After years of research, scientists said they had discovered an entirely new species of whale swimming right under their noses in the Gulf of Mexico.
The decision to remove acreage from auction “circumvented the law, ignored science, and bypassed public input,” said Erik Milito, head of the National Ocean Industries Association, an offshore energy lobbying group.oil extraction still poses a clear risk to the whale, with officials estimating the Deepwater Horizon spill in 2010 wiped out about one-fifth of the population. With so few Rice’s whales left, the loss of even a single individual is devastating for the species.
But to officially declare an animal a new species, scientists needed a body — a single example of an organism used to formally describe a new branch on the tree of life. For years, marine biologists struggled to find that first specimen — what scientists call a holotype — for the Gulf of Mexico’s whales.
After examining the whale’s skull, scientists with the National Marine Fisheries Service published a study in 2021 declaring Rice’s whale a new species. The animal was named after the late biologist Dale Rice, the first to identify the whales in the Gulf of Mexico. In July, National Marine Fisheries Service proposed designating a 28,000-square-mile swath in the Gulf of Mexico as critical habitat for Rice’s whales.And in August, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management , which oversees offshore oil and gas leasing, removed 6 million acres of Rice’s whale habitat from the Wednesday offshore oil lease sale.
“For oil and gas, it could be significant,” Milito said. “The withdrawn acreage, it’s prime real estate.” Environmental groups responded by appealing the decision while BOEM asked for an emergency stay of the judge’s order. On Monday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit delayed the lease sale until Nov. 8.