(The Center Square) — Maine lobstermen are making a last-ditch push to scuttle a federal monitoring program seeking to protect critically endangered North Atlantic right whales.
In a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court, lawyers for five lobstermen argue that new federal fisheries monitoring rules violate the Fourth and 14th Amendments of the U.S. Constitution.
The restrictions, which went into effect on Dec. 15, require Maine lobstermen with federal lobster fishing permits to install 24-hour electronic tracking devices on their vessels.
The lobstermen allege the feds are collecting the monitoring data for purposes unrelated to commercial fishing, such as mapping potential areas to develop offshore wind power, which is “improper and a manifest violation of their constitutionally protected privacy rights.”
“The plaintiffs contend that minute-by-minute surveillance of Maine’s federally licensed lobster fleet is unconstitutional, unwarranted and unfair to Maine lobstermen, who have proven through the actions of generations of lobstering families that they are good stewards of the ocean ecosystems essential to their livelihoods,” attorneys for the lobstermen said in a statement.
The lawsuit is the latest in a flurry of legal activity surrounding federal regulations to protect critically endangered species.
North Atlantic right whales, driven to the brink of extinction in the 20th century by whalers, are at risk from ship collisions and entanglement in fishing gear, federal officials say. Scientists say the population of right whales has dwindled to about 340 and are also impacted by low mortality rates.
Environmental activists have been pressuring fisheries managers for years to ban commercial fishing nets and gear in state waters to prevent entanglements of whales and turtles.
However, commercial fishermen counter that whale entanglements are rare and argue that the new whale protection rules will doom an industry already struggling amid stringent regulation and closures of fishing areas.
Several lawsuits have been filed to block the monitoring rules and a separate set of federal regulations requiring fishermen to make gear modifications to reduce the number of vertical lines in the water and set a section of the Gulf of Maine that would be off-limits for fishermen several months of the year.
The most recent ruling came in June when a federal appeals court ordered the National Marine Fisheries Service to return to the drawing board and re-work the most recent federal regulations.