June 3, 2019 — The Maine lobster industry will have to drastically change how it operates to comply with a federal mandate to protect the endangered North Atlantic right whale, and some worry that the new fishing methods will make their jobs less profitable and more dangerous.
The state Department of Marine Resources has until September to come up with a way that it can cut the number of buoy lines in the Gulf of Maine by 50 percent. Federal regulators say that’s what it will take to reduce the risk of fatal entanglement enough for the species to survive.
Scientists estimate only 411 right whales remain. The species has been on the brink of extinction before, most recently in 1992, when its population bottomed out at 295. It rebounded to about 500 in 2010, but low calving rates, ship strikes and fishing line entanglements have sent its numbers tumbling, yet again.
But many in Maine’s $485 million industry worry it is the lobsterman who will face extinction if federal officials insist on such a deep cut in buoy lines, forcing the state to choose which kind of lobsterman will survive – small inshore operators or high-volume lobstermen who fish in deeper waters.
Jason Joyce, a Swans Island lobsterman, worries there is no way to satisfy the federal mandate that won’t drive at least some of Maine’s 4,500 commercial lobstermen out of business in two years, when these new whale protection regulations are expected to take effect.
“I think the landscape is changing faster than we will be able to adapt as a fleet,” said Joyce, a member of the Lobster Advisory Council that represents Franklin to Frenchboro. “This fishery will look a lot different in three years, and I’m not sure if any of it will be for the betterment of anyone or any whales.”