There’s a good plan to protect the endangered North Atlantic right whale, but the government is not implementing it. A recent Washington Post article explains why.
In the story, Washington Post reporter Juliet Eilperin explains that last year the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) proposed a rule to protect right whales. There are only 400 of these creatures left (about 300 in the western North Atlantic, according to the NOAA Web site) and early this year the agency said the species could not afford any more untimely deaths. The death of one more pregnant female right whale, NOAA estimated, could mean the end of the species.
The proposed rule, which took five years to draft and emerged out of a pool of 100 policy options, would make ships slow down to 10 knots or less in certain East Coast waters during the part of the year when right whales migrate.
The biggest threats to the right whale are collisions with ships and entanglement in fishing gear.
The Bush administration appears to be dragging its feet on the rule and has not yet instituted it. Eilperin notes that the Office of Management and Budget has been studying the economic impacts of the rule since February 2007. Those impacts are estimated to be $116 million per year, or four-hundredths of one percent of the $300 billion East Coast shipping trade.
According to NOAA scientists and other experts cited in the story, the science underlying this rule is sound. The government, however, seems to be more worried about rule’s small economic impact than the literal impact of ships on the endangered right whale population.
A balanced approach to the issue would lead to the conclusion that the rule should be implemented, because not doing so would likely lead to the whales’ demise, whereas the rule’s impact on commerce and the economy will be miniscule.
If we can help another species with very little impact to our own, shouldn’t we do so?
- - - - -
Postscript: beaked whales get a study
Meanwhile, the government has started to study how the beaked whale reacts to sonar and other loud noises. In 2000, 17 beaked whales beached themselves after a Navy sonar exercise; six ending up dying. This event first brought the issue to public attention.
Now Navy and NOAA scientists are attaching motion detectors to beaked whales they spot on the surface. The detectors allow scientists to track the movements of the whales and test their sensitivity to sound.
Critics say the study may not go far enough because it won’t test sonar signals as strong as the ones employed by the Navy. But the detectors are new technology and the study is a start in gathering data about this little-understood species. The study acknowledges that there is relationship between Navy sonar testing and the whale beachings, but scientists do not know
what the causal chain of events is.
According to the article, the beaked whale population may be in the hundreds of thousands.
Right whales need to be protected. Beaked whales need to be protected. The Bush administration needs to get on track and do the right thing before it is too late. Thank you.
I don’t know what it is about these marvelous creature of the deep that is so touching. Maybe it’s that they are so big … and mammals, like us … and, as ocean-dwellers, they must once have been so free.
I agree … they should be protected. It’s a crime to see them harmed.
Deborah
In the final analysis, IMHO, please note that the human community may be governed by a power structure that chooses to protect nothing else, ultimately, but the unsustainable growth of the economic globalization. Despite all their posing, the leaders of the global economy have its unbridled growth continuously in mind. That their relentless drive for endless growth of the global economy is patently unsustainable is not something you will ever hear them discuss. Afterall, SILENCE IS GOLDEN.