GOM - Sharing the Ocean With the Rice’s Whale

A recent NOAA decision to deny Gulf of Mexico speed restrictions to protect the Rice’s whale is being hailed as a win for the yachting and boating industry – but industry leaders say it’s not a competition, and they believe they can be part of a solution that protects the industry and whales.

Ten knots — that’s how fast environmental groups want boats to travel through parts of the Gulf of Mexico to protect the newly discovered Rice’s whale.

In a win for the boating industry, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced in October that it denied a petition from those groups to impose vessel speed limits.

“It was welcome to see them deny that,” said John R. Depersenaire, sustainability officer with the Viking Yacht Company. “Certainly, it’s not the end of the issue; it simply means they’re not moving forward with the recommendations within the petition at this time.”

Already, vessels 65 feet and larger are restricted to the 10-knot limit for most of the year while along the Atlantic coast. There are also speed limits to protect humpback whales in waters off the California coast.

But some in the yachting industry fear that with these restrictions, it could have major repercussions on the industry, impacting tens of thousands of vessels and billions of dollars. So even with NOAA denying the petition, it’s certainly not the end of the issue.

“It’s not just about us being upset [that] we can’t go fast,” Depersenaire said. “We clearly explain that there’s a whole host of consequences that come from a 10-knot speed restriction on boaters.”

Speed Limits

Currently, there are speed vessel rules in the Atlantic to protect the endangered Northern Atlantic right whale; vessels 65 feet or longer must maintain a speed of 10 knots or less in seasonal management areas during certain times of the year. NOAA uses satellite technology and speed radar to identify speeders. In the 2022 to 2023 season, the agency doled out 53 fines totaling $882,806; on average, each vessel received a $16,656 fine.

This summer, NOAA proposed imposing the rule on boats 35 feet and longer. According to a press release from the National Sportfishing Association, the recreational fishing industry generates $6.3 billion and supports 61,000 jobs in the area. There have also been five collisions with North Atlantic right whales by boat less than 65 feet since 2008; compared to the 5.1 million fishing trips in that time period, the chance of hitting a whale is “less than one in a million.”

A veteran boat captain (who asked to remain anonymous) shared that in 2021, he unknowingly violated the speed limit while offshore of Florida and Georgia. However, the notices were sent to the boat owner’s mailbox and “no one really knew what they were.” The boat captain was not aware of the three notices until 2022. Months after that, the boat captain and the owner received a package of legal information regarding their prosecution. The fine came out to $22,000, he said.

“I think everybody thought it didn’t apply to us, that it wasn’t the goal that this legislation was trying to achieve was to stop us little boats who are always kind of running around going fishing and doing our thing,” he said.

The captain explained that he and others were under the incorrect assumption that the vessel speeds were for large cargo ships, not private sport and fishing boats. The rules, he said, have been making a negative impact on recreational boating and related businesses, as the slow speeds have deterred people from going out on the water.

“I understand the nature of the policy and what they’re trying to achieve, and I don’t disagree with it but I think they do cause harm by turning a natural group of allies into creating an adversarial environment,” he said. “We all want the same thing. I don’t think you could find one person that says we’re for dead Rice’s whales, but at what cost? It just doesn’t seem like an intelligent way to collaborate.”

Meet Rice’s Whale

In 2019, environmental groups successfully petitioned to have Gulf of Mexico Bryde’s whales identified as an endangered species. With new attention paid to the species, a paper was released in 2020 arguing that a group originally thought to be a subspecies was a separate species — after evaluation by the Society of Marine Mammalogy and an independent group of taxonomists, they agreed. In 2022, the Endangered Species Act was updated to include the newly named Rice’s whale (in honor of the late marine biologist Dale Rice) and their habitat labeled as critical.

“This is a very endangered whale; we estimate there’s between 50 and 100 of them,” said Grant Baysinger, a contractor in the marine mammal branch of NOAA’s southeast regional office. “It’s literally every time we talk to our scientists at the southeast center, we learn something new about the whale.”