For nearly 73 years the ban on fishing the right whales off the Atlantic Coast (the whales' natural habitat spans from the Bay of Fundy off Nova Scotia, Canada, to the coast of north Florida) has been in effect. Yet, the species still has not increased in population.

For centuries, whale hunters nicknamed the species "right whales" because their mellow personalities, shallow feeding habits and lumbering, 70-ton bodies made them the easiest, or the right, whales to kill.

Today, these whales face near extinction with only about 300 of them left on this planet. Measures to protect these animals have hit a road block inside the United States government. The measure is a proposal from U.S. government scientists to require commercial ships to slow to 10 knots inside a 30-mile "bubble" near ports where and when the right whales are migrating. Commercial ships kill about 2 right whales a year, a number that seems low but to an already dying population is just not needed.

"We think that more animals are being killed than are being born, and there are a couple of main sources of human-caused mortality that we are trying to reduce," said Jim Lecky, director of the Office of Protected Resources at the National Marine Fisheries Service. "Collisions with ships are the number one cause of mortality, and entanglement in fishing gear is the number two cause," Lecky said.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,(NOAA), is the organization in charge of researching and developing a plan to save these right whales. NOAA has been studying the speeds of these commercial boats and saw that speed was the number one killer of these whales. The NOAA found that above a speed of about 10 knots, a right whale's encounter with a large ship would probably be fatal.

NOAA is only in charge of the scientific research element of the proposed plan to save this species; the actual decision must be made by the federal Office of Management and Budget who must weigh in on the economic impact. The office was supposed to make a decision on the rule last year, but there is still no indication when it might act.

Many in the shipping industry, those commercial boats causing the decrease in right whales, oppose the speed limit, saying it would be too costly. A federal study concluded that slowing the ships near the whales’ habitat will cost the shipping companies about $112 million, or less than 1 percent of the $340 billion East Coast shipping industry income.

The shipping companies filed documents with the U.S federal government stating that the reduction in speeds would bring about "significant economic costs." Among other ideas proposed by the group was an actual increase in speeds while in the whales’ habitat.

"A quickly moving vessel will pass through the area quickly, and exposure will be small," the shipping council wrote in a document challenging the limits. "A slowly moving vessel will take longer to pass through the area, exposure will be greater, and the whale will have longer to surface or move in a way that increases jeopardy."

In response to the group's theory, Lecky said, "Would you speed through a school zone?"

Whale experts say they are frustrated by the amount of time the proposal has languished without any action from the Office of Management and Budget. Rep. Henry Waxman said the long, drawn-out process within the office and Vice President Dick Cheney's office is demoralizing career government scientists.

"I think many of the scientists who work for the government are very frustrated, and scientists outside of government are astounded to see the scientific method so abused by this administration. There's been a politicization of science to either ignore the science, rewrite it, or to suppress it," said Waxman, chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Waxman said the Bush administration thinks the "science shouldn't bind them. They're going to do what industry wants"

"Really good scientists, inside the government and outside, all agree on what to do to protect right whales, and yet, it's being thwarted at the administrative level," said Jacob Levenson, a biologist with the International Fund for Animal Welfare.

NOAA scientists say voluntary measures to slow down near whale territory have not been effective, and conservation groups agree. "The industry is not going to do the right thing unless there is a universal requirement to slow down," said Vicki Cornish, vice president of marine wildlife conservation at the Ocean Conservancy.

Still no action has been taken by the federal government to enforce these speed restrictions and the as every day passes with out protection, the right whales chances of survival is diminishing.

A U.S. Coast Guard ship assists in a 2005 attempt to disentangle a right whale from fishing gear.

Source: http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/06/05/rightwhales/index.html 

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