Maine Sen. Susan Collins has blocked the confirmation of a nominee for a top position with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, citing ongoing disputes over fishing rights between the federal government and Maine’s lobster industry.

Collins announced Thursday that she has rejected a unanimous consent request to confirm Jainey Kumar Bavishi’s bid to become NOAA’s assistant secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere. The move comes amid conflict between NOAA and Maine’s lobster fishery over the administration’s Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Plan. 

Collins and other critics have charged that the plan — designed to prevent endangered right whales from becoming entangled in fishing gear — unfairly restricts lobster fishing off Maine’s coast and does not match current science regarding the risks to whales in the area. 

Collins said in a statement that she is rejecting the confirmation to put pressure on NOAA to address the issue.

“The entire agency, all of NOAA, needs to recognize that the practice of implementing management decisions based on incomplete, imprecise, inaccurate data, especially when those decisions have a harmful effect on a fishery that is known for its conservation methods and on the communities that this fishery has supported forever in the state of Maine, cannot continue,” Collins said on the senate floor Thursday. “So that's the situation in which we find ourselves, and that is why — I believe for the first time in all the years that I've served in the senate — I have come to the floor to object when the unanimous consent request is made.”

Gov. Janet Mills and Maine’s congressional delegation have asked NOAA for help with this issue, requesting as recently as February for NOAA to grant an extension to the May 1 deadline for the lobster fishery to equip itself with new gear.