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Stop Congress From Trading Whale Lives for a Decade of Delay
Final signature count: 7
7 signatures toward our 30,000 goal
Sponsor: Free The Ocean
Fewer than 370 North Atlantic right whales survive — and a Senate committee could just voted to gut their protections for a decade.
Fewer than 370 North Atlantic right whales remain alive today — and the population is still falling.5 Now a bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives would strip away the protections scientists say those whales need most, freezing federal safeguards until 2035.1 The Senate is the last line of defense.
What H.R. 9436 Would Do
The Northeast Lobsterman Protection Act of 2026 passed the House on September 1, 2026, and now sits before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.1 If it advances, the bill would halt implementation of federal rules designed to reduce right whale entanglement in the vertical rope lines used by lobster and crab trap fisheries — a moratorium that would last nearly a decade.3
Entanglement in fishing gear is one of the two primary causes of right whale deaths and serious injuries. It doesn't always kill outright. Ropes can hold a whale for months, slowly exhausting it and draining the energy that reproductive-age females need to carry a calf.2 Right whale females calve only once every three to ten years.6 Lost reproductive opportunities cannot be recovered.
The Numbers Leave No Room for Delay
Right whales reproduce so slowly and exist in such small numbers that the species can tolerate essentially zero human-caused deaths per year without declining toward extinction — a threshold that is exceeded routinely.5 A delay stretching to 2035 is not a temporary pause. For a population this small, it is a population-level consequence.6
This bill also fits a wider pattern. Across multiple fronts, marine wildlife protections in the United States have been weakened or rolled back in recent years, and conservation groups warn that cumulative rollbacks create harm that no single policy decision fully reflects.4
Industry Concerns Don't Require This Bill
Fishing communities face genuine economic pressures, and those concerns are real.8 But ropeless and on-demand fishing gear — technology that removes vertical lines from the water column until a trap is ready to haul — already exists and is in active testing.7 What affected fishermen need is investment in that transition. H.R. 9436 offers neither funding nor a path forward; it simply delays protections while the whales continue to die.
The Senate Must Act
The Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee holds the next decision point. Conservation, animal welfare, and scientific organizations are calling on the committee to reject this bill before it reaches a floor vote.2,7 With fewer than 370 animals left and each individual critical to the population's future, a decade of weakened protections is time this species does not have.
Sign the petition now to urge the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee to block H.R. 9436 and keep North Atlantic right whale protections on track.
