VINALHAVEN, Maine — When she heard the news, in the middle of her shift selling tickets at the ferry terminal, Cathy Watt broke down in tears.
The US government had just ordered the unprecedented closure of a 1,000-square-mile swath of ocean off Maine’s coast to traditional lobster fishing for four months a year, starting in October. It was a crushing consequence of climate change: Warming oceans have hastened an endangered.