October 7, 2022 — Politicians and lobstermen told federal regulators that Maine’s premier seafood industry isn’t responsible for threats to the endangered right whale population in the Gulf of Maine.
The National Marine Fisheries Service held a three-hour hearing in Portland on Wednesday night on changes to regulations that the agency’s scientists say are needed to save the endangered species. But they were told that the changes will kill the lobster industry in Maine and also deal the state’s economy a crippling blow without materially helping the whales.
Lobsterman Sonny Beal, of Beals Island, said he’s never even seen a right whale on his fishing trips. Industry proponents said no right whale has gotten entangled in a Maine lobsterman’s gear for 18 years and no right whale death has ever been attributed to entanglement in a Maine lobsterman’s gear.
“What you are doing is absolutely ludicrous,” he said. “You’re going to ruin the economy.”
Roughly 200 people attended the hearing at the University of Southern Maine on the same day that Maine’s congressional delegation launched another salvo in an escalating war of words over the industry’s impact on right whale populations.