Sen. Snowe lambastes proposed gear rules

BREWER – A required change in fishing gear for lobstermen was criticized Tuesday for not having enough scientific data to back it up, but it wasn’t only fishermen who took aim at the pending federal regulation.

U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe, who chaired a Senate subcommittee field hearing on the issue Tuesday at Jeff’s Catering, also had some strong words about the rule, which will require fishermen to use more expensive ropes on their traps.

“These regulations are not acceptable in their current form,” said Snowe. “It’s no exaggeration to say these rules could put lobstermen out of business.”

About 160 people, many of them fishermen, attended the hearing. About a dozen fishermen testified at the hearing in opposition to the pending regulations.

The rules under fire Tuesday are aimed at protecting endangered whales, which are believed to get tangled when they swim under the floating lines fishermen now use between traps. In response to a lawsuit filed by environmental groups, National Marine Fisheries Service decided last October to require all lobstermen who set traps outside an exemption line approximately three miles from shore to use sinking ground lines, which are expected to stay on the bottom out of the way of diving whales.

Lobstermen say the sinking rope is more expensive, will have to be replaced more often, and is more likely to result in their gear getting caught on the bottom and perhaps lost.

Mike Dassatt, a board member with Down East Lobstermen’s Association, testified that he fishes only 400 traps – half the limit for commercial fishermen in Maine – and that he still spends between $3,000 and $5,000 a year on gear. He said he tried using sinking rope where he fishes in upper Penobscot Bay and it didn’t work.

“The first week I used this rope I lost a total of 70 traps,” Dassatt said. “If I have to switch over, I’m done.”

Vicki Cornish, vice president of marine wildlife conservation for The Ocean Conservancy, one of the groups that sued NMFS, also testified at Tuesday’s hearing. She said that, with only about 350 right whales left in the North Atlantic, even one is too many to lose to gear entanglements or ship strikes.

“Maine has a long history of adopting fishing practices that sustain a healthy lobster population,” she said. “We believe that lobstermen have not only the ability, but the responsibility to find long-term solutions to the threat of whale entanglement.”

Snowe asked James Lecky, an NMFS official at the hearing, how the agency could justify the new rules when there are many factors that have yet to be determined. Among the unknown factors are whether the new regulations will have any effect on whale entanglements or survival rates, how the new rules will be enforced, and whether there will be enough sinking ground rope available from manufacturers for fishermen to comply with the rules.

She said there also is not a lot of evidence about where and how frequently whales appear in Maine waters or about where the gear found on entangled whales comes from.

“I felt [the lack of supporting data] was stunning,” Snowe said after the hearing. “I think they need to delay the implementation schedule.”

Lecky acknowledged that NMFS does not have a lot of empirical data on whale behavior in Maine and that the agency had to use models, rather then data, to fill in some of the information gaps.

“We’re over a decade late in achieving the goals laid out in the Marine Mammal Protection Act,” he testified. “We still are finding whales entangled in compliant gear. We’re on to the next step, and this is the next step.”

David Cousens, president of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association, criticized the agency’s approach to implementing the rules. He said that, aside from following the agency’s testing procedure for determining the relative buoyancy of fishing rope, fishermen have no way of knowing whether rope they might buy meets the new standards.

“C’mon, guys!” he said after reading aloud some of the cumbersome and time-consuming steps outlined in the equipment testing procedure. “Are we really going to do that for every sample of rope? That’s unbelievable. No one has anything in stock right now. No one knows what to order.”

Cousens also said it was “ignorant” for the agency to implement the change in October, in the middle of the prime fall fishing season, rather than in the spring when most fishermen set their gear back in the water.

Spencer Joyce, a fishermen from Swans Island, said he has been fishing since 1961 and has never seen a right whale.

“I don’t feel like there’s really a problem,” he said. “It’s like telling the road crews in Fort Lauderdale to salt and sand the roads every day, but there’s no snowstorm.”

Patrice McCarron, MLA’s executive director, also testified at the hearing. She said NMFS doesn’t have enough justification for the new requirement.

“We don’t think the federal government set the bar high enough in terms of data,” she said after the hearing. “Having the bar set this low is not going to work in the future.”

McCarron said that, despite the looming deadline, she is confident the fishermen’s message is getting through to the right people. She said she was encouraged by Snowe’s statements.

“I’m pretty encouraged. There’s hope,” McCarron said.