August 15, 2019 — Maine has more than 6,000 licensed lobstermen. If the 100 or so who gathered at Ellsworth High School Tuesday evening to discuss proposed whale protection rules are a representative sample, most of those lobstermen are angry.
The fishermen gathered for a National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) scoping session on proposed measures to protected endangered right whales. The rules would require a 50 percent cut in the number of vertical buoy lines in the water.
“You’re dealing not just with our livelihoods but with the life blood of our communities,” Stonington lobsterman Julie Eaton told the National Marine Fisheries Service representatives. With earlier whale protection efforts, Eaton said, “We’ve done everything you’ve asked us to do, but this ask is way too big. People will die.”