More Whales Are Dying Off The California Coast, Here's What Officials Are Doing

SAN FRANCISCO, CA — Photos that surfaced of a dead humpback whale in Half Moon Bay on the San Francisco Peninsula left biologists and scientists reeling once they learned the identity of the whale, according to a report from SF Gate.

The 17-year-old humpback, which washed up on the beach Sunday, was identified as Fran, one of California’s most well-known whales who was famous for her interactions with scientists, whale watchers and boaters alike.

SF Gate reported that Ted Cheeseman, the founder of an online database tracking whales around the world, confirmed the whale was Fran and that she was likely killed by a ship strike.

“Fran was in great shape and well-nourished with a full body of blubber, but her skull was knocked off her spine, likely by a ship, according to the necropsy,” SF Gate reported. “Her only child was with her and it's unknown whether it survived.”

"In the database we built, we have 70,000 whales and I recognized her immediately," Cheeseman, who runs Happywhale, a citizen science project that identifies the world's whales, told SFGATE. "Ship strikes are tragic. This is the most beautiful animal in the world, being killed literally as roadkill. It’s such a waste. Quite honestly, I’m both sad and mad."

The Happywhale database has recorded 277 sightings of Fran since her birth in 2005, making her the most popular whale in California. Fran was sighted most often in the Monterey Bay Area.

“The death of Fran is incredibly tragic, given that ship strikes on whales can be avoided,” Kathi George, Director of Field Operations & Response at The Marine Mammal Center, said. “Everyone, including shipping companies, wants to protect these magnificent giants, and we need ships to slow down in vessel speed reduction areas as well as when whales are around.”

According to the SF Gate article, Fran was likely hit in recent days.

“This humpback whale had an extensive contusion over her right chest area, a fractured first cervical vertebra and its skull was dislocated from the spinal column,” Dr. Pádraig Duignan, director of pathology at the Marine Mammal Center, said in a statement to SF Gate. “These findings, combined with overall excellent body condition, strongly implicates blunt force trauma associated with a ship strike as this whale’s cause of death.”

Duignan, who is an expert in whale pathology, led the Monday Aug. 29, Necropsy in Half Moon Bay.

“We were able to confirm from that she had been struck, probably at velocity by a large vessel on the right-hand side,” he said during a Wednesday, Aug. 31, news conference that took place after Fran's death was announced. “Clearly, she was struck side-on by a large vessel going at speed to do that kind of injury to a whale. So she died pretty well instantly. But you know again that could have been avoidable.”

Duignan said that Fran didn't appear to be “actively lactating.” The hope, he said, is that Fran's calf is self-feeding.

“So I think that you know one glimmer of hope, maybe out of that that the calf will survive,” he said.

According to the Happywhale database, Fran was born in 2005 and was the daughter of Big Fin aka River, CRC-9019, and was named by Ferd Bergholz in honor of his late wife. Fran often wintered in Guerrero, Mexico, and was originally documented there by Katharina Audley of the Whales of Guerrero Research Project., a news release from the Marine Mammal Institute said.

Fran’s demise is just one of hundreds of sad stories of whales being stranded along the coast of California, according to NOAA Fisheries.

An ongoing unusual mortality event is leading to an increase in whale strandings, not just in the San Francisco Bay Area, but all up and down the West Coast, according to recent information obtained by Patch.

NOAA Fisheries is reporting an increase in whale strandings over the past three years and that has led to its declaration of an unusual mortality event, or UME.

“Under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, an unusual mortality event is defined as ‘a stranding that is unexpected; involves a significant die-off of any marine mammal population; and demands immediate response,’” Justin Greenman, NOAA’s assistant stranding network coordinator for the West Coast Region, explained.

According to Greenman, seven gray whales have been found stranded in the San Francisco Bay Area so far this year as compared to the normal average of one to two strandings a year.

“All of the animals were dead when found,” Greenman said, adding that the “vast majority of whale strandings worldwide” don’t involve live stranded animals.

“As a general rule most live stranded animals are humanely euthanized,” he said.

To date this year, 23 whales have stranded on the West Coast of the United States with nine of those being along the coast of California, according to the most recent data released earlier this summer. That same data for the year shows a total of 76 stranded whales along the west coast of the United States, Mexico and Canada with the most coming from the warmer waters of Mexico where whales migrate to breed and bear their calves.

In early April a gray whale was found deceased in the San Francisco Bay and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Drift Collector John A.B. Dillard responded to tow the mammal’s carcass out of the area.

Dillard Capt. Kixon Meyer said the mammals must be towed out of the shipping channels because they cause a navigational hazard.

“We don’t look at things as they are we look at them as what they may become,” he explained. “If something is in the channel that is not supposed to be there, we have to remove it.”

Meyer said that mammals are towed a safe distance offshore.

"We can’t really tow them out far enough to guarantee they don’t end up back here because of the winds and currents off the California coast," he said, "we can tow it out 50 miles and it could end up off Pacifica."

What the ASACE does, Meyer said, is work with the state of California and tie those carcasses up on an undisclosed island offshore so the Marine Mammal Institute can study the deceased mammals and gather as much data as possible to determine why the whale stranded.

“At least that death is not in vain, we can get some information from it,” he said.

While whale strandings have decreased over the past three years, peaking at 122 in 2019, the UME is ongoing Greenman said.

“Even though this year has had less than 2019, it is still higher than the normal average,” he said.

Meyer said that some years USACE tows more deceased whales than others and while they don’t typically hear back as to the cause of death of the whales they tow, there is all kinds of speculation as to the why and how a whale died.

“We don’t necessarily get involved in that part of it,” he said. “We just want to make sure that if someone can benefit from us having to remove the mammal, they are able to do so.”

So why are the whales stranding at such a high rate? According to NOAA Fisheries, some whales are suffering from malnutrition, some suffer from boat strikes or injuries caused by predators and others have unexplained illnesses due to biotoxins.

“Full or partial necropsy examinations were conducted on a subset of the whales,” NOAA Fisheries said on their website dedicated to whale strandings and the UME. “Preliminary findings in several of the whales have shown evidence of emaciation.”

The findings, NOAA said, “are not consistent across all of the whales examined,” so more research is needed.

To investigate the UME, NOAA said it has assembled an “independent team of scientists to coordinate with the Working Group on Marine Mammal Unusual Mortality Events to review the data collected, sample stranded whales, consider possible causal linkages between the mortality event and recent ocean and ecosystem perturbations and determine the next steps” for the investigation.

“While the cause of many UMEs is unknown, the investigation aims to determine the cause of all UMEs, when possible,” NOAA said.

During a Wednesday news conference, George said that ship strikes and entanglements are two of the “leading causes of death for large whales,” and the numbers that are recorded are “not the numbers that are happening in reality” off the coast.

“For ship strikes, there's been a paper that was published by Cotton Rockwood and John Columba Petitis, that identified that 80 whales, 80 endangered whales die a year on the West Coast, and most of these whales sink,” George said. “While Fran is one example that we were able to identify, the issue is bigger, bigger than we know, and we need to do something about it.”

According to researcher John Calambokidis, only 5 percent of whale mortalities are documented on the beach.

“I've been disappointed that now, more than 10 years later, we're still, at this voluntary level, when we know that those speed restrictions are what it would take to reduce legality,” Calambokidis said. “Recent surveys we've done indicated there's a major concentration of feeding humpbacks right now in one of the most heavily used shipping lanes coming and going from San Francisco and it seems like it would be an ideal case where something like mandatory speed restrictions would help.”

Calambokidis also suggested improving the design of shipping lanes, to include moving them further offshore, to avoid whales and reduce strikes.

NOAA and the Marine Mammal Center are not the only groups working to save the whales, several other groups including the Greater Farallones and Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuaries Office of National Marine Sanctuaries are doing what they can to keep migrating whales safe from boat and ship strikes through education and other efforts.

“Protecting endangered species and sanctuary resources is a priority issue for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Office of National Marine Sanctuaries,” Jennifer Stock, Greater Farallones and Cordell Bank national marine sanctuaries media liaison said. “We have been doing a lot in regards to working to reduce the chances of ship strikes with large whales in our area.”

Greater Farallones and Cordell Bank national marine sanctuaries formed a Joint Ship Strike Working Group to evaluate potential management options and provide feedback to the Advisory Councils on actions to reduce risk, she said.

Stock said the group has been working with those in the industry to include the U.S. Coast Guard and air quality control districts by asking ships to slow down voluntarily between May and December when whales are most abundant, adding that the request goes out to ships that are 300 gross ton or larger.

"All these actions were based on a working group's recommendations from our Sanctuary Advisory Council.”

The primary goal of the sanctuary ship strike work is to reduce the risk of lethal ship strikes to endangered and threatened blue, humpback, and fin whales by 50 percent in Greater Farallones and Cordell Bank national marine sanctuaries.

Experts aren’t the only ones who can make a difference when it comes to helping the whales during the UME as they migrate between Alaska to feed and Mexico’s Baja peninsula to breed, Greenman said.

“During the UME we have been seeing more whales closer to shore,” he said. “So the public can help us by being responsible boaters and fishers by giving the animals space. If a dead whale is seen folks can report it to our West Coast Region Stranding Hotline: 1-866-767-6114. If an entangled whale is seen, they can report it to 877-SOS-WHALe.”

Boaters can also contact the U.S. Coast Guard on VHF Channel 16.

When finding a stranded mammal, remember all are federally protected by the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Only local and state officials and people authorized by NOAA Fisheries may legally handle live and dead marine mammals so don’t approach or touch injured or dead marine mammals.

The general public can also visit Pay.gov to donate to the Marine Mammal UME Contingency Fund for the current or other UMEs and help cover costs incurred by the Marine Mammal Stranding Network.

“The reality is that the vast majority of ship strikes, we never see it. If we saw this, if the public saw this ... it wouldn't be acceptable right,” Cheeseman asked. “It's just the inertia of something that's out of sight out of mind. It's a tragedy when any whale is killed and it's unnecessary. So really, it's time to make a change here.”