||| FROM CBS NEWS |||
In the summer of 2022, I was walking on the beach at Half Moon Bay in California, when I saw the strangest thing approaching on the waves. When it struck the shore and deflated, I knew: it was a dead whale.
But it wasn’t just any whale. It was Fran.
“I knew this whale, and I’m like, Ohhhhh. It just hit my heart, because Fran, at the time, she was the most well-known whale in our entire database,” said Ted Cheeseman, the creator of HappyWhale.com. That’s a database of whale sightings, which includes more than 850 pictures of Fran the humpback whale, identified by her tail markings.
Nobody knows exactly how many whales are ship-strike victims every year, but many whale species on the endangered species list are threatened by cruise and container ship traffic. / Credit: CBS News
“She had a big personality,” said Cheeseman. “She was playful around whale watch boats. You know, you’d hear on the radio, ‘Hey, Fran’s over here!’ ‘Oh cool, you know, let’s go hang out with Fran!'”
Fran had a baby, known as Aria, who was now orphaned. “We didn’t know if the calf could survive,” Cheeseman said. “I didn’t think so. I didn’t think it was very likely.”
Fran died from a collision with one of the cruise ships and container ships that make more than 200 million trips a year.
According to Sean Hastings, a policy manager for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), ship strikes and entanglements in fishing gear were the number one and number two threats to whales.
Nobody knows exactly how many whales are ship-strike victims every year, because most of them sink after they’re hit. But blue whales, humpbacks, and fin whales are on the endangered list, and the Northern right whale is just about extinct – only about 350 of them are left on Earth.
“That’s why every whale counts, so that we can bring their populations back and help them recover,” Hastings said.
The good news is that the shipping companies themselves say they care.
“There’s no one in our industry that wants to see any one of these magnificent creatures harmed or killed by anything we do,” said Bud Darr, policy director for the world’s largest shipping company, MSC.
He showed me why ship captains can’t just steer clear of whales. The bow of even one of MSC’s smaller container ships is hundreds of feet away from where the captain sits. And even if you could spot a whale ahead, there’s not much you could do about it.
“The ship is an extremely large object,” said Darr. “It’s moving very fast, and it’s noisy. I mean, you may not know there was impact with a whale at all, if there was. Unfortunately, we’ve had whales that have remained on a bulbous bow of a ship when it’s come in.”
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The best way to protect whales from ship strikes is to get rid of the ships! That would also have the added benefit of slowing ecological overshoot. Of course, business-as-usual will never allow or even contemplate that solution.
And the best, perhaps only, way to get rid of the ships is to QUIT BUYING STUFF. Ask yourself how many whale strikes there will be from monstrous container ships hauling unnecessary, mostly useless, Christmas stuff across the Pacific this year. Is that stuff worth those lives? I suggest not.
Obviously the world needs shipping; bulk commodities really do need to travel by water, it’s one of the most efficient ways to transport large volumes of heavy, bulky, relatively low value substances: oil, wheat, mineral ores, etc. But those ships DO NOT have to travel at a high rate of speed. Simply slowing down would save vast amounts of bunker fuel (the filthiest of the petroleum based fuels) and reduce the number of whale strikes.
Manufactured products, on the other hand, should never cross oceans at all; they should be made near where they will be used. There are many good reasons for re-shoring manufacturing; economic, ecological, practical and political.
Give a gift to the Earth this holiday season: BUY NOTHING IMPORTED.
We could have Buy Nothing events where people bring stuff that they would like to give away.
I have heard of a Facebook site for this, but I don’t use Facebook.
I like “buy nothing”. Buy nothing at all unless we absolutely need it, or the other person we’re giving it to absolutely needs it, and yes, buying nothing imported would help a LOT. Here in Lopez we have both a buy nothing group as well as take-it-or-leave-it, which is fantastic.
I’d wager 90% of the crap that’s for sale isn’t actually *needed*, just *wanted*. And whales are dying for that.
Soon enough global shipping will begin to fail, as this crazy way of life begins to fail, so we might as well start now with the buy nothing mentality.
Work stoppages and buy no fuel days have proven to be effective messages. I suspect that a national “Buy nothing day,” if messaged properly, would be even more so.
Get real, commenters!
The phone/tablet/computer you used to communicate your comments was imported from Asia.
Like the batteries powering your EV and the new tires you will soon require due to its needless extra weight.
Do you know where heat pumps are made?
I don’t disagree that a lot of imported stuff is junk. But how will you achieve even the most modest goals of the global anti-carbon agenda without international trade?
“[s]oon enough global shipping will begin to fail” — eerily prophetic but probably unintended. The Houthis seem to be with you on that.
You’re right Scott, I am typing this on a 2015 computer that I’m sure was imported from Asia. I am hoping to not buy another computer in my life. I don’t have an EV, and my 20 year old car was made in the US although I’m sure it has parts made elsewhere. Likewise I don’t have and would never have a heat pump, as I expect the grid(s) will begin to fail, along with global shipping, fairly soon (relatively speaking).
Unfortunately, very few of us have much control over where the stuff we need and buy comes from, and what we “need” is driven by a way of life that we likewise have little control over and are forced to participate in (there is no opt-out!). E.g. the US is designed around cars, which makes it difficult to not have one, although I drive mine fairly minimally.
Using buy nothing groups, and buying used whenever we cannot buy nothing, are a great start to limiting our impact.
Entertaining and thoughtful comments.
That said, a fractionally small number of well to do citizens who want to essentially change the world and current direction of civilization by minimalistic consumption are going to have an immensely imperceptible impact on the 8.1 billion people on earth or the way earth civilization will evolve. Perhaps a start-over will be a new Mars civilization if that goes according rather speculative future plans.
Seems there are much bigger issues for the citizens of this blue sphere to try to solve, such as eliminating war, solving cancer, reducing global warming, slowing terrorism and crime and trickling down to small things such as finding a cure for toenail fungus.
To be clear, not opposed to the buy nothing individuals or advocacy groups … but it’s a personal lifestyle choice.
“Personal lifestyle choices” multiplied by 8.1 billion people adds up to a whole lot of potential power, for good or for ill. Mr. Dashiell illustrates for us an unfortunately all too common pattern of thinking – that we are powerless individuals and that all those “much bigger issues” are hopelessly beyond our capacity to effect. I presume he was trying to say that whale strikes are a small problem compared to “eliminating war” or “finding a cure for toenail fungus”, but I must disagree. The foundation of most of the problems we face as a species is our collective hallucination that we are somehow separate from, rather than an integral part of the Earth’s biosphere. The idiocy of thinking that people could live on Mars is a perfect example of this point. Choosing to live within the ecological parameters of your location and respecting ALL the beings we share this globe with IS a personal choice, and one that each of us will either make or not. The more of us that choose to live less materialistic, more respectful lives the better the whole planet will do.
I urge everyone to spend a little time with this humbling graphic representation of Life on Earth: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/all-the-biomass-of-earth-in-one-graphic/
Robert– a small number of people united in effort in hopes of changing the world (for better or worse), is the only thing that ever has. At this point in time doing nothing is not a viable option.
Great graphic, and very interesting site. Thanks for sharing Ken.