Save The Whales

CONSERVATION ORGANIZATIONS JOIN LEGAL EFFORT
TO PROTECT ENDANGERED BLUE WHALE

Recent Ship Strike Mortalities Again Demonstrate Consequences of
Government’s Decade-Long Delay in Implementing Blue Whale Recovery Plan

Friends of the Earth, Pacific Environment, and Center for Biological Diversity, national and international conservation organizations with a combined membership of more than 120,000 people, today joined a notice of intent to sue the National Marine Fisheries Service (“NMFS”)
(submitted by Environmental Defense Center (“EDC”) in August) for the agency’s failure to implement the 1998 Blue Whale Recovery Plan. Among other actions, the Recovery Plan mandates that NMFS shall identify and implement methods to eliminate or reduce blue whale
mortalities from ship strikes. NMFS has failed to take this required action for more than a decade, despite the deaths of at least five blue whales from ship strikes in southern California in 2007, and
two additional ship strike mortalities along the California coast in October 2009.

Resources:
Media Packet 11-19-09 re: Amended Notice [PDF]
Media Packet 08-12-09 [PDF]
Press Release 8-12-09 [PDF]
Blue Whale Factsheet [PDF]
Notice of Violations of the Endangered Species Act in Relation to the Blue Whale Recovery Plan [PDF]

Links:
Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary
American Cetacean Society:
NOAA Fisheries Office of Protected Resources

Photos by Linda Krop and NOAA.