Another seafood-supply monitor turns thumbs down on Maine lobster, citing the industry's threat to right whales

Famous for lobster and summertime whale watching, Maine is struggling to balance the needs of the lobster industry alongside mounting pressure from environmental groups who are trying to "save a shrinking whale species that scientists say is threatened by the ropes lobstermen use to haul traps from the ocean floor," reports Jon Kamp of The Wall Street Journal. "The complex battle involves a federal agency that has a mandate to protect endangered North Atlantic right whales, a lobster industry that disagrees its fishing gear poses a risk, and environmental groups that say the federal government’s whale-protection efforts have fallen short."

Wednesday, the Marine Stewardship Council revoked its "recognizable blue label" for Maine lobster, "a blow to a business already feeling an economic pinch amid low lobster prices, high fuel costs and questions about its environmental practices," reports Dino Grandoni of The Washington Post. "Retailers across the United States" use the council "to determine whether a fishery is well managed and that it does not harm other species or ocean habitats. The announcement comes just a month after another sustainability guide, Seafood Watch, cautioned against buying lobster caught in either American or Canadian waters. . . . Only an estimated 340" right whales remain in the North Atlantic, but "Evidence is scant that lobstering is driving the endangered whale’s numbers down, say both Democratic and Republican lawmakers from the state."

“This is not a slap on the wrist,” said Sen. Angus King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, said of the Seafood Watch assessment. “They are literally trying to put these people out of business.”

Steve Train, a lobsterman based on Long Island, Maine, told Grandoni, “This is neighbors in small communities, on islands and peninsulas that have done everything they can to harvest this resource in a responsible manner that allowed the next generation and the next generation and the next generation to have that same job.” 

Kamp writes, "In July, a federal judge sided with environmental groups in a lawsuit in which the groups argued that the National Marine Fisheries Service’s latest efforts to protect the whales from entanglements didn’t go far enough. The judge, James Boasberg, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, is expected to rule soon on a path forward."

The lobster industry is pushing back with their own case before the same judge, arguing that the science is "overstated" and stricter regulations would harm livelihoods: “We’re basically fighting for our lives,” said Richard Larrabee Jr., a 46-year-old lobsterman in Stonington, Maine’s biggest lobster port, who supports a family of five.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's fisheries division "is already exploring ways to beef up the whales’ protection from fishing lines and other hazards," Kamp writes.