Dot Earth Blog: The Right Rules for Keeping Ships from Hitting Right Whales

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has built a solid case for making permanent the rules the agency implemented five years ago to limit collisions between ships and endangered North Atlantic right whales along the East Coast.

This whale population, hunted nearly to extinction generations ago, is slowly recovering, with an estimated 450 right whales dividing their time between winter calving areas off the southeastern United States and summer feeding grounds from New England north.

Here?s an excerpt from the agency news release, describing how the rules have proved effective at a small cost:

Right whales are among the most endangered species in the world, and are highly vulnerable to ship collisions. The rules, part of NOAA?s longstanding efforts to recover right whales, are currently scheduled to expire in December 2013. NOAA?s proposal to make them permanent, which includes a 60-day public comment period, was filed at the Federal Register today.

The existing rules, which reduce an ocean-going vessel?s speed to 10 knots or less during certain times and locations along the East Coast from Maine to Florida, have reduced the number of whales struck by ships since 2008, when the speed limits began. No right whale ship strike deaths have occurred in Seasonal Management Areas since the rule went into place. Modeling studies indicate the measures have reduced the probability of fatal ship strikes of right whales by 80 to 90 percent.

Also, NOAA?s revised estimates indicate that the restrictions cost the shipping industry and other maritime communities about one-third of original 2008 projections. NOAA scientists say that industry participation and compliance is high, and that in most cases vessels have incorporated speed restrictions into their standard operations and voyage planning. [Read the rest.]

I see little downside in extending these rules well into the future. You can comment officially by clicking here, or ? of course ? below.

You can see a very different effort to conserve this whale species in this 2011 post with remarkable video of Georgia marine officials freeing a young right whale from fishing gear.

Source: http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/05/the-right-rules-for-keeping-ships-from-hitting-right-whales/?partner=rss&emc=rss

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