WORKING WATERFRONT • June 16, 2022
A Massachusetts group aiming to help develop lobster traps that eliminate standing buoy lines recently received a decision about whether the trap technology could be tested in waters closed to fishing as a protection for endangered North Atlantic right whales. On April 26, federal regulators gave Pioneers for a Thoughtful Coexistence a temporary exemption to test the technology in federal waters that would otherwise be closed to lobstering. That authorization represents the first time acoustically signaled on-demand lobster fishing has been allowed in federal waters.