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BY TOM BELL
Staff Writer 05/12/2008

Staff Writer

The shipping industry has succeeded in doing what Maine's lobster industry has only dreamed of: It has put a federal plan to protect the endangered North Atlantic right whale on hold.

While lobstermen this summer are spending millions of dollars to buy "whale safe" gear to comply with new federal rules, a White House office is blocking implementation of a plan drafted by federal scientists that would force ships to slow down when traveling through areas where the whales are known to be present.

The Office of Management and Budget is challenging the plan's scientific conclusions, according to documents released recently by the Union of Concerned Scientists and Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif.

Maine fishermen, who are working to delay the rules on fishing gear, worry that the shipping industry will avoid regulation. That could lead to more whale deaths from ship strikes, and that could bring more restrictions on the lobster industry, fishermen say. Some conservationist groups, scientists and political officials are also concerned.

The fishermen claim ship strikes cause more whale deaths than fishing gear does, and that it would be unfair to let the shipping industry escape while burdening fishermen with costly restrictions.

"Any mortality to any individual whale hurts us all," said Patrice McCarron, executive director of the Maine Lobstermen's Association. "It's not a good way to protect a species. You need to be exploring all the risk and not letting a big piece off the hook."

Kristan Porter, a lobsterman from Cutler, estimates that the new gear will cost him $10,000 to $15,000 annually.

"If we are going to have a hardship, then they should, too," he said.

Whale-sized facts

About 350 North Atlantic right whales exist today. The species is in such a perilous state that the National Marine Fisheries Service has ruled that fishing and ship strikes cannot be allowed to kill a single right whale.

The plan drafted by federal scientists would require ships to cut their speed to 10 knots in certain areas during times of the year when right whales are known to be present, and also whenever whales are sighted in unusual places.

But shipping interests say that slower speeds would increase costs and make it harder to maneuver ships.

They have found some allies in the White House.

Documents released last week show that there has been an inter-agency conflict between scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which developed the plan; and their critics at the Office of the Vice President and the president's Council of Economic Advisers.

The White House budget office is supposed to examine whether NOAA scientists correctly analyzed the economic impact of the rule, said Vicki Cornish, vice president of marine wildlife conservation for the Ocean Conservancy, a marine conservation organization.

Instead, the office is now looking at whether the economic cost of the rule is worth the conservation benefits of saving the right whale, she said.

Scientists who have worked on the issue are angry, said Amy Knowlton, a senior research scientist with the New England Aquarium Right Whale Project.

"The executive branch of our government seems to be abusing their power to question their own federal agencies about the peer-reviewed science that has been done to support this rule-making," she said. "It's pretty appalling."

White House officials have not stated publicly why the delay is occurring.

In April, the Senate Commerce Committee endorsed a bill co-sponsored by Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, that would require the Office of Management and Budget to release the ship-strike rule within 30 days of enactment or June 1, 2008, whichever date is earlier. Rep. Tom Allen, D-1st District, has introduced a similar bill in the House.

Federal officials estimate that the cost to the East Coast shipping industry for compliance with the ship-strike rule would be $100 million, or about three-tenths of 1 percent of the industry's $300 billion value, Allen said in an e-mail.

By contrast, the Maine Lobstermen's Association estimates that replacing floating line with sinking line will cost as much as $20 million - 8 percent of the industry's $249 million revenue last year.

"Currently, the burden to protect right whales falls entirely and unfairly on hardworking lobstermen, while the shipping industry, which clearly poses the greatest threat, gets a free pass," Allen said.

Ancoring the deal

Efforts to protect the right whale are closely watched in Maine because the whales travel to the Gulf of Maine every summer to breed in the Bay of Fundy.

This October, new rules go in place to ban the use of floating groundlines - the lines that connect traps to one another on the ocean bottom - in off-shore waters. Lobstermen say new lines are expensive and will get easily tangled and damaged on Maine's rocky ocean bottom. They also worry that snagged lines will cause injury.

Since 1970, there have been 63 documented whale entanglements, seven of which were definitely fatal and 14 possibly fatal, according to the New England Aquarium. During that same period, there have been 54 ship strikes, 31 of which were definitely fatal and four possibly fatal.

But those statistics may not be a true indicator of the entanglement threat, Knowlton said. Whales that become entangled in gear often become so emaciated that they sink when they die, while whales hit by ships have more fat and float.

"Both ship strikes and entanglements continue to be a chronic problem facing this species," she said.

The World Shipping Council, in its 2006 testimony on the proposed rules, said there is no statistically meaningful data indicating that the proposed speed limits would prevent ship strikes or lessen their severity.

Moreover, the council said that reduced vessel speed for large ships results in reduced maneuverability, and that 10 knots is unsafe in some situations, increasing the likelihood of vessel collisions, groundings or serious environmental incidents.

Skip Carter, a lobsterman from Scarborough, said he's not surprised the shipping industry is successfully delaying the rules.

"They have the money, and they have a lobby, for sure," he said while working on his fishing gear on Portland's Widgery Wharf last week. "That's how things work."

The right whale was named for being the "right" whale to hunt. It swam close to shore, moved slowly and floated when dead. Its thick layer of blubber yielded up to 70 barrels of oil, which was used for lamps and machine lubrication. Its long baleen, used by the whale for straining plankton, was used in making bed springs, buggy whips and the stays in corsets.

By the late 1800s, right whales had been hunted to near extinction. The League of Nations in 1935 banned the hunting of right whales in all oceans.

But the same characteristics that made them easy to hunt now make them vulnerable to ship strikes and getting tangled in fishing gear.

Right whales are skimmers, filter feeders that swim slowly with their mouths open as they eat plankton and tiny crustaceans. Occasionally, they also feed along the ocean bottom.

They spend the winter in warm waters to the south and migrate to the Gulf of Maine in late winter and early spring. They travel over large parts of the gulf during the summer.

An unusually large concentration of rare right whales gathered last month to feed in Cape Cod Bay, but scientists reported Wednesday that the whales have left, citing aerial surveys and acoustic buoys that listen for the whales.

Scientists said they've likely moved north and east of the Cape Cod Bay to seek higher densities of plankton.

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