June 27, 2018 — Another environmental group is threatening a lawsuit to stop Maine lobstermen from using vertical fishing lines that it says pose a danger to right whales.
Whale Safe USA has served the Maine Department of Marine Resources with a written notice of its intent to sue that agency, the Maine Lobstermen’s Association and individual Maine lobstermen for violating an Endangered Species Act prohibition on killing and injuring endangered species such as the right whale.
The paperwork serves as a 60-day notice of civil action.
Led by Massachusetts advocate Max Strahan, who has called himself the “Prince of Whales,” the group wants to stop Maine from issuing licenses to fishermen who use lobster pot gear that can entangle right whales, especially the ropes that connect lobster pots that sit on the ocean floor to the buoys that float on the surface.
“The MDMR in its current and past incarnations has been responsible for the killing and injuring of many endangered whales and sea turtles since before the passage of the Endangered Species Act in 1973,” Strahan said in a prepared statement. “It knows it (is) killing endangered whales and sea turtles but it simply will not stop.”
Some scientists who study right whales say the species, whose numbers have dropped to about 450 animals, could be doomed to extinction by 2040 if society doesn’t take significant steps to protect them.
Seventeen right whales were found dead in the summer and fall of 2017 in the waters of the Gulf of St. Lawrence and off Cape Cod, many because of ship strikes or entanglements.