Sean Todd advocates with the Maine Coalition for North Atlantic Right Whales for protection of the endangered mammals. Credit: Georgia Department of Natural Resources
As Maine’s lobstermen fight national conservation groups over federal gear rules and fishery closures intended to protect endangered whales, they have found fierce allies among the state’s political leaders. That’s left some local advocates for the whales feeling sidelined by the powerful industry.
A group of a dozen whale advocates called the Maine Coalition for North Atlantic Right Whales say that they support Maine’s lobster industry, and believe it can change practices, stay in business, and keep the right whales safe. Maine lobstermen, they say, could play a decisive and celebrated role in an eventual story of species’ recovery.
But in the past couple of years the group’s members say they’ve had to spend a good deal of their effort combating what they see as myths and half-truths about right whales—for instance, the idea that there hasn’t been a whale entangled in Maine lobster gear in almost two decades.
“It is really frustrating to be a small voice against a massive wave of the lobster industry. It’s difficult to be heard in those circumstances, and it’s difficult to be taken seriously,” said Sean Todd, a whale biologist and director of Allied Whale, a research group at Bar Harbor’s College of the Atlantic, whose mission includes rescuing injured marine mammals.
