Ten of the marine mammals were killed by ships off California last year — the highest number there since tracking began in 1982.
By Jesse Ryan March 18 at 7:30 AM One day last May, a container ship entered the San Francisco Bay with extra cargo.
Cargo ships are so big that crews often have no idea they struck a whale unless they see a carcass when they reach port. Many container ships that enter the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are more than 1,000 feet long. Vessel strikes are one of the leading human-related causes of whale deaths. In the past 10 years, at least 60 blue, gray, fin, and humpback whales with signs of ship strikes have been found dead in California, Oregon and Washington, according to records from NOAA’s Marine Mammal Health and Stranding Response Program, which keeps track of injured and dead marine mammals. Many go unreported.
Recovery rates are low because struck whales tend to sink upon death. Others are never spotted because of ocean currents and decomposition. Ship strikes alone kill more than 80 whales off the West Coast each year, according to 2017 estimates made by Point Blue Conservation Science and Cascadia Research Collective.
Slower ship speeds have been shown to reduce the likelihood of a ship-whale encounter and the lethality of a collision. The number of right whale mortalities has dropped since the rule was created. Some conservationists believe that rerouting the shipping lane behind the Channel Islands could decrease the risk of ship strikes. But the waters behind the islands are a part of the Navy’s 36,000-square-mile Point Mugu Sea Range. The Navy is resistant to funneling ships through the area they use for missile tests and training exercises.
Following the blue whale deaths, the Center for Biological Diversity petitioned NOAA Fisheries to create a mandatory seasonal 10-knot speed limit in the Santa Barbara Channel. After the petition was denied, the center filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Coast Guard accusing it of failing to ensure ship traffic does not jeopardize the lives of endangered species.
The Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary continues to drive efforts to mitigate ship strikes in California, but it doesn’t have regulatory authority beyond its boundaries. Creating mandatory regulation to protect whales from vessel strikes would require either the Coast Guard or NOAA Fisheries to draft a proposed rule and shepherd it through an interagency approval process.
The number of incentivized transits has increased over the years from 27 in 2014, to 125 in 2017, but the program reaches only a sliver of the 2,500 container ships that travel through the Santa Barbara Channel each year. A shared passage The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach operate their own voluntary speed reduction programs to improve air quality. Vessels that slow down when entering and departing the ports are given a rebate on their dockage fees.
Barring incidents when ships are already running late and risk missing their port appointment, there aren’t any steep costs to slowing down in the Channel Islands region, according to a study conducted by NOAA. Researchers analyzed the potential economic impact of management strategies, such as speed reduction and rerouting, and determined that the measures wouldn’t significantly change costs for shipping companies.
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