From: Bangor Daily News
"Earlier this year, NMFS reopened 3000 square miles of ocean south of Nantucket to groundfishing, allowing the use of gillnets and rope. The agency said that based on previous regulatory reviews and some more recent scientific articles, it could not find sufficient evidence to conclude that fishing gear alone causes a decline in the health of large whales — and that further review was not necessary. Conservationists say the agency cherry-picked the evidence. “It doesn’t pass the straight face test,” says Kyla Bennett, the New England director for a national group called Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, or PEER."