California Asks Ships to Hit the Brakes for Whales

Whales traveling along the coast of California are about to get a break. Or, more literally, the ships sharing space with whales will be asked to put on the brakes.

On Wednesday, a long-awaited program to incentivize large ships to slow to 10 knots or less — a whale-safe speed — goes into effect all along the state’s coastline. 

Meanwhile, South Bay Rep. Sam Liccardo is also introducing federal legislation on Wednesday with parallel goals. His Save Willy Act would establish a “whale desk” at San Francisco’s Coast Guard station, creating a centralized place for whale sightings to be reported and mariners to be alerted, helping large ships avoid collisions.

Ship strikes are a leading cause of death for whales. Last year was especially deadly for whales in and around the San Francisco Bay, with more ship-killed whales than usual being found. Also, last year, U.S. government scientists reported gray whale numbers were not bouncing back from recent die-offs, and fewer calves were born than typical.

California’s statewide rollout of the Blue Whales Blue Skies program has been more than a decade in the making, culminating in October’s signing of AB 14, a bill authored by Assemblymember Gregg Hart, D-Santa Barbara.

“It’s a really big and positive step forward in maximizing whale protection in California,” said Jessica Morten, director of marine resource protection at the California Marine Sanctuary Foundation, who has worked on the program for the last 10 years.

It started in 2014 as a voluntary trial for vessels to reduce their speed in the Santa Barbara Channel off Southern California. It has grown to encompass more areas that are hot spots for both ship traffic and whales, including the San Francisco Bay region. Researchers estimate it has reduced the risk of death by ship strike for whales in the area by 40%.

“It’s been really exciting to see the conservation wins we’ve been able to achieve in specific areas,” Morten said

But, Morten said, studying the problem of whale-ship collisions also highlighted that “the way we had the zones implemented in the past, we’re not covering all of the important whale habitat that exists off of California.”

That, she said, is why Wednesday’s expansion of the program is so important.

Much like school zones, where cars must slow down to protect children, slowing a ship down can make high-traffic areas safer for whales. It’s easier for a whale to move out of the way and avoid slower-traveling ships, or for a ship’s captain to avoid a whale. And whales have a better chance of surviving a slower-moving crash.

A less speedy boat is also a cleaner-burning boat — a parallel goal of the program is to get ships to produce less pollution. Dirty air created by burning fuel on the water can blow onshore. In some areas of California, marine shipping is the biggest source of nitrogen oxides, such as in Santa Barbara County (73%) and Ventura County (54%). Nitrogen oxides are a precursor to smog.

Morten describes industry reaction to the statewide expansion of Blue Whales Blue Skies as “mixed.” While some shipping lines have expressed concern about being able to achieve high compliance, more lines have signed up for the program this year — 52, compared to 22 last year. She’s seen compliance grow over time as well.

Back in 2015, the program had about a 20% cooperation level. Last year, it was about 70%. Shipping lines that are good at complying receive honors in a yearly awards program, and an additional ambassador program allows brands and cargo owners to sign on to motivate shipping lines to prioritize whale safety and air quality. Current ambassadors include Patagonia, Sonos and the makers of Uggs, Hokas and Tevas.

California has both some of the best whale-watching opportunities in the world and some critically endangered populations.

“There’s basically nowhere else on Earth where you can almost guarantee that if you’re out on a boat regularly during certain times of the year, you can actually see a large aggregation of [blue whales] — incredibly large, amazing animals,” Morten said. “We have that right off of our coastline, right in our ocean backyard.”

But blue whales are also critically endangered, and they rely on the California coast as their main foraging habitat.

Gray whales are also experiencing extreme difficulties. Recent research out of Sonoma State University and the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito estimates that 1 in 5 gray whales entering the San Francisco Bay dies there.

Federal scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration believe changes in gray whale feeding grounds in the Arctic — accelerated by climate change — are changing whale behavior, driving them into San Francisco Bay as they search for food.

The legislation introduced Wednesday by Sam Liccardo would seek to help whales by directing the Coast Guard to collect reports about their locations and alert vessel operators to their presence.

“Researchers track these whales daily, but we can scale their impact by crowd-sourcing data from the many more numerous commercial and recreational boats, and building a centralized alert system,” Liccardo said in a statement. “A whale desk will protect these magnificent creatures and help mariners avoid costly, harrowing collisions.”