Vessel Collision with Large Whales

node · earth · Busy shipping lanes overlapping whale habitat

Collision between large vessels and whales, and the principal present-day anthropogenic mortality question for eastern North Pacific blue whales. It matters most where a feeding aggregation and a shipping approach occupy the same water, which along the US west coast means the Santa Barbara Channel and the approaches to the major California ports. It is not settled how much it constrains recovery: a 2015 analysis concluded that ship strikes did not pose an immediate threat to the eastern North Pacific population, which the same work estimated at 91-97 percent of carrying capacity in 2013. That conclusion is about a population near its ceiling and does not transfer to a population at one percent of its former size.