“Instead of acknowledging these risks and initiating dynamic management in these newly utilized areas, NOAA is entrenched in the old way of doing things, resulting in more right whale injury and mortality,” said Kyla Bennet, science policy director for the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, known as PEER, a group that defends the rights of civil servants.
Emails released to PEER under public record laws show the Trump administration also has tried to avoid bad publicity about entangled whales. When an adult female right whale, given the name Dragon by researchers, was spotted swimming near the surface with a buoy and rope stuck in her mouth in February, outside groups had to prod NOAA to tell the public about it.”
