ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – How a fin whale died last week in the waters near Seward is being investigated with some advocates calling for slower speeds for cruise ships.
The carcass of the 61-foot adult female fin whale, which was pregnant based on initial findings, was discovered on the bow of a cruise ship on Friday before being towed to a beach in Seward for a necropsy, NOAA Fisheries said Sunday in a statement posted to social media.
NOAA is working with Alaska SeaLife Center in Seward to perform a necropsy.
“Ship strikes are already a leading cause of whale mortality in U.S. waters and the threat is growing,” Rick Steiner, a marine ecologist and Chair of PEER’s Board of Directors said. “Simply put, many of our busiest coastal shipping routes are death traps for whales.”
The cruise ship involved was the Royal Caribbean vessel Ovation of the Seas.
Steiner says ships can go anywhere from 22-24 knots, but the industry should adopt a slower speed of 10 knots or less during the day and 8 or less at night.
“The cruise ships, they’re here to show people whales and scenery and it’s doubly ironic, or negligent of them, not to take every measure possible to protect the whales that are their bread and butter of their industry,” Steiner said. “But due to their hubris and corporate recalcitrant state, they just have not been willing to adopt a voluntary vessel speed reduction in these critical whale areas.”
The Journal of Marine Biology reports that 108 reported whale-vessel collisions in Alaska from 1978–2011, of which 25 are known to have killed the whale.
An email to the company asking how fast the ship was going wasn’t answered. Instead, a spokesperson responded with a previously released comment, stating “We are saddened to hear that one of our ships struck a whale while on its way to Seward. We take any impact to marine ecosystems very seriously. The ship immediately reported the incident to the proper authorities. We are cooperating fully with NOAA and are awaiting the necropsy results.”
Whale strikes aren’t uncommon, but are often not fully reported out about regarding how, when, where and why a whale was struck along with a number of other variables.
In this case, it hasn’t been determined if the whale died because of a collision with the vessel, was already dead before becoming lodged on the ship, or whether other factors contributed to its death.
According to the International Whaling Commission, “over 300,000 whales, dolphins, and porpoises are killed globally each year due to incidental bycatch and entanglement in industrial fishing gear, including trawlers.”
IWC reports most whale strikes occur in the Atlantic Ocean at 62.4%, with 28.8% happening in the Pacific Ocean.
The group also reports that most reported ship strikes involved fin whales (189 total, or 20.2%), followed by humpback whales (163, 17.5%) and sperm whales (102, 10.9%), according to the report published in 2020. The report “Global Numbers of Ship Strikes” analyzes data covering a period from 1820 to 2019.
IWC reports that fatal whale ship strikes have been recorded since the 1800s and increased in occurrence between the 1950s and 1970s because of increased vessel size, speed and overall traffic density.
“Most fatal injuries to large cetaceans are caused by large motorized vessels (80 m or longer) and at speeds of 14 knots or faster. The probability for a strike to be fatal increases from 21% to 79% as speed increases from 8.6 to 15 knots, respectively. If a ship strike is fatal or not depends on which body part of the animal is impacted, and the severity of the impact, e.g. depth of lesion, fractures of vital bones, etc,” the report says.
According to KTOO and a blog post by Royal Caribbean, federal officials documented 77 whale-vessel strikes in Alaska waters over a 10-year period, with endangered humpback whales accounting for roughly three-quarters of those.
Ovation of the Seas arrived in Seward on June 19.
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