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New Low Profile Rope In Wider Experiment
by Laurie Schreiber
Since he took the position last June, Robbins has been working with two rope manufacturers, in Maine and Canada, on two different types of rope. He obtained 106 coils, each about 1,200 feet, which he distributed from Cutler to Kittery. One coil doesn’t go very far on a fishermen’s warp, he said, but it’s a start. The development of the rope is funded by the National Marine Fisheries Service. “We want, initially, to make sure it’s a quality product,” he said. “How it handles, how it behaves on deck - it has to lie nicely when it’s coiled - we want to make sure it doesn’t snarl up.” Five coils initially went to Monhegan Island, to be tested by seven harvesters in conjunction with a controlled lobster density experiment coordinated by DMR biologist Carl Wilson. A number of fishermen were provided with tailored warps cut to specific lengths for the purposes of comparison. Robbins is working with these harvesters to further modify their groundlines based on the results of their input. Robbins dropped some off on Frenchboro, where David Lunt, among others, picked it up. Lunt has been using it since September. “It seems to be doing fine so far,” Lunt said. “I haven’t had any trouble with it.” He’s using 10 pieces, each about 90 feet long. Lunt said what he’s looking for in a line is one that won’t chafe and wear out too fast. Although it varies season to season, the rope he usually uses lasts five or six years. Some types of rope are stiff and kink up, but this new one seems to work pretty well, he said. In the end, he said, he could see a program being workable if the change-over of line were phased in as old rope wears out, rather than requiring fishermen to change their warp all at once. The Maine company produced a 3/8-inch-diameter line, and the Canadian company a 7/16-inch line. The composition is polyurethane and nylon or Dacron, but each has its own formula. The tests are conducted blind insofar as no one aside from the manufacturers knows what the formula of each rope is. “It may be that neither product, so far, is the answer,” Robbins said. Each participant has a logbook to document information such as where he hauls, in what conditions, anything out of the ordinary, and the behavior of the line. Although the National Marine Fisheries Service’s Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Plan contains some recognition of Maine’s unique situation — whales, the industry says, tend to pass by the Maine coast outside of most lobster fishing territory and the inshore area is largely comprised of rocky bottom - most alternatives in the rule push for mandatory sink rope throughout the East Coast. The proposed rule is a result of the continued risk of serious injury and mortality to right whales due to entanglement with fishing gear. From 1993-2002, there were nine fatal and 22 live right whale entanglements, an average of 1.2 right whales per year. Scarification evidence indicates 61.6 percent of right whales bear evidence of scars of entanglements and 10-28 percent are entangled each year. In 2002, NMFS managers determined under the Endangered Species Act that the lobster fishery, along with the Mid-Atlantic gillnet, Northeast sink gillnet and Southeast Atlantic shark gillnet, was likely to jeopardize the continued existence of right whales. NMFS expects to be making a final decision on which alternative they will select in early 2006.
NMFS supported two alternatives to prohibit the use of floating groundlines by 2008, which the state of Maine strongly opposed. “In Maine, we’re saying it’s not that simple a solution because the rocky bottom habitat and the tides are a big factor, and people need some type of flotation in order to haul their traps,” Robbins said. The DMR and lobster industry are instead pushing for an exemption line along the coast, inside of which lobster fishermen would not have to change their rope, and the development of low-profile rope, which is envisioned as hanging low to the bottom and drastically reducing the amount of line higher up in the water, while also floating up to some degree off the rocks so they don’t snag and chafe to pieces when fishermen go to haul their traps. Just how much suspension is needed is one of the questions still to be answered, said Robbins. “We don’t have a hard-and-fast definition of what low-profile is, and that’s kind of the biggest point of what we’re trying to come up with,” he said. Depending on where a fishermen fishes and what rig he uses, that can vary a lot, he added. Over the past year, a prototype line was used by a couple of fishermen in Zones A and C; the data is not ready to be released, Robbins said. The Maine Lobstermen’s Association, Down East Lobstermen’s Association, and Gulf of Maine Lobster Foundation have joined together on the project, he said. Other questions to answer are how people rig and fish in their areas. The next step, said Robbins, is to distribute data loggers — a fingertip-size probe — to each of the experiment’s participants. The probe, to be attached to the groundline, will log information on how much the rope is suspended over the bottom. “We can use that to re-create what’s happening on the bottom,” he said. Over the past year, the DMR has been running a video camera on a remote-operated vehicle to tape the behavior of groundline suspended over different types of bottom and in different tidal situations. Robbins urged fishermen to get involved. “In the months ahead, I hope to encourage participation in other research projects which will allow the state of Maine to continue collaboration with harvesters and other interested parties,” he wrote for the MLA. “This will include such ventures as utilizing data loggers, which provide measurements of depth in relation to time. This data will allow us to view points taken in reference to trap placement in relation to groundline variation to see how the rise and fall of the tide potentially affects the height of the arc in between traps fishing on bottom.” Those interested in learning more may contact Robbins at (207) 633-9513 (DMR), (207) 350-6014 (cell), or stephen.robbins@maine.gov. |
