To protect whales, Euronav has teamed up with the Great Whale Conservancy (GWC), an environmental NGO dedicated to the protection of great whales and their habitat, to investigate how ship strikes can be avoided.
A first result is the inclusion of the voluntary measures of the Canadian East Coast, the waters around California (USA) and the Hellenic Trench in the 2022 Instruction to Masters, making the measures de facto mandatory for its vessels.
Whales knew a massive decline in numbers due to industrial whaling in the 19th and 20th centuries until an international ban in 1986. Today, their existence is further threatened by entanglement in abandoned nets or fishing lines, ship strikes, loss of habitat, plastic pollution, noise pollution, climate change and ocean acidification.
The IMO has recognized the problem, but mandatory protection measures like re-routing ships and/or speed reduction have so far been implemented in a few locations only.
Voluntary measures are recommended in a lot of areas, but they do not have the impact of permanent measures and are often overlooked by ship operators. Euronav teamed up with the Great Whale Conservancy to investigate how ship strikes can be avoided.
If large ships stay out of the critical breeding and feeding habitats of these magnificent animals, we can reduce the ship strike problem drastically and improve the quality of life of those mammals so that they can mate and gradually grow their population
says Hugo de Stoop, CEO of Euronav.
Together, Euronav and GWC identified the Canadian East coast, the waters around California and the Hellenic Trench as their first areas of concerns. The 2022 Instructions to Masters, issued to the entire fleet, orders all Euronav vessels to comply with local voluntary measures, making them mandatory for its entire fleet.
Our ships will stay out of critical habitats where these whales breed, feed and nurse their offspring. These deviations have very little negative economic impact for shipowners, including ourselves, so avoiding these areas is really a question of paying attention to the issue rather than making a big economic sacrifice
Hugo De Stoop added.
According to Euronav, these three areas are the start, but it is looking into other regions around the world where its ships regularly pass and where voluntary measures are published.