Environmentalists Fight for Decreased Speed Limits to Protect Whales

On Monday, a petition was filed by four environmental groups to the U.S. Department of Commerce to instate a 10-knot speed limit for large commercial ships in four of California’s National Marine Sanctuaries in the Channel Islands, Monterey Bay, Gulf of the Farallones and Cordell Bank, spanning over 8,000 square miles of ocean. 

Currently freighters will travel through the environmentally rich areas at twice that speed, at around 20 knots or 23 miles per hour.  The petition cites the danger these speeds impose upon vulnerable marine mammals, in particularly whales.  Director at the Center for Biological Diversity, Miyoko Sakashita, said that these marine sanctuaries should be a safe harbor for marine life, but instead they are at high risk for being slammed and run over by commercial vessels.

Since the protected waters also serve as busy sea lanes, it places the federal regulators of the Obama administration in a tight spot.  West Coast ports in California are among the busiest of the United States, and traffic continues to be on the rise. 

In the last 10 years, about 50 whales have been hit by ships off the California coast.  The exact numbers are nearly impossible to determine given that many accidents will go unseen or unreported. 

The NOAA did designate these shipping lanes as a “Whale Advisory Zone” in 2007, as a result of the death of four blue whales that were struck and killed by vessels.  The advisories, however, are voluntary and do not always deter ship captains to use necessary caution, according to the environmentalists.

The petition filed by the Center for Biological Diversity, the Environmental Defense Center, Friends of the Earth and Pacific Environment is under review, according to World Shipping Council Vice President, Anne Kappel. The World Shipping Council represents nearly the entire commercial shipping industry. 

This is the second time environmental groups have sought to enact stricter speed limits for the West Coast protected waters.  Their last proposal of a similar nature was rejected by federal regulators in 2007.