The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is going through the motions of seeking public input on a plan to abandon speed limits and instead turn to new technology to detect whales in shipping lanes. Marine conservation organizations say that the technology is far from ready. The director of a marine policy nonprofit quoted in The Vineyard Gazette on Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., called the proposal “shocking and illogical.” Deregulation as planned could sound a death knell for the species.
Under the current rules, most vessels 65 feet or longer must not go any faster than 10 knots at times when the whales are active. For the area between Montauk Point and Martha’s Vineyard, the 10-knot speed limit is in effect from Nov. 1 to April 30. This also affects the approaches to New York Harbor, Delaware and Chesapeake Bays, off Morehead City, N.C., and from Wilmington, N.C., to just south of Savannah, Ga. During the spring and summer, the limit is lifted as the whales move north to the area around Cape Cod before heading back south in the fall. Tougher regulations proposed during the Biden administration would have imposed the 10-knot limit on boats as small as 35 feet. NOAA’s position is that the new rules should weigh “both conservation and the economic vitality of coastal communities.”
The East End of Long Island has an ignominious past when it comes to right whales. With the help of native people, English colonists learned early how to pursue and kill the slow-moving creatures from small boats. The local lore is that they got their common name by being the “right” kind of whales because they floated when dead and carried a prodigious quantity of oil that could be rendered in giant pots from their blubber. The last two right whales killed by men aboard shore boats were in 1907 off Amagansett and Wainscott.
NOAA will accept public comment until June 2 at regulations.gov. To find the proposal, enter NOAA-NMFS-2026-0364 in the search box. From our perspective, new technology is welcome as an addition to the vessel speed rules, not in place of it. We hope concerned readers make their voices heard.