“Cause I’m livin’ on things that excite me, be they pastries or lobsters or love.” Like Jimmy Buffet, many people around the world get excited when they see lobster on the menu. Recently, however, the crustaceans have gone from coveted to controversial because of a legal battle between the American commercial lobster fishing industry and marine mammal activists. In response to this dispute, United States government agencies announced new commercial lobster fishing regulations in an effort to reduce the threat of entanglement that commercial fishing gear poses to the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale.
This Article argues that these new regulations, while well-intended, nevertheless improperly target and damage the Maine lobster industry; an industry that has not been credited with a right whale entanglement in nearly two decades. In doing so, this Article explores the histories of both the Maine lobster industry and the North Atlantic right whale, analyzes the ongoing legal battle between embroiling the two, surveys the new regulations and their impacts, and finally argues that the new regulations are flawed to a point that warrants judicial intervention. This Article then concludes with a short afterword discussing somewhat unexpected political and legal developments that occurred after the Article was submitted for publication.