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Regulators say new whale-protection rules for Maine's lobster fleet are on the horizon

FILE- In this Sept. 21, 2020 file photo, a sternman checks a lobster while fishing off South Portland, Maine. The Maine Department of Marine Resources said Wednesday fishermen caught more than 96 million pounds of lobsters in 2020.
Robert F. Bukaty
/
AP
FILE- In this Sept. 21, 2020 file photo, a sternman checks a lobster while fishing off South Portland, Maine. The Maine Department of Marine Resources said Wednesday fishermen caught more than 96 million pounds of lobsters in 2020.

Federal regulators said they will soon start a process to create new whale-protection rules for Maine's lobster fleet that will go beyond the controversial regulations going into effect on May 1. The rules are being imposed to reduce the risk that endangered North Atlantic right whales will be killed by entanglements with fishing gear or ship strikes.

Michael Pentony, the regional administrator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, spoke to an online meeting of the Maine Fishermen's Forum today.

He said that the initial rules were designed to reduce the risk to whales by 60%, but recent evidence shows that the agency must act more quickly than planned to reduce that risk even more.

"But as we got new information late last fall... for the right whale population, we now know that we need a 90% risk reduction," Petony said.

Pentony called that a "daunting task".

He said NOAA is ordering a stakeholder group to propose new rules for east coast gillnet fisheries and all fisheries south of Rhode Island by fall, and then turn to tightening rules for the New England Jonah crab and lobster fisheries.

Conservation groups and the lobster industry had both expected that over the next decade further and potentially drastic risk reduction measures would be coming to New England fisheries, but this the first formal indicator of just how fast that might happen.

A lawyer for the Conservation Law Foundation, one of several suing the federal government for more robust action, said NOAA should consider more rules for the entire east coast right away. Lobster industry representatives could not immediately be reached for comment.

There are roughly 330 North Atlantic right whales left on the planet. 15 whale calves have been sighted off the southern Atlantic coast this calving season.

Corrected: March 24, 2022 at 7:48 AM EDT
An earlier version of this article misstated the first name of Michael Pentony.
A Columbia University graduate, Fred began his journalism career as a print reporter in Vermont, then came to Maine Public in 2001 as its political reporter, as well as serving as a host for a variety of Maine Public Radio and Maine Public Television programs. Fred later went on to become news director for New England Public Radio in Western Massachusetts and worked as a freelancer for National Public Radio and a number of regional public radio stations, including WBUR in Boston and NHPR in New Hampshire.