If these whales go extinct, we’ll know who to blame

A Rice's whale is visible from onboard the NOAA Twin Otter aircraft off the coast of Texas in the Gulf of Mexico. | Paul Nagelkirk/NOAA Fisheries (Permit #21938) via The Associated Press

In the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico lives one of the world’s rarest and most elusive marine mammals: Rice’s whale. There are just 51 of them left, according to the most recent scientific estimates, meaning they are quite literally on the knife’s edge of extinction.

That’s why, in 2019, the federal government ...