Save the Right Whale
In 1972, President Nixon signed the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) into law, which ever since has played a key role in protecting and recovering two of Florida’s iconic wildlife species: the manatee and the bottlenose dolphin.
Americans want to protect marine mammals. In 2017, a poll showed that nearly three-quarters of Americans want to protect marine mammals and support the MMPA. Millions of people go whale watching in the United States every year, supporting coastal communities. In 2012, the whale- and dolphin-watching industry generated approximately 2 billion dollars in revenue and supported roughly 13,000 jobs worldwide.
Another of Florida’s beloved marine mammals is the North Atlantic right whale. The upcoming Right Whale Festival in Jacksonville Beach celebrates the annual return of pregnant right whale females to Florida’s waters. Historically, right whales have migrated annually more than 1,000 miles south from their feeding grounds in Canada and New England to give birth and nurse their calves between December and March in their only known calving grounds: the warm, shallow waters off South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. Many Floridians have seen these majestic whales while boating or looking seaward from the beaches between Jacksonville and Cape Canaveral.
Despite the protections of the MMPA, the right whale is in serious trouble. Fewer than 440 right whales survive, and of these, fewer than 100 are reproductively active females. Right whale numbers drop every year as they are killed by entanglements in fishing gear and by collisions with ships. In recent years, right whale deaths have skyrocketed: from June 2017 to date, 20 right whales have been found dead. Because many dead whales are lost at sea and never found, these numbers, as devastating as they are, do not paint the full picture of the species’ dire situation.
Entanglements are the most significant threat to the whale’s survival: entanglements caused 85 percent of diagnosable right whale deaths from 2010–2015 and 83 percent of the population bears entanglement scars. Fishing gear entanglements may cause immediate drowning, life-threatening injuries and infections, and slow starvation. Even if they eventually escape entanglements, females may be so weakened by the stress that they cannot calve for years. Overall, fishing gear entanglements and vessel collisions have reduced a right whale’s life expectancy from 70 years or more to only 30–40 years.
Even worse, right whale calving rates have been dropping. In the 2016–17 calving season, only five North Atlantic right whales were born; devastatingly, one of these has already been killed by entanglement this year. Even worse, not a single new calf was observed in the 2017–18 calving season. As right whale deaths outpace births, the species may become effectively extinct, with no more reproduction, within a few short decades.
As grim as the right whale’s plight appears, it is not too late to act. At the national level, Defenders of Wildlife and its conservation allies are advocating to federal agencies, to Congress, and to the courts to reduce the risks of entanglement and vessel collisions, as well as to combat emerging threats such as seismic blasting for offshore oil and gas exploration. In just a few days, Jacksonville Beach will host the annual Right Whale Festival to raise awareness of the threats to right whales and how to protect the species from these threats.
One critical initiative is the SAVE Right Whales Act of 2018 (S. 3038/H.R. 6060), introduced in both the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives on June 8, World Oceans Day. The Act would provide $5 million a year for ten years to support research to develop, test, and implement innovative technologies and other strategies to reduce entanglements and vessel collisions. We are grateful for the leadership within Florida’s congressional delegation in co-sponsoring the Act. We look forward to working with the entire Florida delegation to rally bipartisan support for this vital effort to protect the right whale.
You can do your part to save the North Atlantic right whale by contacting your congressional representatives and asking them to co-sponsor the SAVE Right Whales Act when it is reintroduced in the next Congress.
Together, we can help ensure that the North Atlantic right whale will continue to return to our waters for future generations of Floridians to enjoy.
