Environment Report: Blood on the Sand
The teenage fin whale rolled up on the shore south of Pacific Beach’s Crystal Pier Sunday morning. It took the help of a small bulldozer to push her 52-foot-long body back out to sea where she will sink.
Lifeguards towed the whale 1.2 miles offshore where she dropped down below. (In the past, the city towed dead whales to Fiesta Island for disposal at the Miramar Landfill.)
If she fell deep enough, past 1,000 feet where sunlight can no longer penetrate, her body becomes a “whale fall” – an instant ecosystem spurred by a feeding frenzy on her 8,000-pound carcass that can sustain marine organisms for months. Then, her skeleton can house a rich community of invertebrates and microbes for decades.
Whales keep giving back to the Earth even in death. But just one dead fin whale is a travesty for the species.
Humans hunted and killed more fin whales than any other whale species on the planet once the business of whale harvesting for fuel oil and bones for corsets and umbrellas began in 1900. One study estimated whalers killed a total 874,068 fin whales through 1999.
San Diego’s ports played a role in early whaling. California gray whales once teemed in San Diego Bay on their migratory routes, “they were menaces to small boats.” The U.S. banned marine mammal hunting in the 1970s and placed the fin whale under the protection of the newly-minted Endangered Species Act. The International Whaling Commission paused commercial whaling of all species in the 1980s and it continues today.
Now scientists estimate fewer than 100,000 of them survive worldwide. There’s concern about a lack of genetic diversity among the species. Researchers aren’t yet worried fin whales are forced to inbreed, which can cause reduced fertility, bodily defects and behavioral problems (like the distorted jawlines of the royal Austrian Hasburg family of the 16th Century).
Researchers took tissue samples from Sunday’s whale, valuable for genetics studies, Michael Milstein from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration told me. But we’ll likely never know what killed her.
Hundreds gathered to watch the daylong process of the whale’s burial. The touristy stretch between Pacific and Mission Beach is a tough spot to perform a proper autopsy to determine if she swallowed fishing tackle or plastics or starved or harmed by commercial shipping or military underwater noise. Her skin was free of lacerations from a propeller – so officials ruled that out.
“It’s hard to disentangle all the potential threats animals are facing in the modern ocean,” said Vanessa ZoBell, an acoustical oceanographer at Scripps Machine Listening lab.
ZoBell studied how noise from motors on commercial ships in Los Angeles ports impacted blue whales in the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary.
“You could say we’re drowning out their songs,” ZoBell said.
Sound travels three times farther underwater. To whales swimming in the dark deep, sound is seeing. They use songs to socialize, feed and find mates.
But the ocean is getting noisier. The number of ships crossing the ocean tripled in the past five decades. The sound of a continuous rotating propeller underwater is equivalent to the roar of a train.
“It would be like if you lived on an airport tarmac,” ZoBell said.
ZoBell shared a video of the fin whale floating out to sea at dusk on her Instagram. She offered solutions everyone can take to help limit risks to whales’ lives.
“Buy local foods and local goods, so we don’t have to ship everything across the world,” she said. “Support sustainable fishing companies and legislation that’s helping to protect the ocean.”
In Other News
- San Diego’s regional transportation planning agency appointed Coleen Clementson as new interim CEO to replace Hasan Ikhrata in January. SANDAG hired a recruitment firm to gather public feedback on what the community wants to see from the CEO role. (KPBS)
- A California appeals court will hear challenges from environmental groups to the state’s new rules that slashed the value of rooftop solar this week. (KPBS)
- Researchers uncovered the area around the Salton Sea has enough lithium to power roughly 382 million electric vehicle batteries – more than previously thought. (Los Angeles Times)
- The world’s biggest climate change negotiation summit – COP 28 – being held Dubai is turning into a sh** show. The latest draft deal among the United Nations’ climate body doesn’t directly mention the phasing out of fossil fuels – the burning of which is the main cause of the rapidly-changing climate. (Reuters)
