June 30, 2022 — A new report has Maine lobstermen saying, “I told you so.”
The report says large whale entanglements dropped in 2020, including for the right whale.
Lobstermen in Maine have long argued they should not be blamed for the right whales’ population decline, which makes this new study from NOAA all the more frustrating.
“I’ve been doing this my whole life,” Harpswell lobster boat captain Forrest Moody said. “This is what we know.”
Moody calls the new changes to the industry “life-altering.”
“There hasn’t always been evidence to prove or say what they were asking us to do but we still were, we were still made to do it,” Moody said.