The rule about lobster fishing gear that many people have expected the federal government to issue has now become officially confirmed, but many people aren’t happy about it.

Environmental organizations sued the National Marine Fisheries Service earlier this year, claiming the federal agency was taking too long to come up with new rules to protect the endangered right whale. The Humane Society of the United States and the Ocean Conservancy argued that lobstermen should be required to use a type of rope that they say poses less of a threat to whales because it lies on the ocean bottom instead of floating up in the water column.

Fishermen have argued that having to use sinking rope would be prohibitively expensive, but still many held out hope that the federal government would stop short of mandating the gear change.

That hope diminished Monday when NMFS issued the new rule. The agency announced that all lobstermen who set their gear outside a boundary that runs approximately three miles from shore have until October 2008 to switch to the more expensive rope.

“It’s not a surprise, it’s a disappointment,” George Lapointe, commissioner of the Maine Department of Marine Resources, said Tuesday. “We need time to make it work right.”

Patrice McCarron, executive director of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association, also said the rule was disappointing. MLA was an intervenor in the case, which was filed in federal court in Washington in February.

“There’s no way the industry can comply by October 2008,” she said. “I don’t know what the [formal] response to the rule is going to be, but there definitely needs to be a response.”

McCarron and Lapointe each said that their respective organizations are examining their options and appealing to Maine’s congressional delegation for help before deciding what to do next.

U.S. Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins and Maine Gov. John Baldacci wrote letters in September to National Marine Fisheries Service officials asking them to reconsider the rules. Each urged William Hogarth, the head of NMFS, to consider a delay in implementing the rule until at least June 2010.

The environmental groups filed suit against NMFS after the agency missed its own deadline for adopting new lobstering gear rules by more than a year. What the groups wanted was a complete ban on floating rope, which many fishermen use between the traps that they set in a line, or string, on the ocean bottom.

Fishermen, especially in the midcoast and eastern part of the state, use floating rope between traps because it floats toward the surface away from the ocean floor, where it otherwise would likely get snagged on the rocky bottom. Whale conservationists argue that this creates loops that are likely to snare whales as they dive toward the bottom to feed.

Lobstermen, of which there are roughly 7,000 in Maine, counter that having to switch from float rope to the sinking variety likely will increase their individual expenses as much as $12,000 per year. Not only is the float rope more expensive, they say, but it will have to be replaced more often because it will wear out faster rubbing on the jagged ocean bottom.

Fishermen say the mandated change presents other problems, too. Manufacturers cannot produce enough sinking rope fast enough for fishermen to meet the October 2008 deadline, they say, and it will encourage fishermen to set more single traps in the water. This will result in more buoys floating on the surface for the same number of traps, and more vertical lines suspended in the water column to endanger whales.

John Williamson of the Ocean Conservancy, which argued for the float-rope ban, called the rule a “step backwards.” The environmental groups had wanted it to apply to all fishermen, regardless of how close to shore they set their gear, he said. They oppose the 3-mile exemption line and are unhappy that the rule will do away with dynamic area management zones, which require fishermen to remove gear from areas where endangered whales are sighted.

“The net effect is that whales will be receiving less protection off the coast of Maine than they have before,” Williamson said.

Williamson said that while the environmental groups recognize the economic importance of Maine’s $300 million lobster fishing industry, they believe that Maine fishermen, who have spearheaded resource protections in the past, can adapt.

“It’s clear the lobster industry in Maine is very innovative and conservation-minded,” he said. “We are sure the lobster industry in Maine is capable of finding solutions.”

Williamson said there have been 18 new cases of entangled whales reported on the East Coast this year, but that environmentalists don’t know where the tangled fishing gear came from. Many Maine fishermen claim they’ve fished for decades and have never seen a right whale in state waters.

“At what lengths do you go to protect something that isn’t there?” Clive Farrin, president of Down East Lobstermen’s Association, said Tuesday. “I don’t know how much cooperation they’re going to get [from fishermen on the new rule].”

Mike Dassatt, board member of DELA, was highly critical of the mandated change. He said its financial effect on Maine will be significant.

“We’re talking about a whole state that will be impacted – tens of thousands of jobs,” Dassatt said. “It’s like me telling Tiger Woods how to go golfing. Someone sitting behind a desk in Washington, D.C., should not tell me how to set lobster gear.”

Industry representatives say the exemption line should be farther out. The line may exempt 71 percent of the state’s waters from the sinking line requirement, but many fishermen fish on both sides of the line as they follow the seasonal movement of the lobsters, they said. And some fishermen are limited to zones completely outside the line.

“In order to make a living, you have to follow the migration,” MLA’s McCarron said. “The lobsters don’t know where the exemption line is. We have a set of rules that are not going to work for the industry.”