Frequency of whale and vessel collisions on the US eastern seaboard : ten years prior and two years post ship strike rule

This series is a secondary scientific series designed to assure the long-term documentation and to enable the timely transmission of research results by Center and/or non-Center researchers, where such results bear upon the research mission of the Center (see the outside back cover for the mission statement). These documents receive internal scientific review, and most receive copy editing. The National Marine Fisheries Service does not endorse any proprietary material, process, or product mentioned in these documents. All documents issued in this series since April 2001, and several documents issued prior to that date, have been copublished in both paper and electronic versions. To access the electronic version of a document in this series, go to http://www.nefsc.noaa.gov/nefsc/publications/. The electronic version is available in PDF format to permit printing of a paper copy directly from the Internet. If you do not have Internet access, or if a desired document is one of the pre-April Editorial Treatment: To distribute this report quickly, it has not undergone the normal technical and copy editing by the Northeast Fisheries Science Center's (NEFSC's) Editorial Office as have most other issues in the NOAA Technical Memorandum NMFS-NE series. Other than the four covers and first two preliminary pages, all writing and editing have been performed by the authors listed within. Information Quality Act Compliance: In accordance with section 515 of Public Law 106-554, the Northeast Regional Office completed both technical and policy reviews for this report. These predissemination reviews are on file at the Northeast Regional Office. INTRODUCTION Protected species science programs are frequently asked to provide management advice based on imperfect data associated with occurrence rates of rare events such as strandings, road kills or other rarely detected mortalities. Ship strikes of large whales and right whales are such settings, and they are of particular interest because economically significant management actions have been enacted to hopefully reduce their occurrence. These measures are of unknown effectiveness while possibly causing annual industry costs ranging from tens of thousands to exceeding $100 million (shipping regulations). Following implementation of what have been termed " the Ship Strike Rules " (Federal Register 2006) which became effective 9 December 2008, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) will likely be challenged to demonstrate the recovery benefits of these expensive conservation measures in terms of effectiveness measures (e.g. whales saved). An added question on the minds of managers, industry representatives and conservation organizations is, " …