The Trump administration’s proposal to cut back on vessel speed regulations that have been in place to protect right whales has come under scrutiny from conservation advocates.
In a notice earlier this month, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced it would start taking public comments on the possibility of stripping away the speed regulations for vessels along the east coast.
The vessel speed rules were a hot topic in the past when the Biden administration proposed making them stricter, which could have forced the Steamship Authority ferries to the Vineyard and Nantucket to slow down.
Under the current rules, most boats 65 feet or longer need to reduce speeds to 10 knots in different zones during different times of year, based on the historical patterns of the endangered North Atlantic right whale. In 2022, NOAA proposed making the rules even stricter by requiring boats as small as 35 feet long to the 10 knot speed limit, and expanding the areas to include Vineyard Sound.
The change rang alarm bells on the Cape and Islands, especially for the region’s ferry services.
The Steamship Authority estimated that the change would have eliminated about one seventh of the round trips on the Vineyard route, where ferries travel at about 13 knots. It would have resulted in even deeper cuts on the Nantucket route, likely eliminating the fast ferry service altogether.
That proposal was later dropped,
The new plan from NOAA is a 180-degree turn from the 2022 proposal, whale advocates said. Instead, NOAA is interested in getting people’s thoughts about implementing new technology that could detect whales. In the agency’s eyes, this tech could make it unnecessary to have the speed limits in place for extended periods of time.
“NOAA encourages economic prosperity in our oceans, and advancements in technology are increasingly allowing maritime commerce to coexist with endangered species,” said Neil Jacobs, the NOAA administrator. “This action is an important step in implementing the President’s vision of adopting modern technologies, supporting American industry, and promoting efficient and effective regulations.”
NOAA described the existing rules as “unnecessary regulatory and economic burdens” and said it will continue to focus on developing engineering approaches and other advance tools to reduce the risk of vessels strikes, which are one of the main causes of injuries and deaths for right whales.
There are only about 380 right whales left in the world and the protections for the species have been increased over the years — sometimes to the anger of fishermen and boaters.
The New England Aquarium said it will provide comments on the plan, and noted that speed limits have been essential to ensuring the recovery of the species.
“Technology-based approaches may become a valuable tool for reducing vessel strikes, but these approaches need to be further developed and evaluated to determine their effectiveness in reducing risk to right whales,” the aquarium wrote in a statement.
NOAA was particularly interested in approaches that would be able to trigger slow zones if whales are found in the area in real time, and partnered with The MITRE Corporation to prepare a report on how far along the technology was to meet that goal.
The company looked at 11 different possibilities, and gauged how well they could detect whales, be used on individual vessels, and implemented in a regional way to cut down the risk of boat strikes.
While some strategies, such as passive acoustic monitoring and aerial surveys, have been used routinely for years to monitor the whales, many of the other tech options, such as high radar, satellite imaging and LIDAR, were not ready to be used, the report found.
That the government’s own consultant was not convinced that many of the proposed technologies weren’t yet practical to use, but the agency was still moving forward with public comment, was concerning to Regina Asmutis-Silvia, the executive director of Whale and Dolphin Conservation, a nonprofit that’s dedicated to welfare of cetaceans.
“It’s shocking and illogical,” she said.
She wasn’t against employing the technology, but felt that the guard rails or speed restrictions were still needed.
“We don’t even have a plan B, we just want tot take this away,” she said.
It’s not clear if the push for deregulation would change anything for the Steamship Authority, which is considering the proposal.
“We saw the new proposal, and we’re reviewing it before [determining] if we’ll offer comment and, if so, what it would be,” said spokesperson Sean Driscoll.
Though their future is still precarious, right whale advocates said the species is showing some signs of rebound, which is offering some of the first signs of hope in years. Researchers have identified 22 calves so far this calving season, and there has been a trend of slow growth for the population over the last several years.
Jane Davenport, at the Defenders of Wildlife, said that the administration’s intention to deregulate could put that all in jeopardy.
“Although developing technologies may one day augment mandatory speed limits, we cannot run a high-tech science experiment on the right whale’s survival,” Ms. Davenport said in a statement. “We would be signing this species’ extinction warrant if we undermine the vessel speed rule now.”
This article appears in March 20, 2026.
The NE Aquarium is completely correct: removing or reducing this rule BEFORE we have a technological solution which MAY work is not the right way to go. 380 members of a species so at risk, that primarily dies from ship strikes and fishing line entanglements – well, that species continues to need special protections.
For anyone who would like to comment on the proposed NOAA rule change, here is the link (and Gazette, really – you could have included that in this article):
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/03/04/2026-04260/advance-notice-of-proposed-rulemaking-to-amend-the-north-atlantic-right-whale-vessel-strike
The North Atlantic right whale population is estimated at around 380 animals. At that level, every preventable death matters.
The current vessel speed rule exists because it works. Studies over the past two decades have shown that reducing vessel speed dramatically lowers the chance that a collision will be fatal. Slower ships give both whales and captains more time to react.
What’s concerning about this proposal is the idea of removing an existing safeguard based on technology that isn’t ready yet. Even the government’s own review acknowledged that many of the detection tools being discussed — satellite imaging, radar, LIDAR — are not currently reliable enough to serve as a real-time warning system across large ocean areas.
That doesn’t mean new technology shouldn’t be pursued. It absolutely should. But replacing a proven protection with tools that are still experimental makes little sense.
The waters south of Martha’s Vineyard are part of a migration route for whales moving along the Atlantic coast. Seasonal slow zones are a modest precaution in a place where large vessels and endangered wildlife share the same ocean.
When a species is down to a few hundred animals, removing protections before a working replacement exists isn’t modernization — it’s a gamble. And once a species disappears, there’s no bringing it back.
Whales belong in the ocean,we do not,especially at their demise.Again it’s all about money,and human greed.
Extinction is forever. Please do everything possible to save the Right Whales. Compromising the safety and health of the Right Whales is the wrong decision.