Time is running out for right whales. Biden administration must slow down boats
What are you willing to do to save some time on the road? Check your phone when you shouldn’t? Run a red light? Drive too fast? When a time-saver ends in tragedy, however, everything ends in “time’s up.”
Too often, the popular pathway in the halls of power ignores problems rather than finding lasting solutions, especially in regulatory agencies where issues like looming extinction can be shunted without scrutiny. One realworld issue threatens the world’s last surviving North Atlantic right whales. If the Biden administration fails to reset the clock for these whales, time will indeed be up.
A vessel strike reduction rule finalized in 2008 to protect this critically endangered species has remained unchanged for more than 15 years despite scientific evidence that it must be updated to slow down vessel traffic and give these whales a chance at beating the extinction clock.
The threat came alive this month with the mortal wounding of yet another right whale calf by a vessel collision off the coast of South Carolina. The calf suffered severe trauma to its head and lip. According to NOAA Fisheries, it will likely die. It’s a grim fate for the next generation of a species already facing a lifetime of rough waters.
The calf is the most recent of eight birthed by “Juno,” a mother whale rarely seen without a calf in tow. Of the approximately 360 right whales still swimming, she’s one of fewer than 70 reproductively active females.
For those females, time is precious. Juno has gone through eight-year-long pregnancies, each spent carrying a life that may not make it to adulthood. North Atlantic right whale calves face a 50% chance of reaching adulthood — and that’s without human influence. They may have feeding troubles, get separated from their mothers, or become prey.
Then humans enter the equation — and they come fast. The 2008 vessel strike reduction rule requires slower speeds for vessels 65 feet or longer across five East Coast seasonal management areas running from Massachusetts to northern
Florida.
In all five areas, larger vessels are required to slow to a speed of 10 knots or less during periods when right whales are likely present. That translates to about 11.5 miles per hour, slower than the 15-mph limit standard at most school crossings.
Hold that in your mind for a moment. Picture these coastal regions like the roads your children cross. Now, imagine a world where four out of every five cars are going fast enough to put your child in daily, fatal danger. That’s the reality of the right whale.
Juno and her wounded calf were spotted Jan. 3 off the coast of South Carolina, part of the largest seasonal speed zone — from Wilmington, North Carolina, to Brunswick, Georgia. A recent study found that vessels that should slow down in accordance with the 2008 rule were instead speeding up to as fast as 40 knots in that region — roughly 46 miles per hour.
Now consider the boats from 35 feet (the length of a school bus) to 65 feet
(as long as a truck with a semi-trailer). Your child must cross a road teeming with drivers who either break the speed limit or are told the limit doesn’t apply to them. Drivers don’t think about the fact that a child might cross the road until it’s too late.
As these final hours toll, the right whale’s biological clock can’t keep up. Reproductive females typically breed every three to four years. Still, NOAA Fisheries puts the current interval anywhere between six and ten years, chalked up to a human-created cocktail of climate change, fishing gear entanglements and vessel strikes.
It’s time for the Biden administration to call “time’s up” on the outdated 2008 vessel speed rule and finalize the proposed rule to expand vessel strike protections based on updated science. Failure to finalize this rule will only result in more preventable tragedies like the one wrought upon Juno’s calf — and many others.
In February 2021, Florida was the site of another tragedy when a 54-foot sportfishing charter vessel collided with a right whale mother-calf pair. It was large enough to kill the newborn calf and mortally wound its firsttime mother, “Infinity,” who hasn’t been seen since.
The name of that boat? “About Time.”