That's Quite a Speeding Ticket

Rice's Whale

From Addison Smith at JTN, Biden administration considers $20,000 fine, prison for boaters who exceed 11.5 mph in Florida Gulf

President Joe Biden’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is moving a step closer to imposing a 10-knot speed limit for boats in the Florida waters of the Gulf of Mexico, with violations potentially resulting in a felony charge punishable by a $20,000 fine and up to one year in prison.

The agency closed a public comment period Thursday on a petition seeking to impose the limit.

The petition argues the speed limit will protect the endangered Rice’s whale and was submitted by a coalition of six environmental groups to NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) in 2021, invoking the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

The petition calls for "mandating that all boats, no matter how small, traveling in the Florida Gulf obey a 10-knot speed limit," the public interest law firm Southeastern Legal Foundation (SLF) stated in a public rebuke of the petition.

Ten knots is equivalent to 11.5 miles per hour on land. For comparison, sailboats typically cruise at a speed of 8 knots, according to sailboat lifestyle writer Daniel Wade.

Now, NMFS will decide "whether to accept the petition and proceed with the suggested rulemaking," according to the Federal Register.

But on Thursday, the same day as the deadline for petition comments, SLF submitted its formal comment objecting to the proposal, saying it’s "fully prepared" to take action against it.

On top of it being "arguably illegal and unconstitutional," SLF also said the petition provides no sufficient evidence that the rule would protect the whales at all.

"The coalition cannot show that a single boat strike on Rice’s whales in the Florida gulf was ever attributable to a boat of a recreational size, and NMFS cannot deduce it based on the evidence presented," the legal group wrote in its opposition statement. "Over the last two decades, the coalition cites only two instances where Rice’s whales had evidence of a strike from a boat of any size, which isn’t the same as saying that it ever happened at all."

Nonetheless, violations of the rule would subject individuals to "up to a year of imprisonment and a fine of $20,000," according to the legal foundation.

I hadn't heard of Rice's Whale before, and what I found was kind of interesting. The whale is a new species, named in 2021, after a dead whale washed up in Florida, and it's skull was sufficiently different from Byrde's Whale, which it had been thought to be, to be named a new species.  (I kind of hope they had some genetics to back that up, but the article doesn't say so). At the time of the discovery, the whales already had a very small population, estimated at under 100, and a range believe to be limited to the Gulf of Mexico.

Now, imagine a rare variant of the Eastern Box Turtle was found somewhere near Washington D.C., and they proposed to cut traffic in and around the city (the beltway) to 10 mph to save turtle.