WHY LET A LITTLE EXTINCTION GET IN THE WAY OF BIG BUSINESS?

 

Today’s edition of One Angler’s Voyage isn’t going to focus on fish, at least not for a while, although it will eventually get around to the topic.  But it’s going to start by addressing a much larger matter.

That matter is whales.  In particular, Atlantic right whales.

Such whales were once common along the North American coast, so common that, when the original European settlers entered into treaties withthe native tribes, the rights to beached whales were an important part of thenegotiations.  Later, the right whales, which were abundant, docile, filled with oily blubber, and floated after being killed—traits that made them the “right whale” to pursue—formed the basis of New England’s nascent whaling industry.

But that industry was unregulated, and the whalers had unlimited access to the right whale resource, so the creature’s fate was written in stone.  Its population collapsed, and the industry that it supported was forced to turn to other whales in other waters, often on the opposite side of the world.  

In 1970, the North Atlantic right whale was listed as “endangered” under the federal Endangered Species Act.  Today, the species remains endangered, with a total population thought to number less than 350, with fewer than 100 of those being females of breeding age.  Although the population seemed to be slowly increasing between 1980 and 2010, it has declined sharply since then, falling back almost to its 1980 level.  

Since 2017, 34 right whales—about ten percent of the population—have been killed and another 21 seriously injured; 36 additional whales suffered sublethal injuries.  While the causes of 13 of the deaths remains unknown, scientists have determined that 11 died as a result of vessel strikes, 9 from entanglements, and 1 from natural causes.

The National Marine Fisheries Service issued final regulations intended to reduce right whale entanglements in crab and lobster gear a little over one year ago. 

Last summer, the agency took preliminary steps to address the vessel strike issue, expanding current 10-knot maximum speed zones and reducing the minimum size of the vessels to which such speed zones apply from 65 to 35 feet.  In explaining the need for the new rule, NMFS noted that

“Vessels less than 65 feet in length account for five of the 12 documented lethal strike events in U.S. waters since the first speed rule went into effect in 2008, demonstrating the significant risk this vessel size class presents and the need to extend the speed restrictions to include smaller vessels.”

The proposed speed zones would extend from Maine through the upper section of North Carolina’s Outer Banks for the period November 1-May 31; along most of the rest of the North Carolina coast from November 1 through April 30; from southernmost North Carolina to northern Georgia from November 1 through April 15; and from southern Georgia to the northeastern Florida coast from November 15 through April 15.  

While the speed restrictions would have a fairly minimal impact on recreational fisheries in northern waters, being in effect when most anglers are either finishing up their striped bass season or have already taken their boats out of the water for the winter, they would likely have a significant detrimental effect on fisheries in the lower mid-Atlantic and the Southeast.

Needless to say, the recreational boating industry was not pleased with the proposal.

It’s very possible that at least some of that displeasure was justified; it’s possible that smaller reduced-speed areas, or areas that shift with the known presence of whales, or some other less restrictive means of protecting the endangered cetaceans could be put in place, and if the industry took that tack in their comments, you wouldn’t be reading this blog. 

Instead, the industry’s approach was very different, focusing not on the plight of the whales, but on the plight of boatbuilders’ cash flow.  As the Asbury Park Press reported,

“A coalition of trade groups representing the industry compiled an analysis of National Marine Fisheries Service data, the fisheries arm of NOAA, and that found approximately 5.1 million recreational fishing trips were taken in the proposed zones by vessels 35 to 65 feet in length since 2008.  Assuming all five right whale strikes during that time were from recreational vessels, and that all these vessels were on fishing trips, the chance of a 35- to 65-foot recreational vessel striking a right whale during a fishing trip is less than one-in-a-million, the group argued.”

And that statement is true, if one focuses on the vessels and the trips, and not on the whales.

But when you’re talking about extinction, it is the impact of threats on the whales that matters.  And when you look at things from the whales’ perspective, but otherwise make the same assumptions that were made in the industry association’s comments, the odds of something bad happening aren’t more than one in a million—the odds of a particular boat on any given trip striking and killing a right whale--but around 5 deaths in a population of less than 350, or something less than one in 70, of any given whale being killed by a smaller vessel

While that may still seem a reasonably remote possibility, we have to remember that an Atlantic right whale can live for more than 70 years, and that once they survive their first year of life, they face very few threats from the natural world.  While females mature at about 10 years of age and, under ideal conditions, can birth a calf every three years, the stresses they face from entanglement and other human-related injuries have resulted in a longer, six to 10-year interval between births, which represents a sharp reduction in the fertility rate.  In addition, because human-related injuries have reduced the average female’s lifespan to just 45, rather than 70-plus, years, the male/female ratio in the population has been skewed, with males outnumbering females by more than two to one.

Under such circumstances, the loss of even a single individual to human-related causes can represent a meaningful loss to the stock.  The National Marine Fisheries Service has stated that

“The North Atlantic right whale is one of the world’s most endangered large whale species,”

and some conservation groups warn that the species could become extinct by 2040—less than two decades from now.

Yet, based on comments made by its president, Frank Hugelmeyer, the biggest concern of the National Marine Manufacturer’s Association isn’t that the North Atlantic right whale could forever disappear from the Earth’s seas, but that

“NOAA’s proposed rule unfortunately underestimates the very real economic impacts on the recreational boating and fishing industry, the largest contributor to the nation’s $689 billion outdoor recreation economy.  The rule will bring the vast majority of boating and fishing trips along the Atlantic Coast to a screeching halt, impacting millions of Americans who go boating every year.”

That’s a dubious statement, as it ignores the high percentage of recreational boating and fishing trips that take place inside coastal bays, sounds, and estuaries, which would be completely unaffected by the proposed speed restrictions, the number of trips that take place within five or ten miles of a vessel’s home inlet, rendering whale-related speed restrictions relatively unimportant and, although they have almost no relevance to the angling community but are nonetheless "boating...trips,' the number of trips that are made aboard sailboats, that aren’t in a hurry to get anywhere and seldom sail much above 10 knots even when not in a restricted speed area.  

Corporate hyperbole always strives to make things seem far worse than they actually are, yet the Center for Sportfishing Policy, an umbrella organization representing the recreational fishing and boating industries, along with a handful of closely affiliated anglers’ rights organizations, has jumped on the anti-speed zone bandwagon.  Its president, Jeff Angers, complained that

“Protecting right whales is urgent, and we are ready to do our part.  NMFS’ failed due diligence excluded from the conversation America’s recreational anglers and boaters—the most affected stakeholders.  The agency needs to get it right.  Based on actual interactions between recreational boats and right whales, the proposed restrictions on vessels 35-65 feet are unjustifiable, ineffective and unnecessarily costly to America’s economy.”

And perhaps Angers has some sort of a point.  After all, we don’t boil right whales down for their oil any more, and they’re not common enough to be seen on most whale-watching tours, so they really don’t have too much economic value these days.  So maybe, from some warped perspective, it does make more sense to let the whales go extinct in order to avoid unnecessary economic costs.

National Marine Manufacturers’ Hugelmeyer seems to endorse such a view, urging that

“Every employee in the entire industry needs to respond to this to protect their jobs and protect their industry,”

by, we can only assume, preventing NMFS from protecting the whales.

And this is where the fish come in, because groups like the Center for Sportfishing Policy and the National Marine Manufacturers Association don’t just spend their time trying to frustrate right whale conservation.  They spend a lot of time trying to frustrate fisheries conservation, too.

A few years ago, the same coalition of organizations supported something called the Modernizing Recreational Fisheries Management Act—dubbed the “Modern Fish Act” for short—which sought to weaken the conservation and management provisions of federal fisheries law in order to allow larger recreational harvests and an expansion of the recreational fishing and boating industry.  Thom Dammrich, then the president of the National Marine Manufacturers’ Association, observed that

“For far too long, the federal fishery management system has limited access for America’s recreational anglers and boaters due to faulty data and misguided regulations, which in turn have jeopardized the economic vitality of the recreational boating industry.  On behalf of the estimated 650,000 workers the recreational boating industry supports, we are eager to continue working with our allies in both chambers of Congress to get this important legislation to the president’s desk.”

The similarity to the rhetoric used to oppose proposed right whale protections are strikingly clear.

At about the same time, down in the Gulf of Mexico, the same coalition advocated for, and then celebrated, a temporary rule that would allow private boat recreational anglers to substantially overfish their annual red snapper catch limit, with the Center for Sportfishing Policy’s Angers declaring that

“The federal fisheries management system is failing recreational anglers on many levels, and the red snapper is the ‘poster fish’ of the quagmire.  The temporary rule directly addresses this problem, giving millions of recreational anglers in the Gulf of Mexico an opportunity to enjoy America’s natural resources and giving the Gulf economy a much needed shot in the arm.”

Such language, with its reference to NMFS “failing” recreational anglers and its elevating economic concerns over conservation imperatives, echoes the comments that Angers made with respect to the proposed right whale protections.

In 1908, the pioneering American naturalist and ocean explorer William Beebe, who descended half a mile beneath the ocean’s surface in the bathysphere, observed that

“The beauty and genius of a work of art may be reconceived, though its first material expression be destroyed, a vanished harmony may yet again inspire the composer; but when the last individual of a race of living beings breathes no more, another heaven and another earth must pass before such a one can be again.”

Or to paraphrase, in more modern terms,

“Extinction is forever.”

Yet it appears that the recreational boating and fishing industries are willing to increase the chance of the Atlantic right whale becoming extinct, just to prevent a decline in sales.  Such callousness pretty well explains why such organizations should not have a say in endangered species policy.

But their indifference to the very survival of a species also provides a very good window why such groups, and particularly the Center for Sportfishing Policy, shouldn’t be heeded when it comes to somewhat less critical issues of fishery management:  When the needs of conservation and profit conflict, they will always subordinate the needs of the resource to those of their bank accounts.  Such approach may very well serve their short-term interests, but it does absolutely nothing for ours.