Between December 2022 and January 2023 there have been at least 8 whales that have washed up dead along beaches in New York and New Jersey with several showing signs of ships strikes.

Between 2016 and 2023, there were more than 59 reported mortalities of humpback whales in New York and New Jersey, with many showing sign of death from a ship strike. Additionally, between 2017 and 2023 in New York and New Jersey, ship strikes killed or injured over 15 North Atlantic right whales, one of the most endangered whale species in the world. The latest preliminary estimate suggests there are fewer than 350 individual North Atlantic right whales in the world and out of this number only 70 are reproductive females. The population is falling, in part, due to speeding ships hitting whales.
 
Whales are some of the largest animals that have ever lived. They have not evolved to share the ocean with ships that are faster and larger than ships just 20 years ago. Many cargo ships today are about 800 to 1,000 feet long and the ship’s driver is in the back of the vessel where animals cannot be seen.
 
Please urge the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to quickly put in place their proposed rules designed to prevent ships from colliding with whales. The federal government wants the shipping industry to take more responsibility to protect whales, but as of yet there is no timeframe for when proposed rules will be adopted or go into effect. Yet with more whales washing up dead on beaches along the East Coast in 2022 and 2023, the time is now!
 
Proposed new rules would expand seasonal slow zones off the East Coast that require ships to slow down to 10 knots (11.5 miles per hour). They would also require more vessels to comply with the rules by expanding the size classes that must slow down to 35 feet and longer from the current threshold at 65 feet and longer. It would also expand existing “slow zones” in the Atlantic Ocean to as far as 100 miles offshore. Furthermore, the rules would create a framework to implement mandatory speed restrictions when whales are known to be present outside the seasonal slow zones.
 
Current shipping rules focus on a patchwork of slow zones that require mariners to slow down for whales, but some of the zones are mandatory, while others are voluntary. In 2021, Oceana released a report that said noncompliance was as high as nearly 90% in voluntary zones and was also dangerously low in the mandatory ones.
 
Whales have been swimming in the Atlantic Ocean far longer than ships have been sailing on the seven seas.  But now vessels off the East Coast of the United States need to slow down to help save whales from fatal strikes.