Despite concerns from federal oversight agencies, the National Marine Fisheries Service has gone ahead with rules requiring changes in lobster gear to protect right whales. The aggressive timeline is premature because more research is needed to determine where the whales and lobster gear actually overlap.

Effective Oct. 5, Maine lobstermen face fines of up to $13,000 per day if they are caught violating a rule requiring them to use new rope for their traps, at a cost estimated of at least $10,000 per boat. Other requirements, including breakaway links for their lines, went into effect April 4.

The lobstermen, with the support of Gov. John Baldacci and the state’s congressional delegation, had hoped to get a postponement of the October deadline until June 2010 to negotiate an agreement on measures that would protect the whales without crippling the lobster industry.

Last year, the Maine lobster industry approved an increase in trap fees to support needed research of where right whales feed in Maine and where they interact with lobster gear.

But in mid-March representatives of the Humane Society and the Ocean Conservancy bypassed these efforts and insisted that the rule go into effect as scheduled, according to Patrice McCarron, executive director of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association.

The rule requires the use of sinking rope instead of the present floating rope to connect several traps on the ocean bottom with a single line going up to a buoy on the surface. In a few instances, whales have been entangled by lines that float a few feet above the ocean bottom.

The lobstermen objected that sinking rope would quickly fray on the rocky bottom along the Maine coast, that traps would be lost, that manufacturers could not produce enough sinking rope by October and that the expense of the changeover would come on top of soaring costs of diesel fuel and bait. They complained that the October deadline would come at the height of the harvesting season.

In the middle is the National Marine Fisheries Service, which issued its “final statement” last September on the whale rule after receiving 6,980 comments by letter, e-mail and fax. The comments included many demands by environmentalists that the rule be tightened further and complaints by the lobster industry that the rule was unworkable and too costly and that it exaggerated the danger of whale entanglement in the gear.

The statement brushed aside most of the objections or else said adjustments would be made on the basis of continuing research. Despite concerns raised by the Government Accountability Office that its economic analysis was insufficient, NMFS said the rule struck a good “balance of environmental and economic effects” within the requirements of the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

Protecting the endangered whales is necessary, but so is protecting our lobster industry, an economic mainstay and a recognized state symbol. Both interests must be served, and compromise is essential. A commitment to quickly change the rules based on research is one way to accomplish this.