After lobster ruling, federal regulators mull how to quickly reduce risks for right whales

Eric Pray unpacks a Hummer on a Portland wharf in this 2020 file photo. Robert F. Bukaty/Associated Press, file

A group responsible for proposing fisheries regulations is meeting this week to consider drastic measures – like legally halving the number of traps lobster fishermen can use – to quickly reduce the risk of injury and death to endangered North Atlantic right whales.

Entanglement in fishing gear and collisions with ships are the leading causes of human deaths for whales, with an estimated fewer than 340 recorded worldwide.

The National Marine Fisheries Service has developed a 10-year conservation plan to reduce whale deaths to a level that the population could sustain and still be sustainable. But a federal judge ruled in July that the plan was not achieving its goals fast enough.

In the first phase of the plan, which went into effect in May, lobster fishermen had to reconfigure their gear to use fewer vertical lines in the water column and weaken the remaining lines so they would break when stressed by an ensnared whale . A 950-square-mile seasonal restricted area was also introduced in the first phase. According to a National Marine Fisheries Service modeling tool, these measures reduce the risk of death and serious injury for whales by 46 percent.

But in a lawsuit brought against the Fisheries Service by the Center for Biological Diversity and other environmental groups, U.S. District Court Judge James E. Boasberg found those steps were insufficient because the Marine Mammal Conservation Act requires such conservation plans to reduce numbers of animals killed or injured within six months of implementation to a sustainable level. To achieve this, the Fisheries Service has determined that the risk posed by fishing gear and vessel attacks must be reduced by 90 per cent, bringing human-caused right whale deaths to less than one per year – 0.7 per cent to be accurate.

While environmental groups were calling for a new plan within six months, the Fisheries Service filed a brief on Monday asking the court to give it until December 9, 2024 to develop a new plan aimed at reduce right whale mortality to below 0.7 percent a year by May 31, 2025. The Fisheries Service argued that it needed that time to comply with public and legal process requirements and that achieving this goal would require widespread use of ” “ropeless” on-demand fishing technology, which is still under development.

The Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Team, formed by the National Marine Fisheries Service and made up of researchers, fishermen, fisheries managers and representatives from environmental groups, is looking at ways to quickly reduce the risk by an additional 44 percent. Subgroups of the team suggested possible actions, and Fisheries Service staff ran these through their modeling tool to determine how each would reduce the risk. The results were presented at a team meeting on Monday.

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One of the most potentially effective measures is a 50 percent reduction in traps in some state and federal waters, including up to about 40 miles offshore. According to the modeling tool, this step would reduce the risk by 20 percent. Reducing the number of lines in these waters by half would also reduce the risk by 20 percent. Requiring all inshore lobster fishermen to remove an end line from their trap lines would reduce the risk by 21 percent.

Other proposed measures resulted in moderate risk reduction. Requiring all trap, pot and gillnet fisheries along the East Coast to use lines that break at 1,700 pounds of pressure would reduce the risk by 2 percent. Closing off Massachusetts’ offshore waters from January through May, an area of ​​high whale activity, would reduce the risk by 4 percent.

But some suggestions would have little to no effect. For example, extending the duration of the new seasonal closure in Maine’s federal fishing grounds by a month through February would reduce the risk by less than half a percentage point.

Fisheries workers found that the risk reduction points for each measure cannot simply be added up to try to reach 44 percent. Actions to be taken together would need to be run through the modeling tool as a package, as the benefits of one action could be nullified by another.

Questions were raised about the modeling method and the data used by the Fisheries Service.

Robert Glenn, a biologist with the Massachusetts Department of Marine Resources, asked why the figure for average whale mortality is based on 2015-2019 and not more recent data.

“We are limited by our model,” responded Marisa Trago, a NOAA fisheries coordinator. “We’re always a little behind with the data we have… Unfortunately, the last year we have is actually 2019, so we’ll have to use that until we have updated data.”

Glenn urged the Fisheries Service to get updated data as conservation measures taken in Canada, Massachusetts and other states in recent years may show some decline in mortality and lower entanglement rates.

“Given the seriousness of the situation and the impact this is likely to have, I think it’s really appropriate to include the data for 2020 and 2021,” he said. “I don’t think it’s acceptable to just say we can’t run the updated model… I don’t think it’s really valid or fair to say we can’t update it and have to use outdated data. “

These models and calculations are also being challenged in court by the Maine Lobstermen’s Association, which is appealing a recent decision by Boasberg in favor of the Fisheries Service. A Fisheries Service representative at Monday’s meeting acknowledged these challenges.

“Developing actions to meet the goal will require more impact on fishermen across the coast,” said Colleen Coogan, director of NOAA’s Greater Atlantic Fisheries Division of Protected Resources. “We cannot take this lightly or without acknowledging how ominous this feels to fishermen who have rightly perceived that on their own they may pose a low risk… But as currently pursued, this fishery has become one Declining or reducing populations of right whales contributed to their ability to be resilient to changes in their environment.

“Over 85 percent of individual right whales have encountered a fishing line somewhere along the range, and the US portion of their range has more line fishing for longer seasons than the Canadian portion,” she continued. “We cannot rule out the likelihood that many of these encounters, including serious injuries and fatalities, will take place in US waters and the law requires us to respond.”

The team is meeting again on Thursday and September 30 to discuss further mitigation measures and plans to come up with recommendations at a meeting in November.

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