Endangered right whales return to Florida as expanded slow zones considered

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As endangered right whales make their way back to Florida waters, proposed federal slow-speed zones for ships off Florida and elsewhere in the Mid-Atlantic Ocean continue to generate controversy.

NOAA and whale advocates said the slow zones reduce the risk of vessels killing the remaining few hundred whales and must be expanded. Maritime trade advocates countered that the slowdown could impact the world’s just-in-time delivery economy as many ship captains are under pressure to get to port as fast as possible.

Fewer than 350 North American right whales remain. There’s been recent good news — four live calves born this calving season — but that doesn’t stop fears that the species still remains at risk of extinction.

“North Atlantic right whales are dying faster than they can reproduce, largely due to human causes,” the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said on its website.

Right whales have been undergoing what NOAA calls an Unusual Mortality Event since 2017. That resulted in more than one in five of the population being sick, injured or killed, the agency said. Researchers estimated fewer than 70 reproductively active females remain, and they produce fewer calves each year, threatening the species’ prospects of recovery.

Humans are still the leading cause of right whale deaths, federal biologists said, even though the whales have not been hunted commercially for more than 80 years. The primary threats to the whales are collisions with ships or boats and entanglements in fishing gear. 

So as with manatees, NOAA said slowing down boats for right whales is a must to save one of the world’s most endangered marine mammals. The slowdown would give both captains and whales enough time to steer clear of one another. But also as with the manatee slow zones, going slow maddens captains whose livelihoods depend on getting to their destinations on time.

“I think that vessel speed rule is going to be huge,” said Julie Albert, the nonprofit Marine Resources Council’s right whale conservation program coordinator. “We still really don’t know what the final decision is going to be.”

NOAA proposed extending the boundaries of the slow zones and lowering the size of vessel that must comply with current vessel speed limits along the East Coast. Currently, only vessels 65 feet or longer are affected by the right whale speed zones under NOAA rules. But if approved by NOAA, most vessels 35 feet or longer would be required to go 10 knots or slower (about 11.5 mph) within active proposed seasonal speed zones to reduce the risk of deadly collisions with right whales.