Lobsters, Whales, and Traps: The Politics of Endangerment in the Gulf of Maine
In 2019, a debate arose among Maine lobster fishers and environmental groups over the role of lobster traps in killing North Atlantic right whales, the world's most endangered whale species. Maine fishers denied that their gear was killing whales. To do so, they leveraged longstanding represent...
| Published in: | Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space |
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| Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
| Language: | English |
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SAGE Publications
2021
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| Online Access: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/25148486211056811 http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/25148486211056811 http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full-xml/10.1177/25148486211056811 |
| Summary: | In 2019, a debate arose among Maine lobster fishers and environmental groups over the role of lobster traps in killing North Atlantic right whales, the world's most endangered whale species. Maine fishers denied that their gear was killing whales. To do so, they leveraged longstanding representations by regional natural and social scientists of lobster fishing as part of a unique and ecologically sustainable “heritage” economy—one that was itself “endangered” by over-regulation. Setting this debate in the context of a global climate crisis that is irrevocably changing Atlantic coastal environments, this article shows how ecological fragility and white working-class fragility become yoked together. Efforts to understand what lobster traps do, and how they might do it differently, perpetuated a key feature of settler colonialism, namely, the tendency to seek harmony between resource extraction and conservation. |
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