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ELLSWORTH — The
jury is still out on what a slate of six
proposed alternatives for changes to the federal
Large Whale Take Reduction Plan means for Maine
fishermen. The newly proposed rules, intended to
reduce he entanglement of endangered whales in
fishing gear, address a range of issues, from
where fixed fishing gear can be set, to
materials used to make the gear.
At first glance
“I think we made out OK,” said Terry Stockwell,
Marine Resources Management coordinator for the
Maine Department of Marine Resources. But he
said he reserved the right to change his mind as
he reads more of the nearly 800-page document.
The existing
rules designed to protect whales from
entanglement in fixed fishing gear, such as
lobster trap lines and gillnets, have been a
lingering nuisance for Maine lobstermen since
the mid-1990s. But aside from the installation
of some “weak-links” at buoys, changes to the
type of line used and a few of the infamous
Dynamic Area Management (DAM) closures, the
regulations haven’t been too burdensome. But
those rules haven’t been meeting the goals for
reduction in whale entanglements set by the
National Marine Fisheries Service. Thus the
development of the proposed rule changes
published Friday.
The long
overdue options for revisions to the Atlantic
Large Whale Take Reduction Plan comprise six
alternatives. The length means that few outside
of the National Marine Fisheries Service have
yet to wade through the options. In spite of
that, there are a few major identifiable trends
that should be appealing to fishermen and whale
experts alike.
One of the most
consistent changes among the options is the
proposed elimination of the DAM program. Tora
Johnson, the author of “Entanglements,” a recent
book on the subject of whale entanglement, said
in an interview last week, that the temporary
closures around congregations of endangered
northern right whales, never worked.
“Fishermen and
whales just don’t move the way DAMs want them to
move,” she said. In short, fishermen can’t
remove or modify 800 traps from a closure area
with two days notice, and whales that can move
1,500 miles in a week can be long gone from the
area they were sighted in by the time a DAM is
published and imposed. Johnson, who grew up
fishing in a family of fishermen, said
lobstermen in haste to remove gear from a DAM
zone and avoid fines of as much as $100,000 a
day, tend to reset it just outside the closure.
That increased density of gear “unintentionally
creates a fence,” she said.
Since the
adoption of the DAM rule in 2002, the fisheries
service has heard criticism from all sides.
“When the
Humane Society and Leroy Bridges can agree,
you’d better listen,” Johnson said. The fact
that DAMs would be eliminated by 2008 in every
option but one, indicates that they listened.
Another area of
regulation in which Maine lobstermen have led
the charge is the designation of coastal exempt
areas, in which the risk of right whale
entanglement is very low because the whales
rarely travel so close to those shores.
Fishermen in exempt areas would not have to
alter their gear to avoid whale entanglement. As
written, the exempt area designation is all
waters landward of the 1972 COLREGS demarcation
line, which hugs the coast.
Along the Maine
coast, in Boston
Harbor
and
Gardiners Bay, N.Y., there are exempt areas
specified outside of the COLREGS line. In Maine,
it runs outside of Vinalhaven, Isle au Haut and
Frenchboro, but cuts in close to the eastern
side of Mount Desert Island before heading
across to the Schoodic
Peninsula.
The proposed
exempt areas are included in all but the option
that keeps regulations as they are.
Stockwell said
the map provided wasn’t a fine enough scale to
really assess how the exempt areas compare to
the ones requested by the state. In spite of any
variation from those specifics, he said, the
inclusion of the exempt areas in all the new
options is a positive step.
“The only
reason we have them is because we asked for
them,” Stockwell said.
Pat White, CEO
of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association, said he
wanted a more detailed chart to assess just
where the exempt area in southern Maine is. In
the published rules, it doesn’t look as though
it’s far from the beach.
One of the more
troubling proposals for Maine lobstermen is a
ban on floating groundlines by 2008. Research
has shown that the lines, which connect traps to
one another on the bottom, have slack in them
that floats in a loop when they are made of
buoyant line. Those loops pose an entanglement
risk to whales feeding around them. An obvious
solution is to use sinking line that will lie on
the bottom out of the way of whales.
It’s also a
simple reality, confirmed in video research by
the Maine Department of Marine Resources, that
sinking line doesn’t fare well on rocky bottoms
where it wears against jagged edges and gets
snagged easily.
He said the
proposed ban on floating groundlines is alarming
but there’s an important door that’s been left
open. He noted that because the proposed changes
include mention of the need for continued
research into groundlines that keep a low
profile, advances in that work can be included
in negotiations toward a final rule that should
be published in the fall.
Department
officials are putting together summary
documents, and will host a series of information
meetings along the coast prior to the National
Marine Fisheries Service public hearings and
comment period in early April.
Testimony at
the federal hearings will be limited to the
content of the six alternatives proposed in
Friday’s publication. Stockwell said once public
comment from the length of the eastern seaboard
has been gathered, fisheries service staff will
have to distill it all down to a final rule.
That proposed rule will then go out for another
round of public hearings before it can be
implemented.
“There’ll be no
changes this year,” Stockwell said. But in 2006,
some variation on one of the six options on the
table now, could be in place.
To read the
complete report, it can be found at
www.Nero.nmfs.gov/whaletrp/ . |
