The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration withdrew a speed limit reduction law originally intended to limit ship-strikes for whales on Jan. 15, prompting concerns from Graduate School of Oceanography emeritus marine researcher Robert Kenney.
Under the current speed limit regulations, most vessels that exceed 65 feet in length are limited to a speed of 10 knots or less in seasonal management locations, according to NOAA Fisheries. These locations are hotspots for whale activity, where speed limits are enforced to limit the amount of ship to whale collisions.
Robert Kenney has studied the North Atlantic right whale among other marine mammals throughout his career at the University of Rhode Island’s GSO.
“There are regulations in place to minimize the number of whales that get hit,” Kenney said.
North Atlantic right whales have been hit particularly hard by ship strikes, net entanglement and human caused environmental pressures. As of 2023, there are an estimated 372 individual whales in the right whale population, according to NOAA.
“We have a very sophisticated model for tracking the population,” Kenney said. “Because of this, if you take a picture, we can tell you who it is, we know them all.”
In 2006, during the Bush administration, NOAA put out its first round of regulations and routes to help protect the species, according to Kenney. During this time, NOAA researched the rules’ effects on the population.
“The National Marine Fishery Service had to do a whole lot of research and study to stay the 10 knots speed limit actually cut down on the whales that were hit by ships,” Kenney said.
The recent speed limit reduction was an extension of these previous regulations, which applies to boats over 65 feet, to include boats as small as 35 feet in length among other provisions to prevent collisions.
“One of the reasons why they wanted to extend the rule is that the 65 foot limit is not very realistic,” Kenney said.
In 2021, there was an instance of a mother and a calf that were hit by a 54-foot sportfishing boat going roughly 23 knots in Florida, according to the National Fisherman.
Neither whale was seen again and are presumed to have perished. Under the current laws, that interaction was perfectly legal, Kenney said.
“The rule changes created a lot of consternation in the shipping and the sport fishing communities,” Kenney said. “The people who run charter boats don’t want to go 10 knots on the out to make some money, they want to go as fast as they possibly can.”
The NOAA update on the rule came just days before President Donald Trump began his second term.
“They kept putting it off, and now with the new administration coming in, they knew it wasn’t going anywhere so they withdrew it,” Kenney said.
The proposed rule changes received roughly 90,000 public comments, according to a statement from the NMFS in the Federal Register.
“Despite its best efforts, NMFS does not have sufficient time to finalize this regulation in this Administration due to the scope and volume of public comments,” the NMFS wrote.
Marine scientists like Kenney study the death events of the right whales very closely, often keeping track of every major human caused death and injury.
“This is a population where there are fewer than 400 of them, so every single one is important,” Kenney said.
Entanglement in fishing gear has also been a major cause of death for the right whales. More than eight out of every 10 right whales have been entangled at least once and there have been some that have been caught up several times, according to Kenney.
“The reason the whales are in trouble is because we are still killing too many of them,” Kenney said.
Despite both entanglement and ship strikes causing injuries and death, the right whale population as a whole was growing for a time, Kenney said. Now, global warming on top of the other pressures has caused a recent decline.
“Whale food supplies moved around, they are not getting enough to eat so their birth rate went down,” Kenney said.
Although recent assessments of the North Atlantic right whale have shown a population that was more stable, with such a small population it is foreseeable that the species may go extinct within the next century, according to Kenney.
“If all fisheries went to no vertical ropes in the water, no buoy lines, the number of whales that would get killed every year would go down instantly and they could cope better with climate change,” Kenney said.
With NOAA withdrawing proposals and many research projects being put on hold, there has been less of an emphasis on conservation, Kenney said.
“A living species has the right to survive,” Kenney said.
