Maine officials are ripping the recommendation of California-based nonprofit Seafood Watch to try to save whales by stopping fishing for lobster.
The group argues that lobster fisheries in American and Canadian waters use vertical lines that can entangle the endangered North Atlantic right whales.
“Seafood Watch determined that current Canadian and U.S. management measures do not go far enough to mitigate entanglement risks and promote recovery of the North Atlantic right whale. As a result, Seafood Watch assigned a red rating to those fisheries using pots, traps, and gillnets,” the organization recently announced.
The “Red List” designation means that the nonprofit, a program of the Monterey Bay Aquarium, recommends that the species stop being fished in a designated fishery area.