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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 36 Number 2
October 2008
Sink rope delayed, float rope fight lost
GLOUCESTER, MA – After months of negotiations, legal wrangling, and impassioned pleas, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) officially agreed to postpone until April 5, 2009 the implementation date of the sinking groundline requirement in the revised Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Plan (ALWTRP).
The final rule implementing the new date was published on Sept. 2. If NMFS had not agreed to postpone the requirement, all trap/pot fishermen working outside of an exemption zone would have been required to use sinking groundline as of Oct. 5.
“This is a major victory for us,” said Patrice McCarron, executive director of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association (MLA). “There is no way the industry could have converted to sinking groundline by October 2008.”
But the satisfaction of securing the delay was dampened by the response of the Humane Society of the US and Defenders of Wildlife. The two environmental groups filed suit on Sept. 15 over what they called NMFS’s decision to “roll back protections for critically endangered North Atlantic right whales, humpbacks, and fin whales.”
Sierra Weaver, staff attorney for Defenders of Wildlife, lambasted the NMFS decision to delay the sink rope requirement.
“It’s reckless and irresponsible to leave the most endangered large whale on the planet unprotected in this way,” Weaver said.
In a message to members, McCarron said that the MLA had consulted with its legal counsel and officials and determined that it was unlikely the lawsuit would impact the timing of the implementation of the sinking groundline requirement.
Done deal
At the same time, however, McCarron conceded that the battle by the industry and the state of Maine to convince NMFS to allow lobstermen in some areas to use floating groundline was over.
“We all agree that the final rule is final and the sinking rope piece will go into effect in April 2009,” she said. “Maine lobstermen are able to fish some sink rope over the course of this season and find what works best for them. They can also experiment with altering fishing practices to cope with the sinking rope requirement.”
McCarron said the reality of the regulation coming online didn’t alter the fact that changing over from float rope to sink rope will be very expensive and that gear loss and safety threats, especially hang-downs on rocky bottom, are still serious concerns.
“Floating rope is extremely important to Maine lobstermen, so we pursued all options aggressively,” McCarron said. “However, in the end, we could not reach a compromise agreement with the conservation community.”
Sliver proposal
When the ALWTRP revision final rule was published about a year ago, the Maine Department of Marine Resources (DMR) began an intense effort to develop the “sliver area” proposal in hopes of getting the Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Team (TRT) and NMFS to authorize the use of a limited amount of floating groundline.
The proposal would have allowed fishermen in a narrow area between the ALWTRP exemption line and the state waters boundary in lobster Zones A, B, C, and D to use float rope in exchange for a ban on single traps, a cap of 300 endlines per fisherman, and a 10-fathom maximum groundline length between traps.
However, the DMR withdrew the sliver area proposal in August following a July 16 meeting of the Maine Working Group, which is a subgroup of the TRT.
During that meeting, environmentalists were highly skeptical that there was any way to gauge whether or not the trade-off would compensate for the increased risk to whales posed by allowing floating groundlines.
According to a NMFS summary of comments by Maine Working Group members, critics of the proposal said the DMR had no quantifiable information on how many traps and endlines Maine lobstermen actually had in the water. And without that information, there was no way to determine the real effect of the limits outlined in the sliver area proposal.
“If the goal is to reduce the amount of line in the water column, then we need to know how much is presently in use and where,” said one working group member.
Vertical lines next
The comments also showed that, while the environmentalists seemed to want to work with fishermen to some extent, they were deadly serious about getting rope – all kinds of rope – out of the water.
“All lobster fishermen should be faced with a schedule of endline caps that will continuously ratchet downward over a known period, say 10 years, toward a goal of zero,” said one commenter.
At the same time, he added, “Block out a few rope-less fishing zones, then provide fishermen with grants and incentives for those who figure out how to fish in those zones.”
Rope exchange
The Gulf of Maine Lobster Foundation held its final scheduled rope exchange as part of Phase II of its Bottom Line Project Sept. 9-11 in Rockland. The project gives fishermen vouchers worth $1.40 for every pound of float rope brought in for exchange. The vouchers then can be used toward the purchase of sink rope.
The Rockland event was the seventh since the project began in Maine in May 2007. According to Laura Ludwig, project director, 185 lobstermen turned in 196,883 pounds of float rope and collected a total of $274,226 worth of vouchers.
Ludwig said her team had originally planned to collect around 300,000 pounds of rope in Rockland, but once the sink rope postponement was official, “quite a few” of the registered lobstermen decided to wait until after the fishing season was over.
“Financially, we’re on track for one more exchange in April,” she said.
For more info, call Ludwig at (207) 985-8088 or e-mail her at <laura@gomlf.org> or visit the foundation web site at <www.gomlf.org>.
Lorelei Stevens
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