WASHINGTON— The Trump administration today announced plans to revoke vessel speed restrictions on the Atlantic coast that protect whales, including the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale, from deadly ship strikes.

While the 2008 rule creating the speed limits needs strengthening to align with climate-related changes in the ocean, research has shown that it cuts risks to whales significantly.

“It’s incredibly sadistic to destroy a solution that helps shield endangered whales from being killed by speeding ships. Trump officials are attacking one of the only protections North Atlantic right whales have against extinction,” said Rachel Rilee, oceans policy specialist at the Center for Biological Diversity. “This is a brutal blow to right whales, who need and are legally entitled to far more help than they’ve been getting. I’m disgusted to see the Trump administration going after these beloved animals.”

Today’s notice announces a plan to replace the speed limit rule with unproven technological solutions, but such technology is not widely used and would never be an appropriate substitute for slowing down boats. Slowing down vessels is the only proven way to protect North Atlantic right whales from vessel strikes.

Only about 70 reproductively active female North Atlantic right whales remain. According to scientists, a vessel traveling at 10 knots or less is much less likely to harm a whale in a collision.

The North Atlantic right whale population began a sharp decline around 2010 as whales shifted habitats in a rapidly changing climate, bringing them into areas where protections from vessel strikes and accidental fishing gear entanglements were not in place. Only around 380 whales remain, representing a 20% population decline over the past 25 years.

Implemented in 2008, the speed limit rule establishes a seasonal 10-knot limit for most vessels 65 feet (the size of a school bus) and longer in “seasonal management areas” along the East Coast where the right whale’s feeding, calving and migratory patterns overlap with heavy vessel traffic.

“Dynamic management areas” are potential collision hotspots where NOAA Fisheries requests that vessels voluntarily slow to 10 knots, but many vessels do not comply, especially in the species’ only known calving ground in the Southeast.

The Center has pushed for strengthening the speed limit rule by expanding seasonal management areas, applying speed limits to smaller vessels, and making compliance mandatory in dynamic management areas.

In January 2025 NOAA Fisheries announced that it was withdrawing a proposed rule that would have implemented these protections, after stalling on the proposal since 2022.