US sets ship speed limit to protect right whales

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

Oct 8, 12:27 PM EDT
US sets ship speed limit to protect right whales

WASHINGTON (AP) -- To save a slow-moving species of whale that lives along the Atlantic coast, the government is telling ships to slow down.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Wednesday issued a 11.5-mile-per-hour speed limit for ships 65 feet or longer that travel within 23 miles of major mid-Atlantic ports, and in areas where the North Atlantic right whale breeds, feeds and migrates. The regulation will go into effect in December.

Government marine scientists had initially proposed a 34-mile-wide coastal speed zone around the ports. That recommendation was scaled back after the White House questioned the science linking ship speed to whale deaths.

The North Atlantic right whale has been protected as an endangered species since 1970. Despite warning systems and aerial surveys to locate whales in shipping lanes, only 300-400 whales remain in the wild. The major remaining threat to the species is ship strikes, which from 1997 to 2001 killed about one to two right whales per year, according to federal officials.




Read more: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/ENDANGERED_WHALES?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2008-10-08-12-27-15

[Nambe]

1. I hope they save the right whale.

Where is the cop going to hide?

[Gillian]

2. There´s plenty of room for the wrong whale.

The cops in the yellow submarine parked in the garden next to the octopus.

[dixiegrrrrl]

3. Bush's gov. doing something...good???

Why am I automatically suspicious of that?

oh...yeah....I remember why.

[Judi Lynn]

5. Bush and his people fought like men possessed to avoid this. Apparently they decided to go along

with it in order to get a ton of people off their backs.

I've wondered if they really have any intention of enforcing it, since they originally fought like wildmen to avoid it altogether, in deference to the claims by shipping companies that lowering the speed limit wasn't convenient for them financially.

[Dem2theMax]

7. Barely. And while being pushed into it -

"Government marine scientists had initially proposed a 34-mile-wide coastal speed zone around the ports. That recommendation was scaled back after the White House questioned the science linking ship speed to whale deaths."

So the whales get 23 miles of safety. I wonder how many will be killed in that 11 mile range that would have been protected IF the idiot in the White House believed in science?

[Judi Lynn]

4. Majestic picture of a close encounter with a right whale

Majestic picture of a close encounter with a right whale
By Paul Eccleston
Last Updated: 1:01pm BST 26/09/2008



Hunters christened them right whales because they were the 'right' whale to kill.
It was the first whale to be hunted commercially mainly to provide oil for lamps.
By the early 20th century there were perhaps only a few dozen of the ocean leviathans left.
Hunting of right whales, also known as baleen whales, was finally banned in 1935.

~snip~
Since then the north Atlantic right whale has been engaged in a long and slow recovery to a population now of about 350-400.

A research team from Boston's New England Aquarium monitor them on their 1400-mile long migration journeys from feeding grounds in the Gulf of Maine on America's east coast south to waters off Georgia and Florida where the females give birth.

The scientists have amassed a gallery of 390,000 pictures of the whales.

They can recognise almost every individual by the distinctive markings they carry on their heads and by scars they bare from collisions with cargo ships and fishing boats.

Unfortunately their travels take them into busy shipping waters close to the shore and whales frequently injured or even killed in accidental collisions.

~snip~
"It look at me with great curiosity," said Handler. "But no aggression."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/09/26/eawhale126.xm

[tinymontgomery]

6. When I was in the Navy we had to set special watches

while traveling in those waters. And if we hit a whale the shit would hit the fan because of the paper work and the trouble the CO would get in.

[Matariki]

8. "Whitehouse questions Science"

I can't WAIT to NOT have to hear that anymore.

[Lochloosa]

9. I got to see a mother and her calf about 5 years ago.

Off the coast of Jacksonville. They come here in the winter to give birth.

It's against the law to approach them, so the captain idled down. She approached our boat and hung out for about 20 mins. Somehow the boat got between her and the calf and that was it. She went under the boat, came up next to her calf and left.

What a beautiful creature.

[navarth]

10. glad we're doing SOMETHING right.