Much is being reported regarding lobstermen’s trap gear posing a potential hazard to right whales, an endangered species. Let’s take a deep breath and note that, to quote researchers Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser of Our World in Data: “Extinctions have been a natural part of our planet’s evolutionary history. More than 99 percent of the 4 billion species that have evolved on Earth are now gone. At least 900 species have gone extinct in the last five centuries.” Extinction is a part of life.

Maybe it’s time we let the right whale join that 99 percent, and let our lobstermen go about their business, feeding their families and ours, as well as all the folks whose jobs and livelihoods are involved in, and depend on, keeping lobstering a successful industry.

The “Save the Whales” (and, as long as they’re at it, every existing species) people have assigned themselves the mission that no species shall go extinct on their watch. Since they are the pinnacle of evolutionary development, their egos demand that they can and should control everything that happens on their planet – including the climate. But that’s another subject entirely, one upon which nature will, of course, have its own way – as it has been doing for 4 billion years.

Russell Frank
Gorham

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