the Department of Marine Resources (DMR), told the hundreds of fishermen in attendance.
Then, in June 2023, a federal court ruled in favor of the MLA, which had sued the National Marine Fisheries Service, or NOAA Fisheries, regarding the data used to determine the risk of vertical fishing lines to right whales. That risk calculation would further restrict the lobster fishery — possibly out of existence.
“We did not have the money to do this, but the industry stepped up,” said Patrice McCarron, the MLA’s policy director.