Downeast lobstermen dodge whale restrictions temporarily

About 600 lobster fishermen in Washington County dodged a bullet with the decision by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) to rescind temporary restrictions on lobster and gillnet fishing gear aimed at protecting endangered whales. Many of the fishermen would have ended up in violation of the federal restrictions because they would not have had time to remove all of their traps or change their floating groundlines to sink rope. But while the fishermen avoided that entanglement, the alarm could be a foreshadowing of what may happen when new federal rules aimed at protecting whales from becoming entangled in fishing gear take effect next year, as currently scheduled.

On Friday, October 12, NMFS announced it would be imposing a 15-day Dynamic Area Management (DAM) zone, from October 20 through November 3, for a 841-square-nautical-mile area southeast from the coastline extending from Cutler to Addison. On October 5, an aerial survey reported a sighting of three right whales in that area. However, following protests from fishermen's associations and state officials, NMFS conducted another flyover on October 17 and found no evidence of the whales being in the area. The DAM zone was then rescinded.

John Drouin of Cutler, chairman of the Lobster Zone A Council, says he didn't receive the notice about the closure from NMFS in the mail until October 18 C two days before he either had to haul all of his traps ashore or change the rope on all of his 15-trap trawls. With winds gusting up to 45 knots on October 20, he would have had one day to bring in all of the 800 traps he fishes. With good weather, he says it takes him at least eight days to bring all of his traps ashore. And if all of the 25 boats that use the same wharf he uses were taking their traps up, it would make for long days. "If NOAA's going to implement something, then they should notify us in a timely fashion in order for us to comply with it," he points out.

Although the closure would have been for two weeks, he estimates that fishermen would have lost four or five weeks of fishing, because of the time needed to take the traps out and then put them back. "Those five weeks would have made up 70% of our season," he says, noting that the catches are best at this time of year. However, for Cutler fishermen, the catch has been off by 40% to 60% this year.

To replace his lines, instead of removing his traps, Drouin would have needed 103 coils of rope, which would have cost about $18,000, but there isn't enough of the line available from manufacturers anyway. And Downeast fishermen maintain that they can't use the sink rope that would be required by NMFS on groundlines because it catches on bottom and snarls up.

Drouin says that if the zone had been implemented, then he and about 600 other fishermen would have been criminals for breaking a federal law. The temporary DAM zone would have affected five of the eight districts in Lobster Zone A, including all of the Jonesport lobstermen, 90% of those from Bucks Harbor and about 70% of the Cutler fishermen.

After the order was rescinded, Drouin took his fishing boat to the location of the coordinates for where the whales were sighted, which he says was out of sight of land, about 30 miles from shore, with a depth of 600 feet. Traveling back in, he says it was "a long ways before we got to any lobster gear." The 841-square-nautical-mile DAM zone, though, would have been implemented "right to the beach" in Jonesport. "It doesn't make sense," he says. "The whales weren't anywhere near there. There's a lot of water with not one thing in it for them to play around in."

"We don't want to see any harm to the whales," the zone council chairman says. "But when whales show up, no one really cares about the fishermen." Then he adds, "I do thank and commend NOAA for going back out and doing another survey. They weren't required to."

However, Drouin notes that the close call may be a foreshadowing for next year, when fishermen will be required to change to sinking line by October 2008 under NMFS' Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Plan. With the new regulations affecting all of the fisheries from Maine to Florida that use rope, Drouin says that rope manufacturers can't make the amount of line necessary in time. Also, a rope that meets the federal requirements still hasn't been developed that Downeast fishermen can use.

NMFS did agree to exempt 71% of Maine's waters from the new rules, and the Department of Marine Resources is arguing for the exemption of additional areas. In addition, the state is trying to push the implementation date back to 2010, and Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins have urged NMFS to reconsider the regulations. The two senators, along with Rep. Tom Allen, Governor John Baldacci, State Senator Kevin Raye, and Patrice McCarron, executive director of the Maine Lobstermen's Association, were among those who wrote to NMFS expressing their concerns about the temporary DAM zone.