PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • October 15, 2021
Members of Maine’s lobster industry pleaded with a federal judge Friday to throw out an impending seasonal closure in the Gulf of Maine intended to help protect endangered North Atlantic right whales from extinction, just days before it is set to take effect. It’s a last-ditch legal effort to stop a change that the industry says will cause irreparable harm and trigger “the end of the lobster industry in this state as we know it.” U.S. District Judge Lance Walker heard arguments Friday and is expected to decide on the issue in the “very near future.”