Uploaded April 2021 | Updated September 2026, 2 hours ago
ENTANGLED
A film by David Abel and Andy Laub
Available for educational use: bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/ent.html
There are now estimated to be about 350 right whales, making them among the planet’s most endangered species. NOAA officials say the population can’t sustain more than a single premature death a year. At the current rate of decline, scientists say the whales could go extinct within 20 years.
The main threat to their survival, scientists say: millions of lobster lines that stretch from New England up through Atlantic Canada, standard gear for North America’s most valuable fishery. Exacerbating that threat is climate change, which has sparked a collapse in the whale’s food supply in the warming waters of the Gulf of Maine, forcing them to search for food in areas where they had rarely been seen before. As a result, their population has been plummeting.
Now, under pressure from lawsuits by environmental advocates to reduce right whale deaths, the federal government has been considering controversial regulations that pit the region’s politically powerful lobstermen against scientists and environmental advocates trying to save the whales. The proposed regulations, which could reduce lobster lines by half in much of the Gulf of Maine and harm the livelihoods of many lobstermen, has sparked a political backlash. The future of the iconic species hangs in the balance.
ENTANGLED
A film by David Abel and Andy Laub
Available for educational use: bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/ent.html
There are now estimated to be about 350 right whales, making them among the planet’s most endangered species. NOAA officials say the population can’t sustain more than a single premature death a year. At the current rate of decline, scientists say the whales could go extinct within 20 years.
The main threat to their survival, scientists say: millions of lobster lines that stretch from New England up through Atlantic Canada, standard gear for North America’s most valuable fishery. Exacerbating that threat is climate change, which has sparked a collapse in the whale’s food supply in the warming waters of the Gulf of Maine, forcing them to search for food in areas where they had rarely been seen before. As a result, their population has been plummeting.
Now, under pressure from lawsuits by environmental advocates to reduce right whale deaths, the federal government has been considering controversial regulations that pit the region’s politically powerful lobstermen against scientists and environmental advocates trying to save the whales. The proposed regulations, which could reduce lobster lines by half in much of the Gulf of Maine and harm the livelihoods of many lobstermen, has sparked a political backlash. The future of the iconic species hangs in the balance.
