MAINE PUBLIC • June 16, 2023
Maine's lobster industry scored a major legal victory Friday when an appellate court ruled federal regulators went too far to try to protect endangered whales. In a stinging ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia invalidated the biological opinion that the National Marine Fisheries Services used to impose stricter fishing regulations on lobstermen in the Gulf of Maine. In a 3-0 opinion, the court called the scientific assessment done by federal regulators “arbitrary and capricious as well as contrary to law” and that the agency made assumptions about the cause of North Atlantic right whale deaths with “little empirical support.” The agency will now have to redo the scientific assessment.