The decision made this week by NOAA Fisheries to withdraw a proposed rule to expand protections for North Atlantic right whales from deadly vessel strikes has received the ire of conservation groups who have called the move “inexcusable” and a show of “cowardice” that bows to politics rather than acting on science.

The federal agency announced on Wednesday that it was to abandon proposals to implement greater restrictions on vessel speeds and to include additional areas to which right whales are known to travel, as well as to expand the rule to include smaller vessels.

The proposed regulation, initially published in August 2022, would have implemented sweeping changes to vessel operations along the US East Coast. However, and despite receiving approximately 90,000 public comments in support of the proposal, NOAA Fisheries cited insufficient time to finalise the regulation under the current administration as its primary reason for withdrawal.

In the wake of the decision, conservation groups behind decades of campaigning have been quick to chastise the agency, lodging accusations that NOAA Fisheries simply ‘adopted inaction to run down the clock’ among a number of fiery retorts.

Since 2020, at least 16 critically endangered North Atlantic right whales have been killed or injured by blows from boats and ships. In 2024 alone, four right whales – including two females and two dependent calves – have died as a result of vessel strikes in US waters. Fewer than 70 reproductively active females now remain.

Research has shown that a vessel travelling at 10 knots or less is much less likely to harm a whale in a collision. Current regulations remain in effect. Under existing North Atlantic right whale vessel speed regulations, vessels 65-feet or longer are required to reduce speed to 10 knots in designated areas along the US East Coast during specific seasons. The regulations exempt government, law enforcement, and certain foreign vessels.

In the last eight years, North Atlantic right whales have suffered from a catastrophic Unusual Mortality Event, impacting over 20% of the species through deaths, injuries, and illnesses. Most casualties stem from vessel strikes and entanglements in fishing gear.

“The gross inaction and delays by this administration over the past four years to release this rule is inexcusable,” said Erica Fuller, senior counsel at Conservation Law Foundation. “We exhausted every avenue available to us to move this forward as the right whale body count from vessel strikes continued to grow.”

The proposed rule was issued in 2022 following a petition submitted by the Centre for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife, and Whale and Dolphin Conservation in 2012. The petition was resubmitted in 2020, asking for enhancements to the 2008 speed rule.

Emergency petitions were also submitted in 2022 and 2023, asking the agency to immediately implement measures in the species’ only known calving area in the southeastern US. The agency denied the requests, claiming it did not have the time or the resources to implement emergency measures as they worked toward a final rule.

“Accidental entanglements in fishing gear and vessel strikes are listed as primary threats to North Atlantic right whales,” said Regina Asmutis-Silvia, executive director of Whale and Dolphin Conservation. “But their actual greatest threat is political inaction and that is what will drive them to extinction.”

The North Atlantic right whale population began its sharp decline around 2010, as whales shifted habitats in a rapidly changing climate, bringing them into areas where protections from vessel strikes and accidental entanglements were not in place. Today, only around 370 whales survive.

“NOAA Fisheries has kept the right whale waiting for improved vessel strike protection for years,” said Jane Davenport, senior attorney at Defenders of Wildlife. “In attempting to make everyone happy, the agency turned years of delay into an outright denial of the needs of a critically endangered species.

“The agency has a mandate to protect the right whale, but ran out the clock, leaving the whale with an out-of-date rule that we know is not enough.” 

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