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In The News 2007-2008

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Disentangled: Endangered Whales Win Uphill Battle

Roberto Durango

October 14, 2007

On October 1, NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) announced the new Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Plan (ALWTRP) regulations aimed at protecting the endangered North Atlantic right, humpback, and fin whales. Originally, the zero mortality goal of the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) required NMFS to regulate East coast commercial fisheries—the main cause of the endangered whales' mortality and serious injury—by April 2001. After years of litigation with NMFS, The Humane Society and Ocean Conservancy won the first uphill battle to secure a meaningful set of protective regulations.

New ALWTRP regulations will require East coast commercial fisheries to invest approximately $11 thousand per vessel in new gear by next year. The Maine and Downeast Lobstermen's Associations, along with other industry groups, characterized the new regulations as excessively burdensome. Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) dove into the debate by urging NMFS to extend the implementation deadline until 2010. She argued that ALWTRP regulations impose an undue burden on industry.

The Humane Society and Ocean Conservancy argue that the regulations do not go far enough to protect the endangered whales from: (1) entangling in gillnets and groundlines and (2) colliding with fishing ships. Various studies suggest that the incidental effects of commercial fishing have brought the North Atlantic right whale to the brink of extinction—there are no more than 300 such whales left in the world. Therefore, further delays in implementing ALWTRP regulations may have led to a catastrophic result.

However, the endangered whales cannot celebrate victory yet. Congressman Donald Young (R-AK) recently introduced a bill that seeks to amend the MMPA. Young's proposal would repeal the MMPA's zero mortality rate goal because such goal "is unnecessary to achieve [the] Act's goal of maintaining species and stocks at their optimum sustainable population and penalizes commercial fishermen." It is difficult to comprehend how a balancing approach will promote "sustainable population" size when a ban did not work. A new approach is clearly necessary to disentangle the dwindling North Atlantic right, humpback, and fin whale populations. The new ALWTRP regulations are good start.

Sources:

The Humane Society of the United States, The North Atlantic Right Whale: Doomed to Extinction?, July 10, 2007, available at http://www.hsus.org/marine_mammals/a_closer_look_at_marine_mammals/right_whales/the_north_atlantic_right_whale_doomed_to_extinction.html (last visited Oct. 12, 2007).

Ocean Conservancy, North Atlantic Right Whale Entangled in Fishing Gear and Bureaucratic Red Tape, Mar. 22, 2007, available at , http://www.oceanconservancy.org/site/News2?abbr=press_&page=NewsArticle&id=9541 (last visited Oct. 12, 2007).

NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service, Northern Right Whale (Eubalaena glacialis), http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/species/mammals/cetaceans/rightwhale_northern.htm (last visited Oct. 12, 2007).

Clarke Canfield, Lobstermen get rules meant to help whales, Boston Globe, Oct. 3, 2007, available at http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/10/03/lobstermen_get_rules_meant_to_help_whales/ (last visited Oct. 12, 2007).

Lorelei Stevens, Parties agree to Oct. 1 whale rule deadline, Com. Fisheries News, Vol. 34 No. 12 (Aug. 2007), available at http://www.fish-news.com/cfn/editorial/editorial_8_07/Parties_agree_to_Oct_1_whale_rule_deadline.html (last visited Oct. 12, 2007).

Press Release, Sen. Susan Collins, Senator Collins Statement On NMFS Groundline Requirement, Oct. 2, 2007, available at http://collins.senate.gov/public/continue.cfm?FuseAction=PressRoom.PressReleases&ContentRecord_id=62379b8d-802a-23ad-4a8c-ca534fe4ae35&Region_id=&Issue_id=&CFID=18393954&CFTOKEN=92552644 (last visited Oct. 12, 2007).

H.R. 1007, 110th Cong. (2007).

50 C.F.R. pts. 229, 635, and 648.