NOAA delays Lake Ontario shipwreck ban a second time, to 2028

The Lake Ontario National Marine Sanctuary⧉ protects 41 known shipwrecks and roughly 19 more suspected ones under 1,722 square miles of water off four New York counties.▸ Its central protection — a ban on grappling into or anchoring on those wrecks — has never been in force for a single day. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration⧉ (NOAA), the federal agency that designated and runs the sanctuary, stayed the ban from the same June 2024 rule that created it, to buy time to install protective mooring buoys. That stay was due to expire July 21, 2026. Instead, NOAA has extended it a second time, to September 21, 2028⧉ — because an attempt to start installing buoys in the summer of 2025 failed when NOAA couldn't secure ship time from its partners.

Two Federal Register rules, read against each other, tell the whole story.▸ The June 2024 designation rule (89 FR 48272)⧉ set the sanctuary's boundary and shipwreck inventory, and — in the same document — postponed the anchoring ban's own effective date to July 21, 2026, to give NOAA time to build a shipwreck mooring-buoy program. This week's delay notice (FR Doc 2026-14204)⧉, published July 15, 2026 — six days before the original stay was due to lapse — extends that stay again, to September 21, 2028, and explains why: NOAA identified 16 shipwreck sites for a first wave of buoys, obtained permits and awarded purchase contracts, but couldn't get a boat on the water in time last summer.

Anchors and grappling hooks damage shipwrecks mechanically: a hook set into a deteriorating wooden hull or a dropped anchor dragging across a debris field can crush timbers, dislodge artifacts, and scatter material that has sat undisturbed for a century or more.▸ NOAA's own 2024 Final Environmental Impact Statement found the anchoring ban would produce beneficial impacts for historical and water-quality resources⧉ — the standard NOAA itself set for what this rule was supposed to deliver. In this week's notice, NOAA calls the prohibition "essential to protect shipwrecks from damage," even while extending, for the second time, the period in which it doesn't apply. Every other LONMS protection — the general ban on moving, removing or otherwise injuring a sanctuary resource, and New York State's own law against damaging shipwrecks — stays in force. Only the anchoring-specific rule, the one built around the buoy program, has been stayed since the day it was written.

NOAA's case for the delay is logistics, not disagreement.▸ Since designation, NOAA has identified 16 shipwreck sites — 39 percent of the sanctuary's 41 known wrecks — for the initial wave of mooring buoys⧉, worked with state and federal authorities to secure permits, and awarded contracts to buy mooring components. It intended to begin installing buoys in the summer of 2025 but was unable to secure ship time from its partners⧉. Installation only works in Lake Ontario's ice-free months, so NOAA now says it needs the summers of 2026, 2027 and 2028 to finish the work — three more boating seasons to place buoys at sites it identified more than a year ago.

The original 2024 stay wasn't a technical afterthought — NOAA built it in "in response to public comments expressing concerns that the prohibition would negatively affect commercial vessels that may need to anchor in the sanctuary and would limit public access to shipwrecks when alternatives to anchoring (i.e., buoys) are not available"⧉.▸ That trade-off — access now, protection once buoys exist — was supposed to run two years. It is now scheduled to run at least four years and two months, the ban's entire life span to date, with the newest extension issued as a final rule with no public comment period⧉, because NOAA found notice-and-comment "unnecessary and contrary to the public interest." The commercial vessels the 2024 stay was written for have had unrestricted access to every wreck site in the sanctuary since the day it opened.

Two dates now govern the sanctuary's core protection.▸ The buoy program has three remaining summer installation windows — 2026, 2027 and 2028 — to place moorings at the 16 first-wave sites before the new effective date. September 21, 2028 is the earliest the anchoring ban can take force, four years and two months after the sanctuary's regulations otherwise became operative. Jeff Gray, LONMS's acting superintendent, is the notice's named contact for the program; nothing in the record commits NOAA to reporting installation progress before then, so the next public marker will be whichever comes first: an announcement of buoys in the water, or a third delay notice if the 2026-2028 summers run out the way 2025 did.