August 1, 2025 — Jared Golden of Lewiston represents Maine’s 2nd Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives.
This piece was originally published on July 31 in “Dear Mainer,” Golden’s Substack. It is reposted here in its entirety, with permission.
I had a few goals when I successfully pushed to get a seat on the House Natural Resources Committee, but chief among them was using the position to advocate for the men and women who work on Maine’s waters.
It was only three years ago that Maine’s lobster industry was on the verge of shutting down because of a regulatory process that was based on flawed interpretation of federal law and biased modeling that relied heavily on hypothetical threats that fisheries posed to the North Atlantic right whale.
That is why one of my proudest accomplishments in Congress was the successful effort in 2022 — working with the entire Maine delegation and our governor on a bipartisan basis — to enact a moratorium on these regulations until 2028, coupled with additional funding to support right whale research.
However, based on developments in the last few years and my conversations with fishermen, I believe more time is needed to incorporate the research and data collected during the pause into future right whale regulations.