Will we succeed in saving the right whale? | Opinion
Cindy Lowry is a Maine-based environmental advocate with more than two decades of experience protecting marine wildlife, including work on high-profile whale rescue efforts and national conservation campaigns.
To celebrate the United States’ first 250 years, a time capsule was buried in Philadelphia on July 4, to be opened in another 250 years. Maine contributed seven items, a vertebra from a North Atlantic right whale among them.
The bone was from a whale who was found dead near Boothbay in 2016. Researchers named her EgNo 3654. It was believed fishing gear was the cause of her death; she was found with fishing gear wrapped around her head, mouth, flippers and tail.
In addition to her vertebra being included in the capsule, her jaw and flipper bones will be on display when the Maine State Museum reopens on Oct. 24. Museum Director Bernard
Fishman proposed including her vertebra in the capsule.
Fishman told the Portland Press Herald he wanted the capsule to ask the future a question: “Did we — did you — save the right whales?”
Only about 380 right whales are left, and only 70 of those are reproductive females, according to NOAA. Fishing gear and ship strikes are the leading causes of death.
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Entanglement is rarely quick. Whales can drag gear for months, unable to feed or swim freely, before dying of infection, exhaustion or starvation. It’s up to us if we want to fight for a future where North Atlantic right whales continue to migrate off the Gulf of Maine every year, or if they’ll be gone by the time the capsule is opened.
In this time and place, we collectively have the moral obligation to protect our fellow sentient beings. Fortunately, options such as ropeless gear and other technologies exist that the fishing industry could use to ensure right whales have a future. Ropeless, or on-demand, gear keeps traps on the seafloor without a vertical line to the surface until fishermen send a signal to bring them up. Solutions like these should be worked out with lobstermen, not postponed for seven more years.
A bill pending in the Senate could have irreversible impacts on North Atlantic right whales. H.R. 9436, the Northeast Lobstermen Protection Act, co-sponsored by Reps. Jared Golden and Mike Lawler, would extend the pause on new federal right whale protections from the end of 2028 to 2035.
Since 2022, that pause has blocked new rules to reduce entanglements, such as added
gear requirements and fishery closures. No new protections could be added until 2035. The Senate is expected to vote on it in November. A pause on new protections risks more right whales dying in the way that EgNo 3654 did back in 2016.
If you want to be among the people who can make a difference both now and into the future, please call or write to the offices of Sen. Susan Collins and Sen. Angus King before the Senate votes in November, and urge them to oppose Golden’s bill.
EgNo 3654’s bones will be on display at the Maine State Museum in Augusta this fall and my hope is that her story inspires action. We are truly lucky to share our waters with North Atlantic right whales in 2026. Someday, someone will open the capsule and reflect on the vertebra and Fishman’s question. We still have time to decide how they react. Was this a species that we saved?
Let’s hope so.
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