Official Congressional Record
Mr. Speaker, first, I will offer a bit of a rebuttal to my colleague across the aisle. Of course, I am in his party, but I am standing over here today supporting this legislation. There has been some talk about timeline. This is 2 years down the road, but, in fact, everyone here knows that a lot of work goes into developing new regulations, guidelines, and other things before we just deploy them out into the world. Even though that deadline is 2 years out, NOAA is already working on those regulations. Something that NOAA and the Maine Department of Marine Resources agree about is that, yes, we are collecting more data with the money that they are thankful Congress gave to get better data points for how we can protect these whales, but since they are already working on what might follow that deadline in 2 years, they are unable to incorporate it into the work that is ongoing right now, hence the necessity of making some movement here in Congress on this issue today. Mr. Speaker, I thank Chairman Westerman for the time to speak today and Congressman Lawler for partnering with me on this bill. This effort is critical for Maine, but its benefits will be shared by fishermen all along the Eastern Seaboard. This bill is about the future of a heritage industry and the working men and women who risk their lives on the ocean to put nutritious seafood on our plates. It is also about protecting the working-class communities those men and women support. In my district, lobster fishing is the backbone of towns up and down the coast. In some towns, 20 to 40 percent of the residents hold a lobster license. In those towns, life as they know it would end without fishing. You can liken it--if you don’t live on the coast--to what happens when a major mill shuts down and a town is decimated. For them what is at stake is the continuation of a way of life that is generations deep or the loss of it. Without it, they know what to expect. All they have to do is cast their eye elsewhere, southward on the East Coast to former fishing communities that have been turned into investment opportunities for people looking for some prime coastal front property to buy and some locals that they would love to employ to work for pennies on the dollar in service to them, in service to people from away. The Maine lobster industry currently supports roughly 18,000 jobs and it generates hundreds of millions in tax revenue to support schools, infrastructure investments, and State and local services for Mainers. It is already getting harder and harder to make a living on the water without adding onerous new regulations to satisfy the nearly insatiable appetite of environmental law firms. It is a sad state of affairs that these firms treat every whale death as an opportunity to bring a lawsuit against fishermen that lines their own pockets, provides for their own living, no matter what the cause of that whale death was. It could have nothing to do with fishermen. You can bet they are going to bring a lawsuit. They are doing it backed by money from people who love to eat seafood but apparently think they can have it without fishermen. Now, there are some who want to say this bill presents us with a false choice between our fishermen and protecting an endangered species, the North Atlantic right whale. The truth is we can do both, and here is how I know that. Maine fishermen are already doing it. They have been good stewards of marine resources and marine life and leaders in the conservation and protection of the North Atlantic right whale. Over the past 20 years, Maine lobstermen have made effective and costly changes to fishing practices to reduce the risk of entanglements. They have removed many vertical lines from the water by putting more traps on each trawl, despite the fact that it makes fishing less safe for themselves. They have added breakaways at surface buoys and along inlines to ensure that if a whale or any other marine animal is caught in those traps that the line will break. They have made the switch to sinking ground lines and limited the diameter of vertical lines. This is just a few highlights because they have done much more. These practices already exist under the status quo regulatory framework, and they work. From 2009 to 2018, the number of annual serious injuries or deaths to North Atlantic right whales attributed to entanglements from American fishing gear was 0.2. I will repeat that: 0.2. Our efforts are already working. Yet, somehow, these fishermen face the threat of crushing new regulations over and over and over again. When we enacted this moratorium in 2022, Maine fishermen were at risk of being put out of business by these new regulations and closures that would have spelled doom for Maine’s coastal communities. Maine’s lobster fishery is unique. Unlike other fisheries that are dominated by bigger types of fisheries and fishing operations, Maine fisheries, Maine fishermen, is a fleet made up of owner-operated vessels, holding licenses that are passed down through generations. Had the proposed requirements been implemented back then, many, if not most of them, would not have been able to keep going. Congress wisely put a pause on that and devoted Federal funds to monitor, collect data, and to come up with new best practices to protect fishermen and whales alike. This year, Maine’s Department of Marine Resources told Congress, in no uncertain terms, that the data it collected cannot be incorporated into NOAA’s rulemaking on the 2028 timeline and current law. Congress funded this science. Why would we not give State and Federal agencies the time necessary to make good use of it? This bill does not weaken protections for the North Atlantic right whale. It preserves the current effective regulatory framework until 2035. With that in mind, I urge you to see this legislation for what it is. It is an opportunity to protect hardworking people and our marine resources’ economy, pure and simple. To do so without taking away any existing regulations whatsoever, you have an opportunity to have your lobster and eat it too.
