PORTLAND PRESS HERALD – Along the coasts of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, scientists, engineers and fishermen are working feverishly to develop a new, high-tech way to harvest lobster – and the result
could be the key to survival of both the U.S. lobster fishery and the imperiled North Atlantic
right whale.
But farther north in Maine, the epicenter of the fishery, it’s unusually quiet. Only one Maine
business is working on the technology, and only a handful of Maine lobstermen will test it.
Many won’t even discuss it.
The clock is ticking. The lobster industry has less than six years to come up with a method
that doesn’t rely on ropes dangling in the ocean, the traditional way to haul traps from the
seabed. The ropes can also entangle whales, creating a potentially deadly hazard that
fishery regulators have tried to mitigate…