100% Harvester Reporting and Federal Vessel Tracking
Several actions at the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) have resulted in substantial improvements to the collection of data from the American lobster and Jonah crab fisheries.
In compliance with ASMFC's American Lobster Fishery Management Plan Amendment 3, Addendum XXVI DMR has implemented 100% harvester reporting in the lobster fishery. Prior to this requirement, only 10 percent of Maine lobster harvesters were required to report.
In addition, ASMFC's Addendum XXIX to the Lobster Fishery Management Plan (FMP) specifies that as of December 15, 2023, all federally licensed lobster vessels are required to have an electronic vessel tracking device onboard.
Maine DMR has undertaken rulemaking to comply with the addendum, requiring that all Maine state license holders who also hold a federal permit have a tracker installed on their permitted vessel before their first fishing trip following December 15, 2023. Other states will also be required to comply with the FMP if they have federally permitted harvesters who fish in LCMA’s 1-5 or Outer Cape Cod.
The additional data streams from state license holders and federally permitted vessels are critical, providing fine-scale spatial information regarding the location of fishing effort in both state and federal waters.
While these requirements have met with skepticism from some harvesters concerned with the use of the data, these data sets are important not only for targeted, effective whale regulations, but also for regulators to understand and minimize the impact of other ocean uses on Maine's commercial fishing industry, including offshore wind energy development and aquaculture.
Better Data - Improved Risk Modeling
With significantly expanded data on fishing effort, the presence of right whales in the Gulf of Maine, and the distribution of their food source, DMR will work to improve the assessment of risk to right whales.
DMR intends to improve inputs, also known as data layers, to the existing Decision Support Tool (DST) which is used to generate a relative risk “score” for given scenarios of when, where, and how fishing occurs. The DST uses inputs including fishery effort data, gear and rope configurations, and right whale density, which is derived from a model developed by Duke University,
Data collected through DMR's work will directly address two of these data layers.
DMR plans to work with Northeast Fisheries Science Center staff to develop a new fisheries data layer for the DST based on 100% harvester reporting and federal vessel tracking information.
DMR will also be working with Duke University to integrate the updated right whale data from the new monitoring program into the Duke University right whale density model.
Efforts to improve the fishery data and the whale density model will reduce uncertainty within the model.
DMR also intends to publish any new approaches to the existing risk assessment model in peer-reviewed literature so that it can be considered part of the best available science to guide regulatory decisions.