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Hi John,
A container ship recently entered San Francisco Bay with a 45-foot dead fin whale draped over its bow. She was killed by a collision with the ship.
In 2018 a record 10 whales, including fin, blue and humpback whales, were killed by ship collisions off the California coast. More than 80 have died the same way in recent years.
On Monday we launched a new legal fight to end these whale deaths.
Please give today to the Center for Biological Diversity's Saving Life on Earth Fund.
Ship strikes are a leading cause of death and injuries to whales migrating along California's coast. At least 88 whales have died this way since 2006. Science has shown that after being struck, most of these lifeless whales sink, never to be seen again, so the actual death count is likely many times higher.
Our latest action calls for the Coast Guard to update its rules for shipping traffic and for the National Marine Fisheries Service to ensure those rules don't harm whales. Rules for cargo ships are now mostly voluntary: That needs to change for these whale deaths to stop.
We know what to do. Slowing ships down will save whales' lives. Coast Guard monitoring shows that when ships should be lowering their speeds, more than half the time they're blasting through whale habitat.
Limiting traffic at night, when whales surface together to feed, will also help.
We can't imagine a world without these magnificent whales swimming in the Pacific. It's human activity that's driving the heartbreaking wildlife extinction crisis. It's up to us to stop it.
Last year we secured 175,812 square miles of the Pacific Ocean as critical habitat for endangered humpback whales, and we won new rules protecting whales from being entangled in fishing gear off California's coast.
We're also already fighting plans to increase oil-tanker traffic in San Francisco Bay. Our call for ship speed limits and other maritime rules to better protect imperiled marine life goes back almost a decade.
We won't stop until endangered whales are fully protected.
Please give today to the Saving Life on Earth Fund.
For the wild,
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