October 25, 2021 — Maine’s top elected officials are urging the federal government to throw out and rewrite a set of controversial new rules regulating Maine’s lobster fishery, calling the process “flawed and unfair.”
In a letter sent Thursday to U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, U.S. Sens. Susan Collins and Angus King, U.S. Reps. Chellie Pingree and Jared Golden, and Gov. Janet Mills lauded a federal judge’s decision last week to block the enforcement of a seasonal closure of a large section of the Gulf of Maine that was slated to go into effect Monday.
The National Marine Fisheries Service has said the closure area is necessary to protect the critically endangered right whale, but many in the lobster industry, and now U.S. District Judge Lance Walker, argue that the science used to support the closure is questionable.
They urged Raimondo to immediately resolve what they called the rule’s many shortcomings.