On June 6, the head of the National Marine Manufacturers Association called on Congress to fund research into the real-time technological monitoring of marine mammals, as a way to make sure 63,000 boaters from Massachusetts to Florida continue to have access to the Atlantic Ocean.
Such research is needed as an alternative to a plan by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which wants to impose “regulations representing the greatest restriction of public access to our nation’s cherished waterways in our time,” Frank Hugelmeyer, president and CEO of the NMMA, testified before the U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources Subcommittee on Water, Wildlife and Fisheries.
The oversight hearing was about a NOAA proposal that would restrict boats as small as 35 feet to a speed of 10 knots along much of the Eastern Seaboard for long stretches of the year, as a way to protect endangered North Atlantic right whales. “If allowed to proceed, this proposal will have devastating impacts on thousands of jobs and small businesses supported by boating-fueled economies,” Hugelmeyer testified.
The hearing came almost a year after NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service, in July 2022, said it needed to halt an alarming drop in the population of endangered North Atlantic right whales. The agency proposed a substantial expansion of 10-knot speed restriction zones along the U.S. Eastern Seaboard and an increase in the number of boats affected. Instead of only boats 65 feet and larger, the proposed speed restrictions would include boats down to 35 feet. Go-slow zones would also be expanded to up to seven months of the year for much of the U.S. Atlantic coast, out to 90 miles offshore.
Soundings first reported on the proposal in September 2022, noting that the NMMA, BoatUS, the American Sportfishing Association and other leading marine organizations felt blindsided by what they called the government’s “complete lack of coordination with affected industries.” In March 2023, Soundings reported on the high number of public comments the government received in opposition to the proposal, as well as renewed calls from conservation groups to force boaters to slow down.
The June 6 hearing showed a clear divide between political parties on the issue. U.S. Rep. Bruce Westerman, an Arkansas Republican and chairman of the Committee on Natural Resources, said, “This is what happens when you get a bureaucratic administrative state that’s out of control.” He called himself a lifelong outdoorsman and said such people understand the importance of conservation in the environment. He added, “NOAA chose to ram policies through without any regard for their impacts, acting like they live in their own fiefdom over there.”
U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman of California, the committee’s top-ranking Democrat, said that if the government fails to act with regard to vessel strikes, the North Atlantic right whale could be extinct by 2037. He called Westerman’s comments “extreme hyperbole” that “does a disservice to this complicated issue.” He accused Republicans of having a “split-personality disorder” because they want to protect whales when it stops offshore wind development, but not when it comes to the animals’ leading cause of death.
Janet Colt, deputy administrator of NOAA, held firm in her testimony about the need for new speed restrictions. She said vessel strikes and entanglements are driving the population decline. “We cannot afford to cause even one mortal take per year of a North Atlantic right whale and achieve our recovery goals.”
After the speed-reduction proposal was published last year, fishing operators and builders of larger boats such as New Jersey-based Viking Yachts were particularly critical of the findings. Normally, according to Viking’s director of government affairs and sustainability, John DePersenaire, anglers and boatbuilders work through regulatory changes under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, which sets up a lengthy and stakeholder-inclusive process when a change is proposed. In this case, stakeholders didn’t know details until NOAA published the proposal. The marine industry was then given a 60-day comment period, ultimately extended to 90 days, after key players asked for more time.
In March, Viking and its partners on the issue announced the creation of a Whale and Vessel Safety Task Force. Rather than simply lobby for a repeal of speed limits, WAVS hopes to harness technology so that a reliable whale-detection network can be pushed out to boaters’ cellphones or chartplotters.
WAVS also hopes to find ways to increase compliance with existing speed limits. A recent study by Oceana found that in some parts of existing whale-management areas, perhaps 90 percent of ships already subject to regulations were speeding. “We don’t want to hit whales. We just don’t,” DePersenaire says, “It’s catastrophic for our boats, for our passengers and for the whale. We don’t want to be part of the demise of a species going extinct.”
All parties agree that the North Atlantic right whale, as a species, is in danger of dying out. The animals were a favorite target of whaling ships until protective laws were enacted in the 1940s. The Endangered Species Act of 1970 added protections, but by the early 1990s, only about 275 of the whales remained worldwide. Around 2011, their numbers neared 500, but ship strikes and fishing-gear entanglement led to another decline. Recent studies show that as many as 90 percent of all Northern Atlantic right whales have sustained entanglement injuries, some severe, nearly all traumatizing.
Between 2008 and 2022, there were 12 documented right whale deaths from vessel strikes. Vessels smaller than 65 feet accounted for five of them. Today, around 340 of the animals remain. A mere 72 are females of reproduction age—and are reproducing at far lower numbers than biologists say it will take to re-establish the species.
NOAA’s proposed rule won’t solve the problem, DePersenaire says: “They didn’t put much thought into how they could nuance those regulations to accommodate the risk for a 35-foot center console, as opposed to 1,000-foot container ship.” DePersenaire favors the solution Hugelmeyer proposed on Capitol Hill, bringing together NOAA and industry stakeholders to harness technology and create real-time whale intel on the water.
That technology is evolving. Biologist Emily Charry Tissier cofounded the company Whale Seeker in Montreal, Canada, to speed up whale tracking by aerial photography. By pairing an artificial-intelligence engine called Möbius with human biologists, the company says, an aerial population survey that once took three years can now take hours. She hopes to integrate additional technology, such as drone survey photography, into a real-time network that could be pushed onto chartplotters aboard boats.
Greg Reilly, marine campaigner for the International Fund for Animal Welfare, supports the WAVS initiative. His organization helped develop Whale Alert, a free app that lets boaters report whale sightings to crowdsource information—in conjunction with data from official sources—about where all boats need to slow down. “All this stuff gets reported, often into different databases,” he says. “So, our app developer works to aggregate all that and then push it out to the public.”
In the near future, infrared cameras, drones, forward-facing sonar and even radar, calibrated to detect the spray from whale spouts, might also be brought to bear. Whale-mounted AIS trackers were suggested as an idea earlier this year, but they are now deemed unlikely, given that trackers placed in a whale’s fin can get infected.
At the New England Aquarium, associate vice president of ocean conservation science Jessica Redfern says she’s heartened by the appearance of the task force. However, she adds, whale avoidance will simply have to become part of the marine industry’s dialogue, and increased speed restrictions might still be in store. “Why are we so focused on losing one whale?” she asks. “It’s because there’s 72 breeding females. It’s because the risk of extinction for this species is real.”
This article was originally published in the August 2023 issue.
