Congress may be driving right whales to extinction

As we are in the midst of calving season for the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale, I can’t help but think of Snow Cone. Right whale 3560, nicknamed Snow Cone for her markings that resemble the summertime treat, is a right whale that I had the privilege of watching nurture and play with her baby calf off the coast of Florida just last spring.

Sadly, I am unlikely to see Snow Cone or her calf again. This past September, she was seen in extremely poor health, entangled in new fishing gear while still carrying gear from a previous entanglement. Numerous attempts to help disentangle her failed. Perhaps most tragic of all, her young calf, too young to survive without its mom, was nowhere to be found.

Snow Cone is not alone in her experience. During their migration from their winter calving grounds in Florida to their feeding grounds in New England and Canada, right whales must navigate dense commercial fishing areas. Too often, they become entangled in the vertical ropes that connect buoys on the surface to lobster and crab traps on the seafloor.

Once entangled in vertical buoy lines, whales swim with attached gear for long distances, ultimately resulting in fatigue, compromised feeding ability, or severe injuries that lead to reduced reproductive success and painful, protracted deaths.

Entanglements are the greatest threat to North Atlantic right whales and have affected nearly all the 340 that remain alive, with over half having been entangled multiple times. Nearly two thirds of known right whale deaths and serious injuries in the past six years are due to fishing gear entanglements.

With just 70 reproductively active females left in a population that has declined by 30% in the last 10 years, the right whale is on the knife edge of extinction, and entanglement is about to push them over the edge.

The situation is so dire, a federal court last year ordered the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to craft new rules protecting right whales from fishing entanglement by blocking off roped fishing where these whales are present.

However, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, with the support of senators Angus King and Chuck Schumer, as well as Maine Gov. Janet Mills, quietly worked to attach a rider within the 2023 omnibus spending bill that overruled the court order and delayed the federal government from enacting these rope-fishing restrictions until Dec. 31, 2028.

Some experts believe this last-minute policy change, if left in place, is the death blow that will cause the right whale to go extinct. Their numbers are too few and they are reproducing too slowly to survive another six years of mothers dying while trying to rear calves.

Supporters of the Collins provision will say the bill could, in the long run, be helpful because it authorizes $40 million over 10 years toward expanding ropeless technologies. However, there is no guarantee these funds will be appropriated.

Furthermore, ropeless technology doesn’t need 10 years of research to begin implementing. The technology exists today and is already commercially in use. Collins’ provision harms the good fishing companies while protecting and giving a market advantage to those fisheries unwilling to do their part to prevent an entire whale species from going extinct.

Finally, and most importantly, six years of research will do nothing to save a species that is likely to become functionally extinct before that time. A six-year delay in rules preventing rope entanglement will likely lead to dozens more entanglement deaths.

It is my hope that Congress will undo this extinction-causing rule that was quietly snuck into the omnibus that Congress had to pass in December. If you are like me, you won’t sit by and watch the North Atlantic right whale go extinct without a fight. Please encourage your member of Congress to support the RESCUE Whales Act, which would uphold the science-based protections for this whale under the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

If we continue to create change through our collective actions, I believe that future generations will have the opportunity to witness the beauty of the North Atlantic right whale, free from entanglements.