July 12, 2019 — Gov. Janet Mills is directing the Maine Department of Marine Resources to come up with an alternative to a federal plan to protect the endangered right whale from the state lobster industry, saying she won’t allow “foolish” regulations to make life harder for the state’s fishermen.
“I stand with you,” Mills wrote in an open letter to the lobster industry Thursday. “I will do everything I can as your governor to protect your rights and your livelihoods, and defend Maine’s lobster industry in the face of absurd federal overreach.”
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has ordered Maine to craft a detailed plan to reduce the lobster industry’s threat to right whales by 60 percent by September. Federal regulators say entanglement in fishing gear and ship strikes are driving the whale’s decline, with just over 400 of them left.
But state regulators, and now Mills, say Maine isn’t to blame for the decline.