PETA • February 15, 2022
As the Maine’s lobster industry faces new regulations designed to protect whales—from bans on buoy lines to mandates for weakened ropes—PETA is making a splash throughout Portland International Jetport with new appeals reminding travelers that fishing gear as a whole kills 300,000 whales and dolphins annually and suggesting a solution: “Don’t Eat Fish.” In the fishing industry, even whales are callously referred to as “bycatch,” a euphemism for nontarget animals who get caught or become entangled in fishing gear and then are discarded or simply die. PETA notes that death by fishing gear is one of the biggest threats to the survival of many of the world’s 86 cetacean species—including Maine’s critically endangered North Atlantic right whales, over 85% of whom have been entangled in fishing gear at least once—and that eating fish contributes to the decimation of ocean ecosystems.