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Whose Opportunities Are These?



“The Maine lobster fishery has a target on it’s back,” said Maine DMR Commissioner Patrick Keliher at a meeting with lobstermen on November 4, 2019. He was referring to NOAA being after Maine lobstermen over northern right whale gear entanglements.

It’s been twenty-one years since the Max Strahan U.S. Supreme Court case regarding protection of the right whale. Supreme Court cases are considered by lawyers to be a big notch to have on a briefcase. Strahan has no university degree, law degree or known address, but he may have been lucky enough to get pro bono legal representation.

Maybe it was just a right-place-at-the-right-time thing. Then of course there is luck. There are those who question whether there is such a thing as luck. Some say luck is the ability to recognize an opportunity combined with the will to take advantage of it.

There were other big things happening back in the mid 1990s that were lucky for some. Just 209 years after the American Revolution ended, the Gulf of Maine border between the U.S. and Canada was settled in 1996 — the Hague line. It was lucky for the oil and gas industry as they would know from who to lease exploration areas in the Gulf of Maine.

In the mid 1990s, 20 years after the passage of the Magnuson-Stevens Act, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) ramped up regulations on fishing with a focus on New England. The original MSA acknowledged the need to consider the social costs of regulations for coastal fishing communities.

But as luck would have it, some opportunities are created with the intention of taking advantage of them. The severe regulatory restrictions and notoriously punitive enforcement practices of NMFS have gutted the northeast fishing fleet. Every regulation brought higher operating costs, lower profits, less fish and more despair. It has been death by a thousand cuts. Iconic Gloucester is like a city under a military siege. The army of the privatizers, investors and energy companies continue to pressure NMFS to fire more regulatory missiles into the heart of the Gloucester commercial district.

The targeted Maine lobster fishery is getting whale interaction proposals that would drive some fishermen out, raise the cost to participate for others and open the door to consolidation. Whose “opportunities” are these?