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Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., right, is seen outside the Capitol Hill Club after a meeting of the House Republican Conference on June 24. (Tom Williams\/CQ Roll Call)<\/p>\nSenate Commerce Chairman Ted Cruz said his panel will take up legislation next month to extend a moratorium on new North Atlantic right whale protections, a move the Texas Republican credited to Maine GOP Sen. Susan Collins\u00a0five days out from one of the most pivotal elections of her career.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Collins, who is in a competitive reelection campaign against Democratic nominee Troy Jackson, requested the committee take up the lobster industry-backed bill in a September letter with Sen. Angus King, I-Maine.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Cruz wrote Thursday\u00a0on X that Collins\u2019 \u201cleadership has been instrumental in advancing this bill to protect Maine\u2019s lobstermen from burdensome regulations. I hope we can move this bill without changes or further delay to put on President Trump\u2019s desk ASAP.\u201d<\/p>\n
The House-passed bill is a priority for the state\u2019s lobster industry, which argues an extension of the moratorium, set to expire Dec. 31, 2028,\u00a0for another seven years\u00a0would provide greater certainty \u2014 particularly with the presidency up in the air in 2028.<\/p>\n
Congress first imposed the moratorium in late 2022 at the behest of the Maine delegation on both sides of the aisle, inserting it into a year-end spending package.<\/p>\n
The move came in response to a Biden administration \u201cbiological opinion\u201d issued in 2021 recommending tougher restrictions to try to keep the endangered right whales from getting tangled up in commercial fishing lines\u00a0\u2014 a major contributor to the population\u2019s decline.<\/p>\n
But the potential for major changes such as a mandate to use \u201cropeless\u201d gear and fishery closures was too much for the Maine lobster industry, which fears a future administration could revive similar efforts.<\/p>\n
To try to balance the concerns of environmentalists, the 2022 law appropriated $20 million to \u201csupport the adoption of innovative fishing gear deployment and fishing techniques to reduce entanglement risk to North Atlantic right whales,\u201d part of an overall $280 million appropriated in recent years for right whale recovery efforts.<\/p>\n
The Maine Department of Marine Resources has been using the congressionally appropriated\u00a0funds to collect data for the past few years. Collins and King wrote last month that extending the regulatory pause would allow such efforts to continue and better inform future decisions.<\/p>\n
According to the Maine Lobstermen\u2019s Association, the industry supports about $2 billion in annual economic activity and 17,500 jobs.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is critical that any future regulatory actions appropriately balance protecting North Atlantic right whales with the economic and practical realities facing Maine\u2019s lobster industry,\u201d Collins and King wrote.<\/p>\n
Tight margins<\/p>\n
Compounding matters for the industry has been tariff-driven uncertainty and higher inflation.<\/p>\n
In response to Trump administration tariffs, the Canadian government initially retaliated against a range of U.S. exports, including seafood; after Collins and others intervened, Canada walked those levies back.<\/p>\n
Still, other tariffs and cost increases have hit the industry hard, said Curt Brown, president of Bold Coast Seafood in Prospect Harbor, Maine. \u201cOur traps are built of vinyl-coated steel. Trap prices have gone up, bait prices have gone up, fuel prices have gone up. So margins are tight,\u201d he\u00a0said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Brown and other industry representatives say\u00a0implementing\u00a0greater protections for right whales would make matters worse,\u00a0increasing costs and potentially forcing\u00a0some lobstermen out of business.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think you will find any fisherman that says they want to harm a whale; we all support very healthy oceans,\u201d said\u00a0Virginia Olsen, executive liaison and political director for Maine Lobstering Union Local 207.<\/p>\n
But Olsen, whose family has worked\u00a0in the lobster business for five generations, said more time is needed to study the new data coming in through the Maine Department of Marine Resources\u2019 research.<\/p>\n
Hence the Trump administration-backed legislation introduced by Reps. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y.\u00a0\u2014 another top midterm target of Democrats\u00a0\u2014 and Jared Golden, D-Maine, who is retiring,\u00a0to extend the moratorium through 2035.<\/p>\n
It\u00a0passed the House on Sept. 1, but not without opposition from most Democrats and even a couple Republicans sympathetic to the whales\u2019 plight. The vote was 219-196, with 10 Democrats in favor and two Republicans opposed \u2014\u00a0Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania and Aaron Bean of Florida.<\/p>\n
While Fitzpatrick has previously voted against his party on matters concerning endangered species, Bean represents Amelia Island, the winter calving and nursery ground for the whales.\u00a0Amelia Island has its own cottage industry to protect, with the annual Right Whale Festival scheduled for next month. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Aside from Golden and fellow Maine Rep. Chellie Pingree, other House Democrats who supported the measure include those in tough races in swing districts, such as Washington\u2019s Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and Texas\u2019 Vicente Gonzalez.<\/p>\n
Maggie Goodlander and Chris Pappas of New Hampshire, next door to Maine, also supported the bill. Pappas is running for Senate to replace the retiring Democrat Jeanne Shaheen, against former GOP Sen. John Sununu; Inside Elections rates the race Tilt Democratic.<\/p>\n
Lame-duck opportunity<\/p>\n
With Democrats expected to make big gains next Tuesday, the lame-duck session may be the best chance for the bill\u2019s supporters to get the bill enacted.<\/p>\n
While Pingree\u00a0is herself a senior Appropriations Committee member, the potential losses of Collins and Lawler, combined with Golden\u2019s scheduled departure, could make it an uphill climb in the 120th Congress.<\/p>\n
Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales rates Collins\u2019 and Lawler\u2019s races each a Toss-up.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The bill has already been an assist to Lawler, who has pointed to it as evidence of his ability to work across the aisle. His race is in a district former Vice President Kamala Harris won in 2024.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., right, is seen outside the Capitol Hill Club after a meeting of the House Republican Conference on June 24. (Tom Williams\/CQ Roll Call)<\/p>\n
Golden originally introduced his own bill that would implement an identical extension. Lawler, who represents a landlocked district in New York\u2019s Hudson Valley, said he joined the effort through a desire to \u201cfight for small business.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Golden returned the favor last month by endorsing Lawler in his hometown paper The Journal News, highlighting their cooperation on the bill.<\/p>\n
The reasons for House GOP leaders taking up Lawler\u2019s identical, separate bill\u00a0have never been made clear; some speculate it simply has to do with ensuring the credit goes to a vulnerable Republican.<\/p>\n
While a Senate Commerce markup could give the measure some momentum, the battle for floor time in November and December will be intense. Collins, the Senate Appropriations chair, could try to insert the bill into another year-end spending package, though her staff wouldn\u2019t comment on legislative strategy.<\/p>\n
\u2018False dichotomy\u2019<\/p>\n
The North Atlantic right whale, with a remaining population of roughly 380, has been experiencing what\u2019s known as an \u201cunusual mortality event\u201d under the Marine Mammal Protection Act for the last decade. Over 20 percent of the whales have either been either killed or injured, largely due to entanglements in fishing gear and collisions with ships.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Still, supporters of the bill point to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data showing an increase in the number of individual whales since 2020, and 2026 was the largest calving season since the beginning of the unusual mortality event.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Jason Joyce, a lobsterman and director of advocacy for the New England Fishermen\u2019s Stewardship Association, said the numbers demonstrate the need for more data before new regulations are imposed.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat has happened since the current pause was put into place is births are up and deaths are down, so we\u2019re in a better position now than we were when they were going to overregulate us,\u201d Joyce said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But Katherine Sayler, southeast representative for Defenders of Wildlife, said even with the recent growth the population is still down significantly compared to historical population levels.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not even close to the 500 North Atlantic right whales that we estimated in the population approximately 20 years ago,\u201d said Sayler.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Dan Moss, senior government relations representative for Defenders of Wildlife, added that the bill would sideline the work of a team established by NOAA nearly three decades ago to address risk to whales, and that it effectively ignores a court ruling that found current regulations for right whales in lobster fisheries are insufficient under federal law.<\/p>\n
Backers and opponents of the bill have focused on the potential for regulations requiring the use of\u00a0ropeless gear\u00a0to reduce whale entanglements.<\/p>\n
In this system, there\u2019s still rope to connect individual traps, however it lacks the vertical line that leads to a buoy. Instead it relies upon systems that remain submerged until the trap owner triggers them just prior to retrieval.<\/p>\n
During House floor debate, Natural Resources ranking member Jared Huffman, D-Calif., argued that the federal government was \u201cdragging its feet\u201d on right whale regulations, including by de-prioritizing ropeless gear.\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/huffman_BC_063_042326-original-1024x683-1.jpg\")
Rep. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., walks down the House steps to speak to a group of students outside the Capitol on April 23. (Bill Clark\/CQ Roll Call)<\/p>\n
Both Olsen and Joyce said there are significant safety concerns related to the design of ropeless gear, since crew could become entangled without a simple method to retrieve them as with conventional gear.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf my crew is wrapped and entangled in that rope and goes overboard, in my panic, I have to stop, grab a tablet, log in, open the app, deploy the buoy, wait for the buoy to get to the surface, and then put it in my hauler,\u201d Olsen said. \u201cThere\u2019s no way that my crew is going to come up alive.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Sayler argued the bill creates \u201cthe false dichotomy that there cannot be coexistence between fisheries and whales at a time when they face so many threats.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said that right whales play an important role in the ocean ecosystem through the nutrients they create and \u201cthat they are worth having on the planet for their incredible intrinsic value.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Senate Commerce Chairman Ted Cruz said his panel will take up legislation next month to extend a moratorium…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":481374,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[10736,9454,10737,58530,34449,910,3267,10738,162285,2671,2133,288,10740,2038,727,3118,10741,93851,128541,24423,1910,21759,4491,11295,52329,188,79108,1631,7631,2424,13164,54322,7883,27,29,28],"class_list":["post-481373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-10736","tag-9454","tag-10737","tag-angus-king","tag-appropriations","tag-business","tag-california","tag-campaigns","tag-chellie-pingree","tag-congress","tag-democrats","tag-elections","tag-executive-branch","tag-families","tag-festival","tag-florida","tag-house","tag-jared-huffman","tag-jeanne-shaheen","tag-joe-biden","tag-leadership","tag-maine","tag-national","tag-national-oceanic-and-atmospheric-administration","tag-new-hampshire","tag-new-york","tag-oped","tag-opinion","tag-pennsylvania","tag-republicans","tag-senate","tag-susan-collins","tag-ted-cruz","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=481373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481373\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/481374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=481373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=481373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=481373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}