PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • January 13, 2022
I read with interest The Lobster Trap, a collaboration between The Boston Globe and the Portland Press Herald. Maine’s lobster fishery is among the most sustainable in the world. To suggest that Maine lobstermen are either ignorant about environmental science or blithely ignoring it to avoid the inevitable is wrong. Maine lobstermen have been complying with onerous regulations designed to protect the right whale since 1997. We are frustrated that despite years of compliance with ever more onerous and costly regulations to protect the right whale and our environment, our efforts have not been rewarded. We are frustrated that federal regulators do not hesitate to impose ever-more-stringent restrictions, despite their own failure to monitor and track the whereabouts of the whales they are obliged to protect and their inability to analyze whether existing regulations are working. ~ Virginia Olsen, fourth-generation Maine lobsterman and organizer for the Maine Lobstering Union, Stonington