How to Reduce Accidental Whale Deaths

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association has developed a strategy to reduce the number of ship collisions with endangered North Atlantic right whales.

"We believe the ship strike strategy can make U.S. East Coast waters safer for right whales," said Bill Hogarth, NOAA Fisheries Service director. "Vessel strikes are a leading human-caused threat to these rare whales, and we are working closely with maritime commerce professionals and other interested parties to devise this strategy."

The strategy will tailor vessel traffic patterns with right whale occurrence during times and in areas where collision risk is high. The proposed strategy combines routing and speed options in the mid-Atlantic, Southeast, and Northeast ports - areas where right whales frequently fee and travel.

Currently, the NOAA Fisheries Service conducts a multi-faceted effort aimed at reducing human-caused injuries and deaths to North Atlantic right whales. NOAA and its partners conduct aerial surveys to notify mariners of the location of right whales. The new strategy would include maintaining the current procedures.

North Atlantic right whales live mainly in coastal or shelf waters. They spend their winters calving and nursing in coastal waters off the southeastern United States and summers in feeding grounds in New England waters and north to the Bay of Fundy and Scotian Shelf.

The right whale was historically depleted by commercial whaling and today suffers the most injury and death from human-related activities like ship strikes and entanglements in fishing gear. Biologists believe there are less than 300 of the whales remaining in the U.S. waters and that human-related accidents contribute to the inability for the population to rebound.

--Bjorn Carey

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Credit: NOAA