June 21, 2021 — David Abel sees a clear solution to the human threat posed to North Atlantic right whales, involving a rethink of the rope-based methods of lobster fishing off New England and Atlantic Canada.
The Boston Globe journalist and documentary maker, along with producer Andy Laub, laid out the vision in the film “Entangled” released this week. It portrays the tensions between environmentalists, regulators and lobster harvesters during 2019 as the whale appeared on the way to potential extinction.
Warming waters in the northeastern Atlantic have put the whales on a collision course with fishing gear in lobster and crab areas, as well as bringing the animals into shipping lanes where vessel strikes are more probable, the documentary notes.
The threats have created challenges for the National Marine Fisheries Service in the United States and the federal Fisheries Department, as they’ve have struggled to balance the vying interests of an endangered species with the need to preserve a mainstay fishery of northeastern North America’s coastal communities.