Former head of Legal Sea Foods supporting Massachusetts lobstermen in battle against California aquarium that told people to stop eating lobster

The former head of Legal Sea Foods is calling out organizations that say people shouldn’t eat certain fish because of the dangers fishing may pose to aquatic animals.

Roger Berkowitz, the previous president and CEO of the regional seafood restaurant chain, is supporting the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association during its months-long dispute with groups that say lobster fishing is killing too many North Atlantic right whales.

Because of what they say are risks to the endangered species, California’s Monterey Bay Aquarium and the international Marine Stewardship Council last September made a plea for people to stop eating lobster.

A group of four Bay State lobstermen in early March filed a class action lawsuit against the groups, seeking $75,000 in damages for disparagement of their product and interference with their proprietary rights.

“Sometimes I think people misconstrue if there is a problem here, it must translate all the way over when that’s not the case,” Berkowitz told the Herald. “There are plenty of fishing grounds and lobster grounds that are perfectly safe for fishermen to harvest product without endangering the whales at all.”

Berkowitz voiced his stance after he donated nearly $145,000 in seafood to the Greater Boston Food Bank on Friday, a day after an attorney for Monterey Bay compared the MLA’s argument to keep the case in federal court in Louisiana to “playing a game of ‘Whac-a-Mole’” in a court motion.

The exact reasoning why the lobstermen filed the lawsuit in Louisiana versus any other state is blurry, while Monterey Bay has made several requests for the case to be transferred to the Northern District of California, where the aquarium is headquartered.

Specifically, the lobstermen say their livelihood is at risk after Monterey Bay “red rated” the American lobster last fall.

The red rating on Seafood Watch, a program which the aquarium dubs as a leader in the global sustainable seafood movement, means consumers should avoid American lobster caught by trap from the Gulf of Maine, Southern New England and Georges Bank stocks.

Supermarket chain Whole Foods and meal-kit companies HelloFresh and Blue Apron pulled Gulf of Maine lobsters from their product lines shortly after the red rating.

An attorney representing the MLA provided photos taken in late May of signs at a Whole Foods in New Orleans that alert customers of the Seafood Watch, and if an item is marked red on the list, then the store doesn’t sell it, according to court documents.

In filings requesting the case be transferred, aquarium attorneys have said Monterey Bay is not requiring Whole Foods to ban the sale of lobster and that it can’t control the process of ensuring the supermarket chain complies with the commitment.

But attorneys for the lobstermen say that is “irrelevant to the question of whether such a commitment actually exists.”

“The negative is not true: the decision to not purchase something requires no complex calculus,” attorneys Kristin Robbins and Samuel Blatchley wrote in a June 9 filing for the lobstermen. “Instead, the process is simple: when MBA says a product is red-listed, Whole Foods will not purchase it. That commitment, as evidenced by the statements of Whole Foods itself, and readily visible to customers, is what binds MBA to this jurisdiction.”

Attorney Loretta Mince, representing the aquarium, in a reply submitted Thursday called the lobstermen’s filings “slithery” and advocacy “confusing”.

“Plaintiff has utterly failed to demonstrate that MBA in fact controls anything at Whole Foods,” she wrote.

The lobstermen allege the boycott by Whole Foods, HelloFresh and Blue Apron has “led to a swift decline in the value of American Lobster, with prices dropping by 30%, resulting in substantial financial detriment to Plaintiffs in the form of decreased income.”

Berkowitz, who left Legal Sea Foods earlier this year to start an ecommerce business, Rogers Fish Co., said he has not seen the red rating impact his business or any others that sell seafood.

“We’re making sure what is deemed to be OK to harvest is coming from areas where there really isn’t any threat or danger to species like whales,” he said.