Protecting American Lobstermen From Costly Federal Regulations

0:00 Speaker 1 Sunday morning, Labor Day weekend, the end of the summer. With us today is Bonnie Brady, and she’s the executive director of the, well, the Long Island Fishing Association, but now she’s got a new job besides. Tell us what other job you have right now. Hi, John.

0:15 Speaker 2 I’m the policy director for the New England Fishermen’s Stewardship Association. We represent fishermen from Maine all the way down to New Jersey.

0:24 Speaker 1 That’s a big territory. Give us an update. What the heck is going on? And because... It’s Labor Day weekend, the end of the summer. What’s going on? Is the Atlantic Ocean going to be in better shape?

0:36 Speaker 2 Well, we’re very hopeful that the Atlantic Ocean will be in better shape. We also know just this past Tuesday in Congress, after they approved the continuing resolution, a huge bill passed the House, courtesy of Congressman Mike Lawler and Congressman Jared Golden. Mike Lawler was the sponsor. It was called H.R. 9436. And what it did was extend a

1:02 moratorium on further regulation on American lobstermen with relation to ropeless gear that they wanted to try during the Biden administration to shove down our throats, which could possibly kill fishermen in the process. And those that weren’t killed by it could wind up out of business because it was so expensive. And Anyway, Congressman Lawler carried on with the

1:23 bill that Congressman Golden had set up in 2022 to extend out until 2028 to allow the science. NOAA is doing– NOAA, for people that don’t know, is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the folks that, with fisheries, regulate commercial fishermen in the U.S. And they were putting out these regulations– that would have basically collapsed the lobster industry,

1:50 the U.S. lobster industry, from the inside. They wanted to install ropeless gear as an option. And we at NEPSA were very clear from the beginning the reason why ropeless gear, it sounds great, oh, you don’t have to worry, just press a button and it comes up. Well, things don’t work as easily in the ocean as you’d think. And

2:10 these thing called end lines with floats on them, and they call them high flyers that sit on the other side of a bunch of different traps all together as a line, is what can save you in case, God forbid, as a fisherman, rough conditions, your foot gets caught in some of the line and you get pulled over, as

2:27 many fishermen throughout time have had happen. And when you don’t have an end line to be able to grab as some guy’s going over the boat, you have no way to get him back. And we fought this from the very beginning. People can go to our webpage, nefisherman.org, tons of videos talking to survivors who were hauled overboard

2:46 and saved because of an end line. The federal government, through a company called MITRE Corporation, did this huge study on all of the whale information, science, and data that wasn’t around in 2020 when this started being pushed. We’ve got passive acoustic monitors. The federal government added $ 17 million to the pot so they could do more frequent aerial surveys,

3:12 vessel surveys. They’ve also, just this year, there’s a guy named Zurbini. who is a whale scientist who’s been in Argentina, I believe, for the last three years in South America, testing a new tagging method for the southern right whale on the blubber that doesn’t hurt the whale at all.

3:31 And it turns out this thing has worked great. There were three scientists from the U.S. that have been down there for three years doing it. We’ve said, hey, wait a minute, what about tagging? They never said a word.

3:41 The science came out this year. The tags work up to 50 days. So between passive acoustic monitoring, which are basically loud microphones under the ocean to hear when they’re calling, aerial surveys to see where they are, and tagging so we can actually track them satellite-wise, we may not need to do ropeless gear. And that’s a huge thing. I mean,

4:04 we have in Long Island alone, we’ve got lobstermen all the way from North Port out to Montauk. These are first- and second-generation fishermen. I don’t ever want to tell one family, one wife, one kid, a parent, that your kid got pulled overboard because it broke this gear, and we couldn’t save them and we couldn’t stop it. And

4:24 thank God Congressman Lawler did the right thing. He introduced this bill. It was passed on Tuesday, 2-19 to 1-96, and we are forever grateful. It pushed out further regulations until 2035, giving the opportunity to take all the data that is now coming through and see what’s the best way to do this without killing people or their businesses.

4:46 Speaker 1 Well, that is good news. I’m glad Congressman Lawler led it, and I’m glad that now everybody’s agreed to it. Is it bipartisan?

4:57 Speaker 2 Not exactly, no. I mean, there are a lot of people saying, oh, you’re just creating a 13-year waiver. No, it doesn’t get rid of any of the existing whale protections. Those are already still in place. But what it says is before you do something new that is not technology may exist, but that doesn’t mean that technology is ready.

5:18 And when half of the entanglements, more than half, over three quarters of the entanglements to date, they don’t even know what country they’ve come from. But they want to put this hugely onerous, dangerous, life-threatening new gear that they gave to some people to try it out. The guys that are trying out are getting paid for it. The

5:38 gear alone is 10 to 20 times more expensive than what a regular lobster pot would cost. And it’s highly ineffective. We know because I’ve talked to guys out on the West Coast that have been testing the same gear. So it’s not really about keeping the lobster industry whole or safe.

5:55 It’s about doing something and getting more people out of business. And we’re fighting that, and we will continue to do so. This is about getting the science right, protecting the whales, and protecting the fishermen and their communities.

6:07 Speaker 1 Well, thank you so much for coming on this Sunday morning, and thank you for fighting hard for our environment. Thank you for, well, working hard for common sense and bringing down the price of energy because the way they’re doing it with those windmills, it’s doubling and tripling.

6:25 Speaker 2 Well, we’re hopeful that maybe a couple more will fall before it’s over, John, but we’re just waiting to see. I mean, we know there was one lawsuit. down off of New Jersey, where they’re going to allow them to still look at the cumulative effects of the Endangered Species Act and other broad statutes, because they did not address

6:46 that issue. So if BOEM can remand a wind farm construction operation plan and say, wait a minute, we need to re-look at that and get that done, that’s a great day for America. If we can stop the loss of our national defense and national security right before September 11th, what is it, the 25th anniversary?

7:06 Speaker 1 Yeah.

7:07 Speaker 2 That’s the best thing humanly possible.

7:10 Speaker 1 Thank you so much, and have a great weekend, and thank you for always defending America and defending our coastlines.

7:19 Speaker 2 And go out and enjoy a lobster roll there for this weekend. Thank you so much. Have a great day and a great weekend. Thank you.