Maine Group Buys Billboards Promoting ‘Whale-Safe Lobsters’
Um, what?
A group calling themselves Mainers Guarding Right Whales has paid for two billboards that will be displayed in Massachusetts asking those driving on U.S. Route 1 and Interstate 95 if the lobster that they consume is "whale safe."
Although former President Donald Trump did not know what a North Atlantic Right Whale was when he conducted a fisherman's forum at the Bangor International Airport back in June of last year, most of us do.
There are currently no more than 400 of the big creatures on the planet, and they've been up against it since man began hunting them down back in the late 19th century, giving them the name "Right Whale", simply because of how slow they swam and how they'd float when killed.
There are many more Right Whales off the coast of Massachusetts than there are in the waters close to Maine, thus the reason the Mainers Guarding Right Whales group purchased the two billboards there.
So what exactly is a "Whale-safe lobster?"
According to the Mainers Guarding Right Whales website, before a lobster is served up on the dinner table it must meet these standards.
It had to have been caught by a lobster fisherman must using ropeless fishing technology.
Or, it had to have been caught by a scuba diver. That's illegal here in Maine, by the way.
The group suggests other things that one can do, including asking lobster fisherman to use lighter 1700 lbs. ropes so that whales may break free of entanglement, and to consider avoiding lobster until it can be certified "whale-safe", even though no certification of that sort exists, although Mainers Guarding Right Whales is lobbying for such certification.