PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • December 28, 2020
Thousands of North Atlantic right whales fed, bred and calved around here until things got really, really bad. There is nothing complicated about what causes whale mortality, and nothing new about the torture and abuse whales suffer when entangled with heavy ropes that over time deteriorate and cut into their flesh, slicing them in two. They drag the equivalent of a pickup truck or two before suffocating to death in great pain. This is animal abuse by anyone’s reckoning. The cause is crab and lobster fishing as well as ship strikes. We need a Pandemic Emergency Program for right whales unless you are OK with extinction. ~ Barbara Skapa, Mount Vernon, member of Maine Friends of Animals