A citizens group led by Max Strahan, known in different circles as "Mad Max" and the "Prince of Whales," has filed an initiative petition for the 2012 Massachusetts ballot that would seek to protect whales and sea turtles by banning gillnetting and vertical buoy rope used by lobstermen from state waters.
The process has many steps to go, but if it were to become law, it would pose a serious threat to a niche fishing sector — the two dozen or so close-to-shore, gillnet fishermen working in state waters — that, by the nature of where they fish, brings to market the freshest day-boat seafood caught.
The elimination of the state gillnetters has been a priority of the National Marine Fisheries Service, according to correspondence between John Oliver, deputy assistant administrator, and Paul Diodati, the director of state marine fisheries.
Strahan is a well-known and long controversial whale and turtle protecting firebrand who has self-filed multiple lawsuits to get fixed gear out of the water. Efforts to reach Strahan by phone and email were unsuccessful.
The state has jurisdiction over the first three miles of ocean beyond the harbor line; the federal government's exclusive economic zone extends 200 miles from there.
"Max, despite what some people say, is at the helm of the issue and is steering the feds and the state on this," Jay McCaffrey, conservation director of the state chapter of the Sierra Club, said in a 1997 Associate Press profile.
On the other hand, as the AP report noted, quoting Peter Borrelli, executive director of the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown, "His accusations, tactics and proposed remedies should be cause for great alarm. He is filing nuisance suits in federal court that have done more to obscure the real issues than to save the whales."
Most of the more than two dozen petitioners who signed up with Strahan live in Boston and bordering communities.
Read the complete story from The Gloucester Times