The Maine Lobstermen’s Association (MLA) has officially withdrawn support of the April 2019 Take Reduction Team agreement – intended to protect the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale – due to what it calls “serious flaws in the data presented.”
The agreement calls for Maine lobstermen to reduce the fishery’s risk to right whales by 60 percent in the wake of a number of right whale deaths that were found to be related to entanglement in fishing gear. NOAA’s Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Team (TRT), which has representatives from the Maine lobster industry, met and eventually recommended that the state’s lobstermen reduce vertical lines used by up to 50 percent.
Initially, all five Maine lobster industry members of the TRT supported what was a then near-consensus agreement to reduce gear. However, as of 30 August, those five members withdrew their support of the agreement.
“Substantive errors in NOAA Fisheries’ (NMFS or the Agency) data and its last-minute announcement of a U.S. risk-reduction target that was fully assigned to the Northeast lobster fishery led the TRT to work with an erroneous assumption about the relative risk to North Atlantic right whales from that fishery and discount the relative risk posed by other sources,” wrote Patrice McCarron, the executive director of the MLA, in a letter to Assistant Administrator for NOAA Fisheries Chris Oliver.
The error, according to the letter, relates to the understanding of the various human causes of right whale entanglement. Essentially, as presented at the time, the data put an overemphasis on the lobster industry’s impact on right whales, according to the MLA.
“The MLA’s analysis found that gillnet and netting gear were the most prevalent gear (other than Canadian snow crab gear), and the Northeast lobster fishery (and the Maine lobster fishery in particular) were the least prevalent in right whale entanglements from known causes,” wrote McCarron. “This finding means the 60 percent conservation target stipulated by the Agency and allocated solely to the Northeast lobster fishery is unsupported by the best available data, and any package of remedial measures designed to meet it cannot credibly generate the conservation benefits anticipated. At a minimum, the U.S. risk reduction target must be shared amongst the fisheries contributing to entanglement.”
McCarron’s letter goes on to point out that current findings indicate that the current take reduction plan implemented by NOAA’s National Marine Fishery Service is working. Since it was amended in 2009 and 2014, the MLA found, right whale entanglements attributable to U.S. lobster gear have been reduced substantially, with only one right whale entanglement attributable to Maine lobster gear back in 2002, with no known injuries or mortalities associated with the gear.
The MLA also criticized the way that the NMFS presented information to the TRT. A “Decision Support Tool” that was intended to provide data was presented to the team just one week before a meeting by the team, during a webinar that was 30 minutes and offered limited opportunity for questions.
As a result of the withdrawal, the MLA offered up 10 recommendations for actions that the NMFS could take to improve the data and process behind future right whale conservation decisions, including publishing a thorough analysis of data regarding known sources of whale entanglement.
The MLA’s withdrawal from the take reduction team agreement comes in the wake of three of Maine’s four congressional representatives coming out against the potential new regulations, in addition to the state’s governor, Janet Mills, threatening to defy the new rules.
Photo courtesy of NOAA
