One of Gloucester’s remaining fishing vessels coming into Gloucester Harbor. The fishing fleet here has been battered by a decades-long barrage of ever-changing fishing regulations. This has made it almost impossible for the industry that built and maintained the town for nearly 400 years to remain viable. Fishermen fault failed federal fisheries management, disjointed science and the influence of corporate money undermining the democratic process. Dead in the Water photo.
Endline End Game
State plan calls for targeted exemption from line reductions
by Laurie Schreiber
A modified plan by the Department of Marine Resources (DMR) would exempt inshore vertical endlines from a federal plan to decrease by half the overall number of endlines used by the lobster fishery.
DMR Commissioner Patrick Keliher presented the proposal in a series of meetings with the industry in early November.
The DMR’s plan hinges on an existing nearshore exemption area that spans the Maine coast and was established in 2014 to exempt lobster fishermen from new vertical-line rules implemented at that time, also to protect right whales. The parameters of the area were based on data overlays that showed right whales weren’t showing up where nearshore fishing was taking place.
