An Opinion Piece From Our Co-Founder Michael Fishbach

WHERE DO THE MAJORITY OF SHIP/WHALE ENCOUNTERS OCCUr AND WHAT IS THE ONLY REAL SOLUTION TO FIX THIS GLOBAL ISSUE?

The global ocean is a vast, interconnected part of our planet covering roughly 70% of its surface. Our human counterparts in these complex waters are, without question, the great whales. They are warm blooded mammals just like us, they have large brains just like us, and they communicate and cooperate with their own species, just like us. Many of them live in family or extended community family groups or pods like we do. They "assist" each other at births, just as we do, and they birth, nurse, and suckle their young, as we do. Some of them will risk their lives to save their own kind, just as we would. They also happen to be a critical part of an ecosystem that drives the planetary weather systems. Their home, our oceans, feed a significant part of the global human population.

We have in the past unknowingly and selfishlessly caused them devastating harm during the era of industrial whaling, in our drive for their precious oil that fueled the onset and success of the industrial age. We effectively used them so as to move our own kind into a more developed and comfortable future.

Now the global numbers of the great whales are severely diminished, and for many reasons,

it is in our best interest to help them recover toward their pre-whaling densities. However,  a few unintentional consequences of our modern activities stand in the way. Transiting ships, the massive international fleets that carry our goods on oceanic highways around the globe, are the cause of far too many deadly unintentional strikes on the great whales.

It is estimated that these vessel strikes number in the thousands each year, and the important thing to recognize is that certain species are more vulnerable to these strikes than others, and that many of these strikes are avoidable.  

Where do most of these strikes occur?

If we consider the ocean as a huge funnel with ships going almost everywhere, we can easily imagine how spread out they are during their long transits on the open seas.  But each and every one of them has a destination, and that destination is always the next port where they are either dropping off goods or picking them up. As the ships get closer and closer to any port this oceanic funnel begins to tighten. It is no longer a vast open space, and the density of ships increases the closer they get to these ports. This is where the problem is entered. Modern whales have a minimum of a 20 million year history on this planet and there are regions of the oceans that they have seasonally favored for eons. Unknowingly to the whales many of these favored habitats are in port regions, which became developed long after the whales became dependent on them. It is in many of these port regions that critical whale habitat and shipping traffic overlap and both are present in their highest concentrations. This is precisely where the majority of these tragic encounters occur. Away from port regions, both in the migratory paths of the whales and where feeding grounds and birthing grounds exist, some danger to the whales also exists, even though in these regions the ships are far more spread out.

The answer to greatly minimizing and in some cases eliminating these strikes, and highly disruptive near misses between ships and whales, is understanding the precise locations and times of year the whales use this or that habitat, especially in the regions of our global ports. This can only be effectively accomplished by large amounts of direct, recorded observations, with all sightings being documented by the precise time, date, and location of that sighting. This data must then be mapped onto navigational charts and overlaid with recent historical ship movements.

At Whale Guardians™, shipping personnel and whale experts work with our recently developed APP to create routes that both avoid whale-favored habitats while respecting the operations of the global shipping fleet. These safe routes are then passed on to both the global shipping community and the relevant ports, so as to effectively separate ships and whales from being in the same place at the same time. In this manner critical whale lives are saved, and the global populations can finally recover, in a robust manner, toward their pre-whaling densities.

Port regions offer wonderful access to the sea, where whale data can be accurately collected, habitat use can be pinpointed, and the shipping industry can be confident of the benefit of simple routing solutions. In the open sea, further from land, the tracks of the small number of whales that are placed with satellite or implant tags (which in some cases have a negative effect on the whales) are often used to form a "model" of the migratory routes of larger numbers of whales. 

This somewhat invasive strategy is very costly and therefore typically provides low numerical sample data sets, even if they do fill in knowledge gaps for science. At times, and in certain places, these can be effective in understanding general whale movements and important habitats with some level of accuracy. They can also assist in the identification of seasonal whale corridors. However, this data only informs us in oceanic regions where the numbers of ships are far less dense. The number of close misses and collisions occur far less often here on the more open sea than would be the case in the more densely crowded port regions. 

When ships and whales are in the same place at the same time, collisions can and will occur. Even at slower speeds these collisions still result in severe trauma or death to the unsuspecting whales.

Image Caption: A blue whale feeding near a large tanker just outside the Port of Los Angeles by Michael Fishbach – Great Whale Conservancy / Whale Guardians™