PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • October 19, 2021
The people involved in the Maine lobster fishery got a reprieve from new federal whale protection rules last week. U.S. District Court Judge Lance Walker ruled Saturday that the Maine Lobstering Union had successfully shown that a temporary ban on fishing in a roughly 967-square-mile zone in the Gulf of Maine would cause some of their members “irreparable harm.” Meanwhile, Walker found that the government scientists failed to show that the rules would protect any whales, or even that there would be any North Atlantic right whales in protected areas to benefit from a closure. Judge Walker has given the government space to come up targeted rules that will have a better chance of success because they are based on real-world data.