PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — A bunch of Massachusetts lobster fishers has sued the federal authorities over an emergency closure of fishing grounds that’s designed to guard a vanishing species of whale.
The closure, enacted Feb. 1, blocked off about 200 sq. miles of Massachusetts Bay from lobster fishing till the top of April. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration stated the closure was obligatory to guard North Atlantic proper whales from harmful entanglement in fishing rope.
The whales quantity solely about 340 on the earth and return to the waters off New England each spring. But the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association contends the closure is unlawful and can trigger financial hurt to the business, and sued the federal company in court docket this month.
The fishing group is ready to listen to a couple of court docket date, stated Beth Casoni, it’s government director. The group stated in court docket filings that the closure harms and an business that’s “essential to Massachusetts’s culture, heritage, identity and economy,” and the court docket ought to reopen the fishing grounds.
“This action isn’t warranted, it’s overreaching and quite frankly it’s unacceptable,” Casoni stated.
A spokeswoman for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration declined to touch upon the lawsuit as a result of it’s nonetheless in court docket.
The Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries has stated the closures are essential “to protect seasonal aggregations of right whales from potential entanglements in buoy lines.” Some environmental teams have additionally cheered the restriction as a result of they see it as important to defending the whale, which has declined in inhabitants in recent times.
Lobster fishing within the U.S. takes place primarily off of Maine and Massachusetts, with some lobsters additionally coming to the docks in New Hampshire, southern New England and farther south. The business is coping with financial pressures, reminiscent of current choices by some retailers to cease promoting lobsters due to considerations in regards to the menace to whales. It’s additionally dealing with proposed new fishing restrictions designed to guard the whales alongside the East Coast.
The business can also be extra productive than it has ever been. U.S. lobster fishermen caught almost 135 million kilos of lobster price about $925 million in 2021. Lobster fishers by no means topped 100 million kilos in a single 12 months till 2010.
About 110 million kilos of lobster got here to the docks in Maine in 2021 and about 17 million in Massachusetts.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”