09/12/2022
“Thank you all for being here today. This is an important moment for Maine Lobster. My name is Luke Holden, I am the founder and CEO of Luke’s Lobster. I was born into this amazing industry. My father, Jeff Holden, was the first licensed lobster processor here in the State of Maine. For the last 13 years leading Luke’s, and really for my entire life, I've been working to build the reputation and marketability of Maine Lobster. The Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch program’s red-listing of our fishery is negligent in the face of the work of my teammates and all the men and women that work to support this fishery. In August of 2020, when the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch program was first rumored to red list the fishery I organized a meeting with their team along with Senator Collins, Senator King, Governor Mills, Representative Pingree, Representative Golden, Commissioner Keilher, Patrice McCaron from Maine Lobster Association, the CEO of Red Lobster, the leadership team from our largest customer, Curt Brown from Ready Seafood and my team. It was remarkable how our elected officials showed up in the time of need, how well educated they are on the issue, and how passionate they were for standing up for what's right. On the opposite end, it was remarkable how unprepared and disassociated the The Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch team was. I believe everyone deserves the benefit of the doubt, and so we formed a working group to make sure The Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch team had access to all the information we industry leaders had access to. Through the communication process with the Monterey Bay team, it was clear that they were not interested in the specific facts of our fishery and that their minds were made up and aligned with the demands of their funders. One specific example was the scientific data that we shared around there being no whale habitat along the Maine coast within the exemption line (basically within 3 miles of the coast), which is the scientific consensus of federal authorities. When Monterey Bay responded that they had no interest to look at that data, to me that was a clear marker they were not interested in the facts.”