Record number of dead whales stranded on the West Coast with ship strike injuries in 2018

In late May of this year, a container ship entered the San Francisco Bay with extra cargo.

A 45-foot dead female fin whale was draped across the ship's bow. A necropsy revealed that the impact with the ship had broken her back, ruptured her organs and caused severe internal bleeding. Unlikely as it sounds, it is doubtful that anyone on the ship felt the impact of the collision. Crews on 1,000-foot ships often have no idea they struck a whale unless they see a carcass when they reach port, says Captain Kip Louttit, Executive Director of Marine Exchange of Southern California.

While whales in United States waters haven't been targeted with harpoons and grenades since the 1986 international ban on commercial whaling, ships still pose a significant threat to the massive mammals.

The first six months of 2018 marked a 10-year high for stranded and deceased whales with boat collision injuries on the West Coast, an analysis of federal data shows.

Vessel strikes are one of the leading causes of human-related injuries and deaths of large whales on the West Coast. Blue whales, fin whales, humpback whales, and gray whales migrate along the West Coast each year. The Pacific populations of fin whales and blue whales are endangered, while Eastern North Pacific humpback whales were removed from the federal endangered species list just two years ago. In the past 10 years, 60 blue, gray, fin, and humpback whales with signs of ship strikes have been found dead on the West Coast, according to the NOAA National Marine Mammal Stranding Database. The stranding records only list that a vessel encounter has taken place; they do not confirm whether or not the vessel encounter was the cause of death or stranding. However, notes in the stranding records from trained responders who examine the deceased whales list critical injuries attributed to ship collisions such as "right pectoral fin cleanly cut probably from boat propeller", "several vertebrae were cracked/broken, which suggests ship strike," "findings suggestive of blunt force trauma, likely caused by collision with a large ship."

At least two endangered whales that washed up along the shores of California with ship strike injuries over the past 10 years were pregnant when they died, stranding records show. Any loss in numbers can make a difference for recovering species. And the problem isn't unique to California. Significant losses are at stake as global ocean shipping continues to connect the far corners of the globe. There were 1,200 entries in the International Whaling Commission ship strike database as of May 2016.

While these records are the best measure of whale strandings available, they do not capture the full scope of the losses. Recovery rates for struck whales on the West Coast are low because many of them sink upon death or are never found due to ocean currents and decomposition. Between 83%-95% of blue, fin, and humpback whales struck by ships are not documented, according to a recent study conducted by Point Blue Conservation Science, a nonprofit scientific research organization. The report estimates that ship strikes kill over 80 whales off the West Coast each year.

"Without a doubt, there are more whales struck by ships on the West Coast than the stranding records show," said Dr. Jim Dines, the Mammalogy Collections Manager at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles.

Despite the high incidence of whale mortalities linked to ship strikes, there are not any mandatory rules in place on the West Coast to mitigate collisions.

Slower ship speeds have been proven to reduce the likelihood that a ship strike will be fatal. Regulations limiting the speed of large ships in certain areas along the East Coast have been effective in reducing North Atlantic right whale deaths. NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service established the Ship Strike rule on the East Coast in 2008 to protect right whales, which were at the time, and remain, one of the most endangered whales in the world. It was a comprehensive policy that relocated shipping lanes, established ecologically important zones and mandated ships to slow to speeds of 10 knots or less in specific areas during periods of peak right whale activity. In the nine years after the rule was in effect, only one right whale carcass with ship strike injuries was found in an area with imposed speed limits.

NOAA's Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary is leading efforts on the West Coast to reduce whale-ship collisions. They are focused on working closely with other sanctuaries and ports along the West Coast to encourage ships to slow down but skepticism about the effectiveness of voluntary speed limits remains.

"East Coast levels of cooperation won't happen without mandatory regulation" said Cotton Rockwood, a marine ecologist at Point Blue.

The threshold that NOAA uses to determine if regulatory action is needed to protect species is called the Potential Biological Removal limit said Bruce Russell, who served as the Co-Chair of the NMFS-Sponsored Ship Strike Committee which worked on the East Coast regulation. PBR limits are the annual allowable human-caused mortality for each species based on minimum population size. If a population loses more individuals than their PBR limit for any given year, the mortality levels are considered unsustainable. Even though the stranding numbers do not show that species on the West Coast are being killed at rates above their allowable removal limits, blue and fin whale mortalities caused by ship strikes alone exceed their removal limits, a study conducted by Blue Point Conservation Science estimates. While blue and fin whales are not as endangered as the right whale, their current mortality rate requires further conservation efforts says Dr. Jim Dines.

The high concentration of ships and whales that travel along the waters off the West Coast has been a long-standing issue for various stakeholders. Efforts to reduce ship-whale collisions around California intensified after five blue whale carcasses were found in the Santa Barbara Channel in September of 2007. NOAA's Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary started working with the shipping industry, government agencies, and non-profit organizations to reduce whale-ship collisions. In 2009, the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary Advisory Council (SAC) identified strategies to mitigate the threat of ship strikes in the Santa Barbara Channel. In response, the Santa Barbara shipping lane was narrowed and shifted to divert ship traffic away from krill-rich whale feasting areas, and an incentive-based vessel speed reduction trial was conducted in 2014. That same year, the SAC also formed the Marine Shipping Working Group to build on previous work and develop recommendations addressing issues related to marine shipping in the Santa Barbara region.

The needs of many different groups converge around the 70 nautical mile stretch between the coast of California and the Channel Islands that make up the Santa Barbara Channel. Seasonal upwelling of nutrient-rich cold water from the continental shelf drop off fuel phytoplankton growth which draws swarms of krill. In turn, whales, specifically blue and humpback, are drawn to the region to feast on the krill and small fish. Similarly productive waters surrounding San Francisco are also an important humpback feeding area. While the feeding frenzy in the Channel region is a boon for whale watching companies, the krill hotspots also overlap with the Santa Barbara shipping lane, which thousands of tankers traverse each year. Given the high number of whale sightings in the channel, members from some conservation organizations believe that rerouting the shipping lane behind the Channel Islands could decrease the risk of ship-whale encounters. But there is not enough data on whale distributions south of the islands to confirm that this would separate ships from high concentrations of whales and the area behind the islands is also a part of the Navy's Sea Range. The Navy conducts missile testing and training exercises from their Ventura County Naval Base at Point Mugu across the 36,000 square mile area and is resistant towards funneling shipping traffic through it as it might interrupt their testing operations. However, the Channel Islands Vessel Speed Reduction (VSR) program added a new western route behind the islands in 2016 after showing that 35% of ship traffic was already using the unofficial approach.

The Channel Islands VSR Program, also known as the Protecting Blue Whales and Blue Skies Program, grew out of the 2009 report and was first offered in 2014. NOAA has requested that large ships in the Channel Island region slow down since 2007, but the recommendation's compliance rates are extremely low so they added an incentive-based program. Protecting Blue Whales and Blue Skies represents a collaborative effort between the Santa Barbara County Air Pollution Control District, Ventura County Air Pollution Control District, Environmental Defense Center, and the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation. The program incentivizes cargo ships to slow down in the Santa Barbara channel by giving them a small stipend for each trip traveled 12 knots or less instead of the average 14 to 18 knots speeds from May through November.

While the number of compliant ship transits has increased over the years from 27 in 2014, to 43 in 2016, the program still only reaches a sliver of the estimated 2,700 made through the Santa Barbara Channel each year. The program expanded in 2017 when three VSR zones outside the Port of San Francisco were added. Sixty percent of the participating ships that slowed in both zones also slowed down during the 200 nautical miles in-between. The extended slow down assuaged some concerns that ships may speed up after leaving VSR zones to make up for lost transit time. Slowing down also increases fuel efficiency and reduces greenhouse gas emissions, which is an increasing concern among coastal communities in California. Marine shipping accounted for 78% percent of smog-forming nitrogen oxide emissions generated within Santa Barbara County in 2016 according to the Santa Barbara County Air Pollution Control District.

The Channel Islands incentive-based program relies on funding from grants and Air Pollution Control Districts along the route of the program. The financial incentive for complying has decreased each year the program has been offered. NOAA officials are hopeful that eventually they will no longer need to pay ships to slow down, and that they will abide by speed recommendations due to increased public scrutiny on sustainable shipping practices. But that goal is still a few years out. "There's no consumer awareness about this issue," said Jessica Morten, a Resource Protection Specialist at NOAA Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary.

The ship that struck the female fin whale in May was a ship called the Horizon Spirit, owned by Pasha Hawaii. The circumstances around Horizon Spirit's whale strike are unknown but its parent company has a demonstrated track record of showing disregard for voluntary speed limits. Unlike the Channel Islands VSR program, which was principally established to protect whales, the voluntary VSR program at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach was primarily created to reduce air pollution. The Port VSR program is managed separately and gives ships that travel 12 knots or less within 40 nautical miles or 20 nautical miles of the port a dock fee subsidy. Pasha Hawaii is a subsidiary of the Pasha Group, an American logistics and transportation company that operates around the world. For the past three years, The Pasha Group has had the lowest VSR compliance rates across all shipping companies whose vessels make at least five trips to the Port of Los Angeles a year. Among that same group, the average compliance rate for slowing down at the 40 nautical mile boundary was 84.48% and 91.96% for the 20 nautical mile boundary in 2017. The Pasha Group's average compliance rate for 2017 was 5.71% for the 40nm boundary and 11.43 percent for the 20 nm boundary according to compliance data from the Port of Los Angeles.

Shipping companies claim that mandatory speed limits complicate their planning processes and increase costs. If ships miss their appointment to unload at a port they have to wait for the next available slot, which can sometimes take days and could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars because many of the dockworkers are unionized. Barring incidents when ships are already running late due to weather or technical issues and risk missing their port appointment, there aren't any steep costs of slowing down. A study conducted by NOAA analyzed the potential economic impact of management strategies such as speed reduction and rerouting measures in the Channel Islands region and found that they wouldn't significantly change expected total costs for shipping companies.

The low carcass recovery rate of struck whales indicates that whales struck by ships off the West Coast logged in NOAA's stranding database, and perhaps the IWC database, likely only represent a fraction of the collisions that occur.

California is home to two of the busiest ports in the nation and hundreds of endangered whales. Cooperative efforts from the shipping industry, government officials, and conservation groups have led to new initiatives that aim to mitigate ship-whale encounters, but current ship strike rates on the West Coast suggest that more work is needed.