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Cindy Lowry is a Maine-based environmental advocate with the International Marine Mammal Project, a project of Earth Island Institute. She has spent more than two decades protecting marine wildlife, including working on high-profile whale rescue efforts and national conservation campaigns.
There are only about 380 North Atlantic right whales alive now. They’re slow to reproduce, they migrate along our busy East Coast, and one of the biggest threats to their survival is getting entangled in fishing gear. Right now, there’s a pause on new protections for them that’s set to expire in 2028, and a bill moving through Congress would keep that pause going for another seven years.
Rep. Jared Golden and New York Republican Rep. Mike Lawler’s Northeast Lobstermen Protection Act cleared the House Natural Resources Committee on July 15 in a bipartisan 22-13 vote. A floor vote could come as soon as this summer, and it’s expected to pass. The bill would push the current moratorium on new right whale protections from 2028 all the way to 2035. Congress set a six-year limit on this pause back in 2022. This bill would make it last 13 years.
Golden says protecting right whales and supporting fishing communities “can and must go hand in hand.” It’s a nice line but doesn’t hold water. His own bill assumes something different: that right whales can simply wait another seven years while lobstermen get comfortable with ropeless gear or other changes on their own timeline. “Hand in hand” to me means both things move together.
His bill doesn’t do that. It lets the industry adjust at its own pace and makes the whales wait.
A federal court already ruled that fishery limits have to stand to comply with the Endangered Species Act. The 2022 pause didn’t erase that ruling, it just told regulators to hold off. This bill would allow them to hold off again.
And unlike in 2022, we now know exactly what waiting costs: In 2024, a right whale that washed up on Martha’s Vineyard was confirmed to have died after being entangled in Maine gear. That should have been the moment to rethink the timeline.
Golden claims the Maine lobster industry isn’t asking for much, just more time. But right whales don’t have extra time built into how they reproduce. A population this small and vulnerable doesn’t have seven more years of the current regulations.
I believe we need a version of this bill that includes funding for gear that doesn’t kill whales and a public accounting of what’s already been spent buying “more time.” What’s headed for a vote this summer isn’t that bill. It’s one that assumes an endangered species can wait.
Maine readers who want the pause for new right whale protections to end on schedule in 2028 should reach out to Reps. Golden and Chellie Pingree. Golden’s bill allows more excruciating deaths of right whales. We have an obligation to make sure that doesn’t happen.