He runs deep-sea fishing and whale-watching charters out of Wildwood Crest and Cape May. His smaller boats will be exempt from the rules. But his 100-foot Atlantic Star can make 20 knots. Returning to port aboard her will take at least an hour longer during his winter offshore excursions, he said.

"The guys finish fishing at 2 p.m. and still have a 60-mile trip back. That means less time fishing and more time to get home," he said.

"That's brutal. That cuts into your customers' fishing time. It affects the performance of the boat - everything," Cape May County charter boat captain Paul Barrus said.

Fortunately for him, his 90-foot North Star Express based in Ocean City is outside the speed zone.

Barrus said charter boats already have it tough between the price of fuel and fishing rules that limit the daily catch.

"That would be another nail in the coffin for us," he said. "The regulations are already crippling us. We're constantly asking customers to pay more and giving them less."

The speed limit will be enforced from November to April, the time when right whales make their migratory journey past New Jersey.

Cape May's Cicchitti said the time frame is the only saving grace. Fewer charters are booked in the winter. But he is skeptical the rules will have their intended effect.

"I've been doing this 35 years. I'm on the ocean 200 days a year," he said. "There was just one time I was ever close to running over a whale and it was 3 miles off Cape May. I've never even heard of anyone doing that."

The agency is still determining the fines it will mete out to scofflaws. The U.S. Coast Guard and the National Marine Fisheries Service will enforce the speed limit using technology that can track and measure a vessel's speed, spokeswoman Connie Barclay said.

The agency is also placing speed limits along the entire coastline of South Carolina, sections of Florida and the entrances to the Chesapeake Bay and major ports in Providence, R.I., New York, Norfolk, Va., and Wilmington, N.C.

"The restrictions will add about 53 minutes per vessel arriving in an affected area," Barclay said. "This represents less than 1 percent of the trade value of the $300 billion East Coast shipping industry."

In the Delaware Bay, tankers, container ships and freight barges will face a delay between 90 minutes to two hours. This will have a financial impact of about $13 million on the shipping industry at places such as the Philadelphia Regional Port Authority.

The move is designed to protect the Atlantic right whale, which is critically endangered. Between 300 and 400 right whales are believed to inhabit Atlantic waters. The biggest threats to these whales are boat strikes and fishing-net entanglements, Barclay said.

"Our biologists estimate that one to two whales (along the eastern seaboard) are killed every year by ship strikes," she said. "We know that mother-calf pairs are very vulnerable. They feed up near the surface. They're very large and slow-moving."

Robert Schoelkopf, director of the Marine Mammal Stranding Center in Brigantine, said boats pose a danger to many marine animals, including sea turtles and the occasional manatee that ventures into New Jersey waters. His center responds to whale strandings across the state, some of which were caused by apparent boat strikes. If whales are so intelligent, why don't they get out of the way?

"You have to realize they live in the ocean 24-7. They're constantly bombarded by the sound of these boats. You can imagine a whale constantly hearing boat traffic can become immune to it," he said.

Schoelkopf said the federal action shows how dire the right whale's future is in the Atlantic Ocean. The speed limit will be re-examined in five years.

"It's worth a try. Once the 300 are gone, that's it," he said.

E-mail Michael Miller:

MMiller@pressofac.com