By Star-Ledger Guest Columnist Sue Russell
In early February, a chronically entangled female North Atlantic right whale calf died in lobster trap-pot lines near Martha’s Vineyard. Authorities said that she had suffered “for a prolonged period of time. ” Later in February, another female was found off the Georgia coast.
The gentle North Atlantic right whale is so near extinction it cannot spare one death per year. Since December, five of the whales have been found dead. Scientists warn that the whale will be functionally extinct by 2035.
The chief causes of death for the right whales are the usual suspects: entanglement in fishing gear and vessel strikes. The whale’s Atlantic Coast migratory route is an obstacle course of recreational and commercial vessels; tantamount to crossing the Jersey Turnpike at rush hour.
The U.S. government is enabling the right whale’s tragic slide to extinction. Greasing the way, in fact. The riddle is why the Biden Administration’s National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, known as NOAA, continues to sit on life-saving rules.
The answer is politics, beginning with Congress’s use of FY federal budgets for an end-run around the pesky Endangered Species Act. And let’s not forget pandering.
Susan Collins (R-ME) led the Maine delegation in amending the FY 2023 omnibus budget bill to block NOAA from issuing improved rules to prevent entanglement until 2028, withholding protection for six years from a whale that will be extinct in eleven.
Congress denied protection as scientists warned that current U.S. and Canadian policies allow at least five times the rate of entanglement the right whale can survive. Earning the sobriquet, “Extinction Democrat,” Senate leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) inserted the language.
Related whale news:
Ship Strikes: collisions between whales and vessels
The threat from vessel strikes – Whale and Dolphin Conservation
New technology helps avoid whale-ship collisions (Video report)
Now, a ban on NOAA vessel strike rules is buried in the pending FY 2024 omnibus. Completing the circle, it would tie NOAA’s hands in expanding the 10-knot speed limit to vessels 35 feet and above. The proposed rule defines and expands high-risk zones, mostly at off-season times of the year. For cover, the sport fishing industry says NOAA cannot act until locator technology that does not exist is “fully” deployed. That’s years of research and development for a whale that is out of time.
The blocked vessel strike rule is enormously important: Oceana studies show that 90 percent of vessels exceed speed limits in place to protect whales and that reduced speed may cut fatalities by 80 to 90 percent.
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