June 20, 2023 — Maine’s lobster industry scored a major legal victory Friday when an appellate court ruled federal regulators went too far to try to protect endangered whales.

In a stinging ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia invalidated the biological opinion that the National Marine Fisheries Services used to impose stricter fishing regulations on lobstermen in the Gulf of Maine. In a 3-0 opinion, the court called the scientific assessment done by federal regulators “arbitrary and capricious as well as contrary to law” and that the agency made assumptions about the cause of North Atlantic right whale deaths with “little empirical support.”

The agency will now have to redo the scientific assessment that underlies the stricter fishing regulations that the agency tried to impose but that Maine’s congressional delegation managed to delay.

“A presumption also ignores that worst-case scenarios lie on all sides,” reads the ruling. “It is not hard to indulge in one here: ropeless fishing technologies, weak links, inserts, and trawls may not work; permanent fishery closures may be the only solution. The result may be great physical and human capital destroyed, and thousands of jobs lost, with all the degradation that attends such dislocations.”

Scientists estimate there are fewer than 350 right whales left and that entanglements in rope from fishing gear pose a major threat to the survival of the species alongside collisions with ships and environmental changes. The lobster industry and its allies in Maine staunchly disagree and argue that the industry has taken numerous steps — at significant financial cost to fishermen — to avoid entanglements and ensure that lobster ropes and gear break free if a whale encounters them.

Read the full article at nhpr