December 12, 2022 — President Macron of France may not have realised it, but he walked into another fishing war earlier this month when he and 200 other guests were treated at the White House to butter-poached Maine lobster accented with American Osetra caviar and garnished with celery crisp.
At issue was the lobster, currently subject to a court ruling designed to prevent Maine’s lobstermen from trapping the crustacea in baited pots marked by lines that can fatally entangle feeding North Atlantic right whales. There are now just 340 such whales, with only about 100 breeding females, making the species one of the most endangered on the planet.
The Maine Lobster Marketing Collaborative celebrated the choice, saying it was “proud” that the guests were “enjoying the delicious taste of Maine lobster”. The international advocacy group Oceana countered that “lobster on their menu cannot be considered sustainable by any definition”.
The dispute between Maine’s $1bn lobster industry, which employs more than 10,000 lobstermen, the White House and new protections issued by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, has deep roots.
The right whale population has dropped from 500 a decade ago while Maine’s lobster industry has boomed. The industry disputes that its vertical lines attached to buoys are to blame. Some point to ship collisions, others to gillnets.