A Democratic
Maine
representative criticized the
Biden administration
for its policies targeting the state’s
lobster industry
while ignoring the effects of offshore wind projects.
Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME) said in an interview with Fox News Digital that the federal government is holding Maine lobstermen to an unfair standard over their impacts on the endangered North Atlantic right whale species.
Golden said the
lobster industry
is handled differently than ocean-based energy industries in the name of appeasing environmental activist groups.
“The hypocrisy part is what pisses me off because we know that right whales, other whales, get struck by freight vessels all the time. Cruise ships that are out there, carting people around, hit them,” he said. “You see very little effort by the federal government to do anything.”
“And yet they see a small business lobster fishery up in Maine that’s not politically important to them, and they try to crush it just to try to prove to the environmental groups that they’re actively trying to protect the right whales,” he continued.
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The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, released regulations in August 2021, anticipating that they would “achieve an estimated 69% reduction in the risk of death and serious injuries caused by entanglement in these fisheries.”
Some of the regulations included reducing buoy lines, weakening remaining lines, and improving fishing gear.
The federal government has been fast-tracking offshore wind development projects as well, which have been blamed in recent months for the deaths of different species of whales. In January, federal environmental officials reported 14 whale strandings. There have been two right whale mortalities in 2023, per NOAA
data
.
However, the federal government said in January that the offshore wind industry was not to blame for the deaths of the whales, claiming 40% showed evidence of “human interaction,” such as entanglement with fishing gear or being struck by vessels.
On the other hand, Maine lobster industry groups have pointed to data showing there has never been a recorded right whale death caused by lobster fishing equipment
in the state
, per Fox News. The last entanglement of a right whale in fishing gear was recorded over two decades ago, the data showed.
“They can’t show any field-gathered data,” Golden said. “All they have are these computer-driven formulas that show risk even though it’s been almost 20 years since there was a whale entanglement associated with the Maine lobster fishery. Despite the complete lack of any data, they’ve tried to regulate that fishery nearly out of business.”
Maine’s lobster industry makes up 90% of the United States’s lobster supply and is supported entirely by small business operations. Lobster industry advocates have criticized the NOAA’s regulations from 2021, and recent ones expected to roll out in 2024 and 2030, as threatening thousands of blue-collar jobs.
“Am I concerned about hypocrisy in how the federal government deals with, like, the Maine lobster fishery, as opposed to big energy projects?” Golden said. “The answer is 100% yes because, for four years now, I have been constantly harassing the federal government to show us one piece of evidence that Maine’s lobster fishery is at all responsible for any kind of entanglement of whales, let alone a death of a right whale.”
In February, Golden wrote a letter to the NOAA
asking
for additional information on the investigation into the whale strandings and the role offshore wind projects play.
Virginia Olsen, director of the Maine Lobstering Union, commended Golden’s efforts to stand up for the lobster industry.
“The lobster industry has been working diligently to reduce risk to right whales even without any deaths attributed to the Maine fishery,” she said. “We applaud Rep. Golden for asking the tough questions on behalf of Maine’s fishing communities, requesting some transparency in necropsy results, and helping us all better understand the true causes behind this sudden increase in whale deaths along the East Coast.”
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Last week, Golden — along with Reps. Jeff Van Drew (R-NJ), Chris Smith (R-NJ), and Andy Harris (R-MD) — wrote another letter to federal officials demanding information regarding the risks offshore wind projects pose to marine wildlife, noting a 1.7 million-acre area that is set to become the site of a large wind turbine construction project.
“Offshore wind development and deployment stands to be a consequential national undertaking, which is why our approach should be done correctly the first time, with full consideration taken in order to mitigate negative impacts on marine species such as the North Atlantic right whale,” the letter said.
