Maine’s lobster industry is not expected to face any immediate legal consequences after a fishing rope suspected to originate in the state was found embedded in the tail of a dead right whale.
That is because of a measure approved by Congress more than a year ago that prevents new restrictions aimed at protecting right whales from being imposed on lobstermen before 2028.
Despite repeated concerns raised by whale advocates that lobster gear poses too great an entanglement risk, fishermen have long argued there’s too little evidence to warrant further reductions of vertical ropes connecting traps to buoys on the surface. The only previously known case of a whale getting tangled in Maine fishing line occurred in 2004, and that whale survived.
That changed Wednesday.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said this week that a piece of rope that was deeply embedded in the juvenile whale’s tail had markings associated with Maine lobstering gear. Plus, there was no evidence of blunt force trauma, which would be a sign that the whale had been struck by a ship, the agency added.
An official with one environmental group said Thursday that the provision in the 2023 federal spending bill makes any new lawsuits over the whale’s death unlikely. North Atlantic right whales, which are protected under federal law, are considered critically endangered, with only 360 estimated to remain.
“The federal government is prohibited from putting additional safeguards in place until January 2029,” said Gib Brogan, a spokesperson for the ocean conservation advocacy group Oceana. “This will likely preclude any additional legal action.”
But Brogan and officials with other groups said the death off Martha’s Vineyard, and another death of a whale found Wednesday off the coast of Georgia, show the federal government is not doing enough. While the causes of death have not been determined, entanglements in fishing gear and ship strikes are the two leading reasons for unnatural deaths in whales, according to scientists.
“Let’s call this what it is: gross negligence by our government leaders,” Brogan said. “Our East Coast shores have become the graveyard for a critically endangered species dying from human causes, and the deaths and injuries keep adding up.”
Kate O’Connell of the Animal Welfare Institute said the 2022 decision by Congress to delay additional lobster gear restrictions “ignores” mandates under the Marine Mammal Protection Act and Endangered Species Act and undermines hopes for the species’ survival.
“It is clear that the North Atlantic right whale population cannot sustain the death or serious injury of even a single whale per year if the survival and ultimate recovery of the species is to be ensured,” O’Connell said.
Officials with Maine’s Department of Marine Resources declined Thursday to comment on whether the entanglement of the dead whale off Massachusetts could prompt more legal challenges, or whether lobstermen could face more regulatory pressure despite the provision in the 2023 spending bill.
Tighter restrictions on the lobster industry over the years have largely resulted from lawsuits by environmental groups.
In 2018, the Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife and Humane Society of the United States sued the federal government and won a decision that ordered more restrictive rules aimed at preventing whale entanglements.
But Maine’s lobster industry contested the decision and won a legal victory of its own last year, arguing the tighter rules were unfairly onerous on fishermen and not supported by data. The appeals court victory came six months after Congress delayed new restrictions for the fishery.
Some of the new proposed rules that fishermen and Maine officials oppose include greater reductions of vertical lines, weak links in ropes that might help whales escape entanglements, and prohibitions on placing vertical lines in some areas during certain times of year.
There have been other federal restrictions on lobstermen that have taken effect over the years. In 2008, they had to stop using floating rope to connect multi-trap trawls and use sinking rope instead, because the floating rope created curving loops that rose off the bottom and could potentially get tangled on diving whales.
A decade ago, fishermen working further offshore were required to stop using “singles,” or traps that are each connected to a floating buoy, and instead use a greater number of traps per trawl that would reduce the number of vertical ropes to the surface, as those ropes also create entanglement risk.
