The Maine Lobstering Union has won emergency relief to stop the closure of productive lobster water off the coast of Maine that regulators said is needed to help protect endangered North Atlantic right whales from extinction.

U.S. District Judge Lance Walker in Maine granted the order on Saturday.

The Portland Press-Herald reports in his ruling, he said regulators had relied on “markedly thin” statistical modeling instead of hard evidence to show the nearly thousand-square-mile area they had planned to close was really a hot spot for the imperiled whale.

Attorneys for the government said at a hearing Friday that fisheries service used the best available science.