Officials are urging large ships to slow down as they approach San Francisco Bay
California marine sanctuary officials are urging large ships to slow down as they approach San Francisco Bay. Unusually large number of whales feeding on abundant krill have been spoted off California coast.
The “notice to mariners” was also broadcast Tuesday by the Coast Guard.
The warnings were issued after a bleeding rare fin whale, which officials said was fatally slashed in a “ship strike,” washed ashore at Point Reyes National Seashore last month.
Captains and their crews aboard large ships are urged to “keep a sharp lookout” for whales in their paths, and to slow their speeds to 10 knots (11.5 mph) as they enter waters where the whales are evident, said Leslie Abramson of the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary.
The death of the fin whale “was really a wake-up call for us,” said Abramson, the sanctuary’s advisory council coordinator who works with the Bay Area shipping industry.
Two years ago, she noted, five whales – two humpbacks, two blues and one fin whale – were killed in collisions with ships off the Northern California coast during the whale migration season, making the call for ships to slow down all the more urgent.
And if large vessels like freighters and cruise ships are observed failing to slow down and avoiding concentrations of the whales, then officials of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversees the sanctuaries, are empowered to regulate traffic in shipping lanes more stringently, she said.
“We understand that ships are working on extremely tight schedules, Abramson said, “and we are trying to deal with the problem proactively, but if there’s no cooperation we could move toward regulatory action.”
The whales are particularly abundant right now around all three national marine sanctuaries in this region – Gulf of the Farallones, Cordell Bank and Monterey Bay – Abramson said.
The whales are lured by the abundance of the tiny shrimp-like creatures called krill that are their main diet. And the krill, in turn, are abundant because the tiny organisms are fed from nutrient-rich depths upwelling into the California Current, marine biologists say.
Source: Maritime Connector