NH to join Maine in challenging fishing regulations
Oct. 27—CONCORD — Gov. Chris Sununu announced New Hampshire would join the state of Maine in federal court to appeal a Biden administration regulation to protect the endangered north Atlantic right whales that he said would cripple the region's lobster industry.
A U.S. District Court judge last month upheld a National Marine Fisheries Services (NMFS) regulation environmental groups sought in response to the whale population, estimated to be around 340 animals in the Atlantic waters of the U.S. and Canada.
"This ruling, if upheld, would devastate New England's lobster industry with restrictive regulations brought on by the federal government," Sununu said in a statement. "This is a bipartisan issue New Hampshire and Maine are aligned on, and we as state officials have an obligation to stand up and provide the leadership necessary to fight Washington and to preserve the lobster and fishing industry in our states."
U.S. Sens. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., and Susan Collins, R-Maine, have led efforts on Capitol Hill since last spring to assist lobstermen in dealing with higher costs for gear needed to comply with these restrictions that have been years in the making.
Shaheen chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee working with control over the budget of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that includes the marine fisheries service.
She vowed to keep working to help the lobster industry to deal with this "challenging situation" while balancing the environmental threats to the whale population.
"The potential impact of this ruling to our lobstermen and fishermen is very concerning. I've always said that it is crucial that good science, with input from the fishing industry, guides these kinds of management decisions," Shaheen said in a statement.
Sununu said the industry has made significant changes to operations such as using weaker rope and affixing more traps on a single line in the water.
Fishing industry leaders insist there has not been a single, documented case of lobster gear entangling a right whale off the coasts of both states.
The Conservation Law Foundation led an environmental coalition that had already convinced the federal judge to order the NMFS to go even further than it intended to protect these whales.
"This decision rejects the lobster industry's attempts to distract from the overwhelming scientific evidence that entanglements have killed far too many right whales for far too long," Erica Fuller, a senior attorney at the Conservation Law Foundation, said last month.
"It took the fisheries service five years to finalize a rule that only reduced lethal entanglement risk by 50 percent when the science shows 90 percent is needed. This species doesn't have another five years to wait for the agency to comply with the law."
