Lobster fishing will face restrictions to try to save whales

By PATRICK WHITTLE
Associated Press

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — America’s lobster fishing industry will face a host of new harvesting restrictions amid a new push from the federal government to try to save a vanishing species of whale. The prospect of new rules has loomed over the profitable lobster industry for years and were announced Tuesday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. They are designed to protect the North Atlantic right whale. The whales number only about 360 and they are vulnerable to lethal entanglement in fishing gear.