TINA MARTIN: The extraordinary North Atlantic right whale is one of the planet's most endangered species.

- The right whale is really one of the wonders of the living world.

MARTIN: In New England, the whales are competing with the lobster industry.

MICHAEL ASARO: 85% of the right whale population now, there's scars that indicate entanglement injury.

♪ MARTIN: Entangled, on Local, USA.

♪ Local, USA was made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the John D. and Katherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Wyncote Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

(boat engine humming) (water rushing) (splashing) (muffled water noises) (whale bellowing) ♪ - The right whale is an extraordinary creature.

It's really one of the wonders of the living world.

But if something in our management doesn't change, the direction of the population points to zero, and that's extinction.

(water spurting) - The North Atlantic right whale is considered one of the most endangered species on the planet.

This will be the first large whale in modern history that would go extinct.

♪ ASARO: 85% of the right whale population now bears scars that indicate entanglement injury.

This is a big problem, and it's an urgent problem.

(splashing) DAVID FIELDS: It's a tragedy that we're losing the right whales, and it's emblematic of large-scale changes that are happening on the planet.

Human beings can't exist without biodiversity, and this is maybe a harbinger of where we're going.

♪ - We need to put as much pressure as we can on the agency to step up and take action right now.

I don't think the urgency can be overstated.

- Human action is killing these whales, and human action has the ability to save them.

♪ Lobstermen are stewards of the sea, and they don't want to entangle anything.

I sat here and listened to environmentalist after environmentalist tell me what a murderous individual I am.

My opinion about the whales is (bleep) 'em.

What more can we do?

Eventually, they're going to die off.

It's going to happen no matter what.

As your governor, I will do everything I can to defend Maine's lobster industry in the face of this absurd federal overreach.

- The challenge is to find ways for the fishing industry and the right whales to coexist in the same waters.

NOAA is the fox got in the chicken coop.

You're going to be fired for being a liar and a person who works to kill off the right whale.

- One of the problems is that fisheries are one of the main factors that are endangering protected species.

You end up with one organization deeply conflicted with its mission.

♪ ♪ (gavel pounds) JARED HUFFMAN: Good morning, everyone, welcome to this hearing of the subcommittee on Water, Oceans, and Wildlife.

We'll now examine the many threats facing one of the most endangered marine mammals in the world.

SCOTT KRAUS: The stock is now declining rapidly, with only about 400 left.

HUFFMAN: That's fewer right whales in existence than members of Congress, and there are fewer than 100 breeding females in the population.

KRAUS: In 2017 and 2018, 20 right whales were found dead, representing nearly five percent of the population.

Of the 12 whales that were examined carefully, all had died from human causes.

HUFFMAN: In order to maintain a sustainable right whale population, no more than one right whale per year can be killed by human causes.

(flies buzzing) That number has been exceeded every single year for the last 20 years.

The science shows that climate change may be shifting the food source northward, which means the whales will be moving further into areas with shipping lanes and lobster traps.

No wonder these whales are in such dire straits.

If more is not done to save this iconic species, scientists predict it will go extinct in the next few decades.

(waves crashing) ♪ MICHAEL MOORE: It's two miles, at zero-one-zero.

It's back to the east corner of Yesterday.

We're in Cape Cod Bay, and so we're headed over to a patch where we saw a lot of whales yesterday.

♪ What I do for a living is I worry about the relationship between the humans and marine mammals.

We have to figure out why the animals are not recovering, and what we can do about it to try and secure the longevity of the species.

Over here.

MOORE: We just don't give these guys a chance to live a full life.

- There's a whale right here.

♪ MOORE: What we're hoping to learn from these animals today is who they are, and how they are.

The who is largely done by a photograph of the head.

(camera clicking) AMY KNOWLTON: Skim feeding there.

Okay.

(splashing) I'm here to collect images to assess evidence of entanglement scarring, or vessel strikes, and look at their health.

MOORE: The right whales have been in the bay for a couple of months now, and they've been feeding deep.

But they're beginning to come up to the surface to feed more.

That's it... (inaudible) Often, you'll see a tail going down.

Occasionally, you'll see a back as they surface.

It's a matter of getting into the head of the whale as to what it's going to do next.

(splashing) KNOWLTON: We keep track of individual whales through these callosity patterns on top of their head.

Each whale has its own unique pattern, very different from each other.

We also have whales that have been entangled that we know are carrying gear in here.

This is pretty bad entanglement scars, deep raw tissue there.

We want to keep track of those individuals in particular, especially with the drone footage.

(drone whirring) - Go right, go right...

Right, go right.

MOORE: Got a couple of drones on the boat.

We use them for examining the body condition of these animals, and the length.

And if you do that year by year, you can get at the growth rates and also the changing of the condition of the animals with the various impacts that they're suffering from.

(splashing) When a whale gets entangled in rope, they can take six months to die.

There is an industry that causes a very significant animal welfare problem.

(drone screeching) KNOWLTON: Cape Cod Bay is one of the richest feeding grounds for this population.

Once the plankton here has run its course, then they'll shift to other habitats further north.

MOORE: Despite all of the efforts that have gone on, entanglement has gotten worse.

In the last 16 years, we've killed 70 right whales, and entanglement was the primary problem.

KNOWLTON: If we don't stop the level of mortality, we could just be driving the nail into the coffin of the species, and it could happen fast.

(boat motor revving) ROB MARTIN: My name is Rob Martin.

I'm a commercial fisherman, and I've probably been fishing too long, since I was a kid fishing out of a skiff.

(birds cawing) My grandfather used to fish back in the '30s and my great-grandparents, they fished out of dories, and I've always been infatuated by the sea.

And that's what I always wanted do, was to go lobstering.

When it's in your blood, it's in your blood.

♪ Five years ago, when we got one of the closures, it was a lot bigger than what we thought it was going to be.

When I found out it did happen, I was very, very upset.

(boat motor revving) I had three months not getting paid.

It hit that first year, it hit hard.

College tuition payments to make.

I got mortgage payments.

It seemed to get tougher and tougher every year.

I don't want to see any more closures, I want to see fishermen and scientists actually work together, and I'm very concerned because nobody knows what's going to happen.

It's anybody's guess.

(boat motor stops) (sighs) Ah.

(monitor beeps) Peace and quiet.

I am preparing right now for the upcoming season to get as much stuff done as I can, and basically, if I'm not working on the boat, I've been working on gear on a nice day.

Been doing it pushing 40 years now, on my own doing it, so that's a long time.

♪ These are all my 800 traps.

The reason why they're all here in the yard is because right now I'm not allowed to fish for three months, and I'm just waiting for May 1, so I can start setting gear again.

The bulk of my gear's already ready here.

Checking there's no holes in the heads, for trap tagging, go on to the next one.

This is all whale-safe rope.

The bulk of my vertical lines, if I can get it, is orange, because in the water, the eyeball of a whale, even though they see in black and white, they can pick up red and orange the best.

This is Lori Caron, my better half, who is a lot better than me.

LORI: It was somewhat shocking to us when the final rule came out, and the magnitude, the fact that it encompassed 3,000 square nautical miles.

Five years later, we're being told that it's not enough.

REPORTER: Happening now, Atlantic right whales are at the center of a protest along the New England coastline.

Of course, these lobstermen know that they are up against an endangered species, but they say what isn't fair is the restriction that federal lawmakers are putting on them.

LORI: In reality, the closure that took place put a cork in three harbors.

BETH CASONI: Thank you all for being here today to show your support for the local commercial lobstermen their families, crew, and shoreside businesses who cannot go to work today.

The Mass restricted area has devastating economic impacts on the fleet.

We are here in Plymouth, America's hometown, where this country was built on commercial fishing, and this historic way of life is being threatened every day.

Conservation groups continually sue the federal government to add more and more restrictive regulations on the commercial lobster industry as a whole.

Enough is enough.

(applause) MARTIN: The guys all around here are waiting to set gear.

The boats are loaded, waiting to go.

My message to the government is work with us.

We've done the right thing.

MAN: There is a lot of focus on the right whales due to the fact that they're endangered.

But there's also going to be an endangered lobster fisherman.

We don't want that to happen.

We want to try and coexist.

LORI: Here, some letters that we've written, from the South Shore Lobster Fishermen's Association that would suggest we've had 75 to 100 meetings at this point.

Articles on gear modification.

This is the lawsuit filed by the environmentalists.

There was another lawsuit in 2011, another separate lawsuit in 2018 in the Massachusetts federal court.

As I started looking into it, and attending meetings with Rob, there was a bit of an injustice.

And it's been really, really important to us that we educate ourselves through this process.

So, as you can see, we've killed a lot of trees, unfortunately.

(chuckles) We didn't battle the regulations, we stepped forward graciously to see how we could exist within them and we continue with that.

I do believe that the whales deserve protection, but fishermen remain on the sidelines, closed.

There are casualties and those need to be considered.

DONNA WIETING: We want to welcome you to this TRT meeting.

We know that we are at a critical juncture.

We need to make changes.

We want whales and fisheries to coexist.

You are the group of people, the experts, who know the whales, know the fisheries, and can come up with a consensus approach to solving these very intractable challenges.

KRAUS: We're at the Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Team, which is the National Marine Fisheries Service approach to reducing the consequences of human activities on right whales.

It's fishermen, conservationists, researchers, state and federal managers all getting together to try to hammer out the solutions to this problem.

Those of you who have been at this for decades know what we're asking you to do.

We have to achieve 60 to 80 percent reduction in serious injuries and mortalities to right whales.

The situation for right whales continues to worsen.

So now is the time to act.

MAN: Well, the discussions that I've had with a lot of people around this table, there are very divergent views.

ASARO: Fundamentally, we have a nearly billion-dollar industry and an urgent need to protect these whales from entanglement in fisheries so that fishermen can maintain their livelihoods and that we can preserve an endangered species.

You'll note that in nine of the last ten years, at least one right whale died due to entanglement.

It actually increased from 21% between 1970 and 2002 to 51% in the last 16 years.

So now more than 75% of the anthropogenic deaths are due to entanglement.

Entanglements in fixed gear fisheries, including things like lobster trap pots, basically it's the line that connects the buoy at the surface of the ocean to the trap at the bottom that's collecting the lobster is an entanglement hazard.

And we know that right whales in particular are highly susceptible.

SHARP: These animals clearly are suffering quite a bit before they die.

Imagine panicking, being stuck underwater and not being able to get to the surface.

(whale bellowing) We're looking at between 50 and 100 right whales getting entangled every year.

The idea that you can just push that under the rug is not going to end well for the lobster fisheries that wants to continue that denial.

The data doesn't support it.

ERIN SUMMERS: I'm struggling with the conversation that we're having, we're being very specific about how that happens in the timeframe that I can understand with the decision that we're supposed to make.

KRAUS: Yes.

I think smaller spatial closures are really not probably going to be as effective.

CHARLES MAYO: It is simple arithmetic.

The number of calves being born is too low and the number of deaths is too high and the data are unequivocal.

The North Atlantic right whale is going down.

The arrow points to zero.

ASARO: If we are moving forward with regulations that are going to require fishermen to make more sacrifices, I would urge you not to put them in a situation where the solution we come up with is too modest, because at the end of the day, we'll be back at this table again.

SHARP: We don't have the time to have these battles.

These whales will go extinct, if we don't make these changes.

We are motivated to act by our conscience, by the law, so that fishermen can maintain their livelihoods and that we can preserve an endangered species.

(indistinct talking) MAN (archival footage): ♪ It is advertised in Boston ♪ New York, and Buffalo ♪ All the way, you're running gear ♪ ♪ And blow, boys, blow ♪ They'll send you to New Bedford ♪ ♪ A famous whaling port ♪ All the way, you're running gear ♪ ♪ And blow, boys, blow JOHN BULLARD: My family made a considerable amount of money hunting whales for hundreds of years in all oceans.

♪ The legacy of whaling is something that the entire city deals with.

The business of whaling had a great cultural influence on the ports that it touched, especially, of course, New Bedford.

CHRISTINA BROPHY: New Bedford was one of the most important whaling ports in the world.

It was the wealthiest city per capita, twice in its existence.

BULLARD: As Herman Melville said, "All the brave houses and flowery gardens "were each harpooned and dragged up hither from the bottom of the sea."

The killing of whales is part of our history.

We're so lucky tonight to have Christina Connett with us.

And she's our curator.

- Yes.

- She's going to give us the tour.

CHRISTINA: And if you guys want to bring any... white wine is fine.

We can go behind the scenes with those, and just don't tell Jordan... - (laughs) - Our collections director.

Let's see if we can head down to storage.

(crowd chattering) - Wow.

- I've never been here...

I just want to show you some of the whaling instruments back here.

All of these were bent by the animal.

You'd shoot this into the whale and this would pivot, so it's tragic and horrible to look at, but it also shows how powerful these fights were.

And these ones here are exploding harpoons.

These would be shot out of those guns and explode in the animal, so you imagine shooting this off your shoulder?

- It'd give you a big bruise.

- It would break mine.

Yeah, these are whale oils...

Some of them incredibly smelly.

If I open it, it'll really... - No, don't open it.

(laughter) - A smelly area.

MAN: Look at these.

These are the weapons.

MAN 2: That's amazing.

BROPHY: The North Atlantic right whales had good blubber, they had good baleen, and they floated.

And they live within very close proximity to other kinds of human activities.

So the legend is that the North Atlantic right whales were called right whales because they were the right whales to kill.

MAN (archival footage): No matter what size they were, you took them as fast as you could, because you didn't know whether you would go a week, two weeks, or sometimes a month, without seeing a whale.

BULLARD: We decimated whale populations in the creation of the first energy business in the United States.

It was outlawed with the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

BROPHY: She was hit by a ship and she was pregnant, so we last two possible reproductive females in that one ship strike.

We're still whaling, just with different intention.

So we're still killing them, but not on purpose.

♪ Some of the biology and ecology of whales that made them vulnerable to Yankee whalemen are the same kinds of behaviors and biology that make them susceptible to modern human activity impacts, like ship strikes, entanglements, and noise pollution.

If nothing happens, in 20 years, there will be no more reproducing females.

That's the projection.

It's pretty gruesome.

BULLARD: If we let this species go extinct on our watch, we all have to live with that.

(beeping) WOMAN (mechanical): Your exercise has been started.

(sonar beeps) (thunder crashing, ship horn droning) MICHAEL BURNS: We use the simulator extensively to practice navigational skills, ship handling skills and collision avoidance, not only with other ships, but with marine life.

(ship horn blowing) (lighting crashes) Operating a ship in heavy weather can be particularly challenging, especially when it comes to being able to detect a right whale.

They don't show up on radar.

They are not visible at a great distance.

And at night it can be virtually impossible to detect their presence.

♪ Unfortunately, with right whales, a lot of the technology that we have isn't particularly helpful.

Our best asset to detect and avoid a right whale is our own eyes looking out the windows.

(waves crashing) (sonar beeping) Parking brake, all set.

Status selectors, normal.

TIM COLE: Our primary job is to monitor right whales.

The challenge with flying over right whales can be unique.

MAN (on radio): Cleared for takeoff.

For these surveys, we start off flying straight lines at 1,000 feet over the water.

We have two observers monitoring the ocean surface and looking for indications that right whales are present.

MAN (on radio): We've got a right whale.

(inaudible) FRITZLER: Once a whale is spotted, we'll then maneuver the aircraft over the whale in order for them to be able to take pictures.

COLE: We use photo ID to tell how many whales are there.

We are also checking the whales to see if there's any entanglement.

With monitoring, we can pinpoint the key areas that are important to either have ships slow down or to modify fishing gear to reduce the risk that whales can become entangled.

Right whales are highly migratory.

They range from Florida up through into Canadian waters.

In 2015, we started doing some surveys up in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

We found a large number of whales there, coincident with a major mortality event.

A total of 12 right whales were found in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, dead.

(bellowing) FRITZLER: When we do fly over a carcass, it is a little disheartening.

COLE: We spend a lot of our time helping the Canadian government relocate carcasses, so they could tow them back to shore to examine them, to find out exactly what the cause of death was.

(plane engine roaring) (group singing) I'm here to do a ceremony to honor the spirit of an animal that's very magnificent.

It's important that we let the Creator and the spirits know that we've heard the message about the hard times that are coming when the whales come ashore.

(singing continues) STEPHANIE RATELLE: We're in northeastern New Brunswick on Miscou Island.

We're here to necropsy the right whale that's behind us here.

♪ The pathologist, along with many vet techs and their team, are performing a necropsy on the right whale to hopefully identify what could possibly be the cause of death.

(motor turning on) TONYA WIMMER: The one thing we're going to do, try to get the complete history from the previous sightings, because we know that he's been entangled before.

Was he disentangled?

Did he shed the gear on his own?

It's a very difficult thing to do as we look at this beautiful animal and then have to open it up, and look inside.

Does anyone need a new knife or anything?

MAN: No, I'm good right now.

WIMMER: Okay.

It was extremely fresh, and the fresher the animal is, the more we can learn.

We have various samples from all the major organs, and then we have a variety of bones and baleen going for genetics.

(saw scraping) Fisheries and Oceans Canada are in charge of the management, so the information is provided to them.

It is then in their hands to figure out what the next steps are and to decide what to do.

(whale spout blowing) ADAM BURNS: In 2017, when North Atlantic right whales showed up in the Gulf of St. Lawrence for the first time in significant numbers, we didn't have a mitigation measures in place specific to that, like we did in other parts of Atlantic Canada where North Atlantic right whales were present.

And we started to see the impacts of that in terms of some whale mortalities.

WIMMER: We were very fortunate last year in Canada not to deal with any dead right whales.

We were hoping for that to continue, but obviously there were other things at play.

♪ (sonar beeping) MAN: Bring it on board.

DAVID FIELDS: I've been measuring this cross section for the last seven years.

We sample these different organisms, from the algae, the bacteria, and the viruses, all the way up to the zooplankton, the food for right whales.

Okay, so if we lower this thing, we're coring the ocean, and everything you catch in your zooplankton net is everything that's out there, that's going to become massive, right?

The swordfish, the lobster larvae.

And since we're talking about the base of the food chain, it's what drives the productivity of everything else.

(water splashing) There are live animals in here, and we're going to move these things into a small jar, and then we're going to pour alcohol on them, and it'll be preserved for a good week.

So if you look in here, you see all those darting animals?

(students agreeing) Those are all copepods.

Copepods are the most abundant animal on the planet, period... if you crushed them all up.

it's the equivalent of about a trillion humans.

How does a 40-ton animal live on an animal that is this big?

It's only because all of the copepods go down at the same time and they aggregate into a compact layer of just fat animals.

From here across the Atlantic to Norway, it forms a density that makes it worthwhile for an animal to dive to feed on them.

Some of these copepods have been around for 200 million years.

They've adapted and fine-tuned their life cycles to live in a particular environmental setting.

And now that environmental setting is changing faster than they're able to adapt.

As the temperature has been increasing, the populations of these calanus have been decreasing.

And the organisms that depend on them, such as right whales, are not going to find sufficient food.

It's that disconnect that's beginning to cause a problem.

♪ That's a calanus.

Looks like one, looks like she's swimming like that.

They're tiny little organisms that have this really complex behavior pattern.

♪ Well, this is actually a really good image of how much fat they have.

This is what right whales eat, they eat Calanus finmarchicus.

NICK RECORD: Right whales need to find and eat thousands and thousands of pounds of calanus per day when they're feeding in the Gulf of Maine.

So even small declines can have a huge difference.

The waters of the Gulf of Maine have been warming faster than 99.9 percent of the rest of the world's oceans.

There's a strong inverse relationship between temperature and calanus.

When waters get warm, we see a big decline in calanus, and especially the energy-rich calanus that right whales need.

Depending on where you look in the time of year, you can see anywhere from the 30 to a 90 percent decline in calanus.

Then the right whales have to start looking elsewhere for their food.

They started showing up in places where we didn't have management and conservation programs in place.

So they were more vulnerable to things like ship strikes or gear entanglements.

(whirring) We've built our management strategy around this idea that the right whales are going to do roughly the same thing every year, and as the climate has changed, it's really altered the predictability in that pattern.

The mortalities have gone up so sharply because all of a sudden, those management strategies don't work anymore.

ASARO: I believe that the team here can put something forward that's in the ballpark of what is needed for this species.

- I'd probably say it has to go back to the team.

We have a discussion about it.

MAYO: People took the situation seriously this time.

It has gone a direction that we have not seen in nearly a quarter of a century of doing this.

This is the least squishy discussion we have had in 25 years.

Now, as a Maine lobster fisherman, I am responsible for three different families directly, and my ability to come home today was to be able to tell them that I might not be able to support them in the future, was something I have had a really, really hard time thinking about.

In my boat alone, I am going to remove 10.78 miles of vertical line-- it's scary for me, but I know that's something, and I can go back to my fishery and have that conversation.

I am here basically trying to get myself out of a job.

Am I so certain, you know, on this consensus that I will disband my disentanglement team?

I'm no fool.

But this is the best step that I have seen taken since I've been on the team.

ASARO: If you can live with moving this package forward, please raise your hand.

In 20 years of meeting and convening this team, it has never put forward measures as strong as what has been accomplished today.

♪ (applause) Who cannot live with this package?

(applause ends) Sharon.

While this has a lot of attraction for me, and I think there's a lot here that can be useful, my concern is I don't see what else is going to be considered by the agency besides this.

And I don't consider this sufficient.

MAYO: I don't think it's the solution to the problem.

But I think we came very close.

In my opinion, probably lead us to a situation where the unsustainable kills of right whales in the fishing industry will stop.

There's absolutely a need for an expedited implementation of what can be done, as quickly as it can be done.

PATRICE MCCARRON: When we look at such deep cuts to the fisheries, we do have to look at, you know, the possibility of unintended consequences.

Measures developed here today are very likely to have potential severe economic impacts to the state of Maine's lobster fishery.

The recommendations put forward here today are a big ask.

We did not hammer out all the details, and the devil is in the details and how something as large as a 50 percent reduction in vertical line impacts the fishery, we need to maintain our rights to disagree if something isn't panning out in the way that can be implemented appropriately for the state.

♪ Maine is taking a stand against a strict new federal plan to stop right whales from dying.

♪ Maine's congressional delegation is reaching out to President Trump tonight, asking him to help the lobster industry.

♪ NEWS ANCHOR: Maine's representatives say new federal regulations designed to protect whales are instead a grave threat to thousands of people who rely on the lobster fishery.

♪ JULIE EATON: Coastal fishermen from east and west, I want to welcome you to the Maine lobstermen's rally.

We all know why we're here.

♪ ROCK ALLEY: This is going to destroy our coastline, our small communities.

Our lobster industry-- this is the only industry we have left.

CHELLIE PINGREE: We all care about the right whale, but we all believe there's a right way to going about doing this.

And this proposal isn't the way.

♪ Maine's entire congressional delegation, and Governor Mills, stand with you in this fight.

(applause) JANET MILLS: My administration will not allow the bureaucrats of Washington, D.C., to undermine our lobster industry or our economy with foolish, unsupported, and ill-advised regulations.

We truly believe from the bottom of our hearts that Maine lobstermen are not a part of the problem.

When a species of whale is at risk of extinction, who has a seat at the table to ensure that the process behind such decisions is fair and equitable?

MIKE HERSEY: NOAA has chosen to persecute Maine's lobster industry, not to diminish the threat to the right whale, but as an expedient means to get the environmentalists off their back.

(applause) There's thousands and thousands of jobs and people that depend on this.

Once we lose a fishery, it's gone forever.

RICHARD LARRABEE, JR.: I can't think of one thing that the National Marine Fisheries Service has ever done to help a fishery besides regulate it to extinction.

(cheers and applause) DR. SARAH SHARP: Today, we're at the IFAW Marine Mammal Rescue Warehouse.

This is our rescue operation center, and so we keep a lot of our rescue equipment here so that we can run out the door any time marine mammals need rescuing.

My name is Dr. Sarah Sharp, and I'm the animal rescue veterinarian with the International Fund for Animal Welfare.

It's extremely rare to not have a whale that has some evidence of entanglement.

These whales get entangled in line.

They start thrashing.

They can't get to the surface to breathe.

It's a quick death, but it's actually a fairly traumatic event.

When we see whales that are entangled for a really long period of time, they can have a number of different wounds associated with the entangling gear.

The line can embed over the blowhole.

That's not only going to be painful, but it's also going to significantly impact the animal's ability to breathe.

This line over time essentially works deeper and deeper.

And it not only cuts through the skin and the blubber and the muscle, but it actually starts cutting into the bone.

So, I'm absolutely worried about extinction for these animals.

And I'm not only worried about extinction in the future, but I'm worried about extinction in the next few decades.

(voice breaking): Um, I don't want these whales-- sorry.

Um...

Sorry.

(sighs) Um...

I don't want these whales to go extinct on our watch.

(waves splashing) ♪ PATRICK KELIHER: We're here tonight to review Maine's draft plan.

So back in June, we were looking at proposals that included a recommendation of a 50 percent reduction in vertical lines or end lines.

Maine members of the TRT, along with everybody else on the TRT, voted in favor of the 60 percent reduction.

But the Maine member of the TRT also read into the record, "We reserve our right to change our mind, because we don't know what this means on the water."

The first piece of the Maine plan is a 25 percent reduction in end lines, based on our calculations.

So it is not a 50 percent reduction as proposed through the Take Reduction Team.

If you take all of the vertical lines, month by month, that's over five million vertical lines.

We're looking at impacting only 1.4 million vertical lines.

We've totally changed the denominator here.

Let's quickly talk about the wild card here, which is the federal court cases that are ongoing.

About a month ago, a case was filed, bringing the Maine lobster fishery directly into a lawsuit and I want to highlight a couple quotes from the same judge, as it pertains to those whale lawsuits.

"Any lag between the court's issuance of an injunction "is precious time for the North Atlantic right whale, "which has been suffering unprecedented fatalities "in the last three years, particularly from entanglements.

"This is very concerning to our attorneys, it should be very concerning to you as an industry.

This remains the wild card, having a court step in and putting an injunction on this fishery.

So with that, I'll be happy to open it up to questions.

Say they pull the plug on us, and we don't gain their support on this.

Where do we go to then?

I can tell you this.

This is our line in the sand.

So, if they don't accept this, we're going to be in a federal court fighting this out.

MAYO: This is a special place.

Cape Cod, and this body of water are part of my family's heritage.

It's been the backyard of now 11 generations of us.

And into it come these exceptionally rare animals, these last of the right whales.

So this is the place to study them, where the last battle to save them will take place.

♪ We started doing our disentanglement work in 1984, and it was the first real effort to slow down free-swimming entangled whales that otherwise would die, and it has followed on to this day as we've attempted to develop methods to free animals from lethal entanglement.

(indistinct voices, boat engine revving) This is an effort to disentangle the whale we call Ruffian.

(indistinct voices) - Whoo!

MAYO: Who had towed gear all the way from the Gulf of St. Lawrence into Georgia-Florida waters, a distance of 1,700 miles.

- If you go-- easy, easy!

MAYO: The first part of the effort, get a grapple across the gear.

- I got him, he's, he's in, he's in.

Back up, back up, back up, back up... Get the boat's buoy ready to go over.

Okay, buoy over, buoy over.

MAYO: And then we're attached to the whale.

The flukes of a right whale are up to 18 feet across and weigh the weight of a small car.

There are a couple of memorable occasions where they were very close.

(water splashes) And if they'd hit, we undoubtedly would not have lived.

Once the whale is on the surface, the effort is to use a pole to get a hook knife into the entangling ropes.

And there, they just succeeded in getting it.

And that hook knife will eventually cut the gear.

♪ - One, two, three... - Okay, that's it.

MAYO: It's a way of remotely cutting the gear to be more safe than we used to be.

♪ Joe Howlett was trained here at the center.

In 2017, Joe was dispatched to attempt a disentanglement.

- Just keep some pressure on it.

Near the end of that disentanglement, he lost his life.

(water splashing) Joe was an exceptionally dedicated guy who died in the effort.

There is on the part of all of us who work with right whales a passionate desire to help them, not just because they're whales we know, but because they're on the brink of extinction.

There has to be further development and rapid development of new methods to fish, methods that do not involve entanglement.

The answer's really simple.

It's been there all along, and it goes far beyond anything the Take Reduction Team has recently decided, and that is no rope in the water.

That will solve the problem.

KEVIN RAND: Typically in this garage, we repair boats.

It has been transformed into a research and development laboratory for ropeless fishing.

RICHARD RIELS: My name is Richard Riels.

I'm the executive director and founder to SMELTS, Sea Mammal Education Learning Technology Society.

I spent some years studying the entanglement problem in large whales, and saw a lot of animal suffering.

When you walk up to a dead animal and you see it entangled in gear, we probably want to try to figure out how to prevent that from happening.

RAND: He came to me with an idea about building a ropeless fishing system, and I told him he was crazy.

RIELS: A ropeless system that could reduce entanglement in large whales and give the fishermen a potential to work in closed areas.

Just trying to figure out, with fishermen, can we do this?

This is how ropeless fishing could work.

The lobstermen shows up to his fishing grounds, deploys the gear, and sends a signal to report his position.

We have no vertical line and buoy.

The marine life that's swimming throughout the ocean, in the fishing grounds have no chance of being entangled.

Fishermen returns to the fishing grounds, activates his recovery system, brings the lobster raft to the surface, leaves the fishing grounds.

(water splashes) The technology is there.

If we can afford it, we don't know.

Can we get enough of it built that actually impacts global fishing?

It's a big challenge.

There are so many animals being entangled.

Prevention is really the only hope we have to end the needless suffering of these large whales.

In the Gulf of Maine alone, there are about 3.5 million lobster traps.

And at any one time, hundreds of thousands of buoy lines are in the water.

That has to change.

Ropeless is coming.

(chuckles) Whether it's now, five years, or 20 years.

You either adapt or you get left behind.

♪ (air hissing) FRANCINE KERSHAW: Thank you so much for coming, everyone.

North Atlantic right whales need us now more than ever.

We're losing right whales at a shocking rate.

So we've lost at least, almost 30 animals since 2017 alone.

And those are known deaths.

We know that we're losing a lot more that we never discover.

A scientific study recently showed they're all dying because of impacts from humans.

KATHERINE DEUEL: We all have the opportunity tonight here at NOAA headquarters to have the federal government hear from us about what we think should be done.

We can't afford more delay.

NOAA needs to act now, they need to act quickly.

KERSHAW: If strong conservation measures and protective regulations are not put in place now, they will continue to decline before extinction.

So this may be their last chance to get them on the road to recovery.

ASARO: Good afternoon, everyone.

(indistinct chatter) Tonight is our scoping meeting on developing modifications to the Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction plan.

This is the first of many opportunities for public comment, and that is a critical part of the process.

It helps you all inform the steps that NOAA takes as we move towards a proposed rule.

If the goal is to get below potential biological removal level, so that's less than one per year, and get the risk reduction at the least economic impact, what the TRT came up with was pretty smart.

You are only talking about a theoretical, unscientific, unproven methodology proposed by the very people who are killing the whales to reduce it.

So you therefore expect more dead right whales from entanglement over the next ten years.

Reduce does not equal eliminate.

- The Marine Mammal Protection Act requires us to reduce... - Maybe you should listen to the Endangered Species Act, which makes every entanglement a violation of law.

(applause) Your goal is to wipe out the right whale.

So tonight, again, we'd like to get input from you now.

- It's kind of sad watching what's going on here.

Here we are taking the brunt of the punishment, again.

It's not right.

I don't know how long we're going to be able to take it, but something has to change.

(applause) I'm sorry, you feel like we're blaming you.

I just want to tell you, we're really frustrated.

We feel helpless.

We feel powerless.

We just wanted to keep these whales alive, and we don't think we can do it.

- We're not out there trying to kill whales.

It's pretty easy to go up there and say, "Invoke this rule, this and this," because it doesn't affect you.

It affects us.

To put it bluntly, human actions are putting these beautiful, gentle giants on a direct path towards extinction.

That is why we are here today: to correct these human errors and actions in a meaningful way.

I urge NOAA to do right by the right whale and implement stricter regulations.

(applause) - Both sides of this issue are being played.

There may be no human action, or inaction, that can save a population of 400 right whales, but there are actions that could be taken to devastate the local economies entwined within the lobstering and fishing communities.

NOAA is the fox guarding the chicken coop.

It's owned by fishermen.

It's run by fishermen, under statute.

And this beautiful, beautiful opposition that they demonstrate here is just part of the scam.

You're all going to be replaced by green fishermen, who will not use vertical buoy ropes, and will actually care about the environment.

ASARO: It's time to go, Max.

It's time to go.

It's time to go.

- It's time for you to go, sir, because you're going to be fired for being a liar, and a person who works to kill off the right whale.

♪ (waves splashing) ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ CLAY GEORGE: We're about ten miles from the Georgia-Florida line.

We're smack dab in the middle of the North Atlantic right whale calving grounds.

It's a big area, so we really depend on aerial survey to find the whales.

MELANIE WHITE: This is the only place that right whales are known to go to give birth to their live young.

(camera clicking) Being that they are so endangered, we're trying to protect them as much as we can.

GEORGE: Going back to the 2000s, we were seeing about two dozen calves per year on average.

Since 2010, that number has dropped in half.

And two years ago, in fact, we didn't even see a single calf.

That's the first time that had ever happened.

- (over radio): The Coast Guard reported an alpha.

GEORGE: We can't make more calves, but we could certainly stop killing whales.

That's just got to happen.

Or this species might not stand a chance.

MICHAEL PENTONY: It's a monumental challenge that we are currently facing.

And it requires everybody-- our state partners, the fishing industry, environmental groups, we need to all come to the table and play a part in the recovery of this iconic species.

- (over radio): R/V Hurricane, this is NOAA 48, go ahead.

Just wanted to give you a heads up.

We got a mother-calf pair.

- Good, copy, NOAA 48.

The National Marine Fisheries Service has to balance these two objectives that it has, of sustaining fisheries and protecting species.

At the moment, that balance is just going the wrong way.

- (over radio): Three, two, one... perfect.

It's always a challenge to look to dual mandates of conserving protected species and ensuring thriving sustainable fisheries.

We look for solutions that make meaningful progress towards recovering right whales, while also ensuring that our fisheries remain very profitable.

♪ CORKERON: We're still looking at least another couple of years, before something really starts changing on the water, and that's really slow, the way these animals are disappearing at the moment.

♪ I would reject the idea that we're too slow.

We are working within the process, and in order to have effective, meaningful, long-lasting measures that are in place, we need the collaboration among all of the stakeholders.

CORKERON: If the agency is going to be serious about saving North Atlantic right whales, then the action that they're going to have to take is going to be more draconian than what's being considered so far.

And that's hard.

But that's where we are now.

North Atlantic right whales are paying a price for this.

At some point, we have to turn this around.

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Local, USA was made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the John D. and Katherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Wyncote Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.