Update: regarding the Secretariat post a few back. Secretariat's Triple Crown jockey, Ron Turcotte was originally from Maine and learned his horse whispering skills working logging horses as a teen in Northern Maine.

Ron was thrown a few years after the Triple Crown win during a race, and became a paraplegic.

Right Whales:

While Maine lobstermen (and women) are investing thousands of dollars upgrading their gear for the coming season to help protect endangered Right Whales summering in the Bay of Fundy, the office of the Vice President and Finance are giving the shipping companies the blind eye.

Despite Government funded Scientific studies that determined ships need to slow down in Whale travel lanes, ,the shipping lobby has caught the ear of the administration, and the rule changes are being delayed while the data is being re-examined.

Lobstermen are changing over their ropes to sinking rope to help prevent whale entanglement. While I have never worked on a lobster boat, I have had the pleasure of observing the lobster catching process from another boat.

The lobster boat captain pulls up to his specially marked floating bouy that marks his trapline. The sternman hooks the bouy and line onto a winch, which pulls the first trap up from the bottom. The sterman hooks the trap, cleans it out of seaweed, starfish, crabs, and measures any lobsters for minimum size.

Then the winch keeps going and pulls the next trap in line. Because traps are laid out strung together. Formerly the rope between traps would float off the bottom, creating hazards for whales, especially if the trap gets lost in a storm.

Whales become entangled in the line and starve to death.

The new rules for lobster gear includes sinking line to replace standard line that floated.

Ships are deadly to whales from ship to whale impact. I was once on the ferry to Moneghan Island and saw a right whale surface not 10 yards from the ferry, which was chugging right along. Big ships travel faster and can easily kill a whale , so the new rules were to slow them down in whale areas. Although the economic cost to the shipping industry was less than 1%, the White House has determined that is too high a cost to protect endangered species.

The lobsterfolk are paying up to 8% to upgrade their gear.