“Whale-ship collision hotspots: 93% have no protection measures”

November 22, 2024 Evrim Yazgin

A global survey has found that shipping traffic overlaps with almost the entire range of all whale species but only 7% of the areas with the highest risk of whale-ship collisions have protection measures in place for the whales.

“Whale-ship collisions have typically only been studied at a local or regional level … and patterns of risk remain unknown for large areas,” says lead author Anna Nisi, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Washington in the US. “Our study is an attempt to fill those knowledge gaps and understand the risk of ship strikes on a global level.”

The research, published in Science, focused on 4 species: blue, fin, humpback and sperm whales.

It found that the highest risk areas lay along the coasts of the Americas, southern Africa and parts of Asia.

The team found mandatory measures to reduce whale-ship collisions were very rare. These overlapped with just 0.54% of blue whale hotspots and 0.27% of humpback hotspots. Such measures had no overlap with any fin or sperm whale hotspots.

The findings are “timely” and “not surprising”, according to Vanessa Pirotta, a researcher at Sydney’s Macquarie University who was not involved in the study. (snip-MORE)