During the fall of 2007 there were four confirmed blue whale fatalities
in the Santa Barbara Channel. Previously, the greatest number
of blue whale fatalities in one year off of California was three
(1988 and 2002 respectively), and these fatalities were separated
by hundreds of miles (Marin to San Diego County in 2002) and several
months. Of the whales that were examined, including a pregnant
adult female with a fetus, all were determined to be struck by
ships. The reason for this level of ship strikes in a relatively
small area is speculative but may be related to an unusually shallow
and/or dense aggregation of krill or increased local density of
whales in the Santa Barbara Channel.
NOAA Fisheries, the federal agency responsible
for protecting marine mammals and endangered marine life, designated
the situation as an Unusual Mortality Event (UME).
Click
here for more information about UMEs.
The Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History performed
on-site necropsy work on three whales in the Santa Barbara Channel.
Click
here for more information on those blue whale strandings.
The
Sanctuary Advisory Council formed a Ship Strike Subcommittee
to develop a Blue Whale/Ship Strike response plan. The subcommittee
is composed of agency, business and public partners, who working
with CINMS staff, are currently designing a proposal for an Advisory
Council-based pubic process aimed at investigating and reducing
threats to large cetaceans in the Santa Barbara Channel (which
includes Sanctuary waters). Subcommittee members Click
Here
The subcommittee has generated, and the Sanctuary Advisory Council
has endorsed a document titled:
Reducing Ship Strikes on Large Cetaceans in the Santa Barbara
Channel and Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary - Endorsed
by the Sanctuary Advisory Council January 2008
Click Here
To download a copy 
pdf
The Subcommittee will also be developing advice on longer-range
issues and management options for addressing this issue.
NOAA
(including the Channel Island National Marine Sanctuary
and National Marine Fisheries Service) and the U.S. Coast Guard
are tracking the issue closely and have in place a short term
working plan for taking precautionary actions and being prepared
to respond in the event of a ship strike. Guiding agency actions
is multi-agency plan that was initially developed in 2008 by the
Advisory Council's Subcommittee on Large Cetaceans and Shipping,
and subsequently endorsed by the full Sanctuary Advisory Council
on May 30, 2008: Prevention and Emergency Response Plan for Reducing
Ship Strikes on Blue Whales and Other Large Cetaceans in the Santa
Barbara Channel and Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary.
Click Here for more info.
Sanctuary
staff coordinate weekly overflights of the shipping
lanes with the U.S. Coast Guard and the California Department
of Fish and Game. During overflights sanctuary staff record the
locations of whales and their behavior. In addition, staff have
been obtaining whale sightings collected by the Channel Islands
Naturalist Corps (CINC) volunteers aboard local whale watch and
tour operator vessels. The aerial survey and CINC data are compiled
using Geographic Information System (GIS) software to create whale
sightings maps. The maps provide near real-time information to
mariners about the presence and general distribution of whales
in the shipping lanes. The maps are shared with a variety of agencies
and entities, including the NMFS Office of Protected Resources,
US Coast Guard, California Department of Fish and Game, the Santa
Barbara Museum of Natural History, the Marine Exchange of Southern
California, and whale scientists.
The
Subcommittee and staff are working on a research
plan that is designed to deliver the information necessary to
manage and mitigate the whale-ship interaction risk. In order
to generate predictive relationships between environmental conditions
and spatial pattern whale densities the plan proposes an integrated
ecosystem assessment that monitors whales, their prey and the
environmental conditions that drive prey distribution. Several
institutions and agencies conduct whale research in the region,
for additional information see research links below:
Research Links
Cascadia
Research Collective
Oregon State University Marine Mammal Institute
Scripps Institution of Oceanography Whale Acoustic Lab
NOAA National Marine Fisheries Service Southwest Regional Office
Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History
WHAT SHOULD YOU DO IF YOU FIND A SICK OR DEAD ANIMAL?
Click Here for more info.
For more info. contact:
Sean Hastings
NOAA Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary
Channel Islands Harbor
113 Harbor Way, suite 150, Santa Barbara, CA. 93109
(805) 966-7107 x 472office
Sean.Hastings@noaa.gov
