New maps show high-risk zones for whale-ship collisions vessel speed limits and rerouting can reduce the toll [Video]

Imagine you are a blue whale swimming up the California coast, as you do every spring. You are searching for krill in the Santa Barbara Channel, a zone that teems with fish, kelp forests, seagrass beds and other undersea life, but also vibrates with noise from ship traffic. Suddenly, the noise gets louder.

You start to make a slow, shallow dive, but without much urgency – after all, your species evolved over millions of years without this mysterious noise, so why would you know what to do when you hear it? A minute later, you are fatally struck by a container ship.

Your body slowly sinks to the bottom of the ocean, where it will nourish deep-sea creatures for decades but will never be seen by humans again. Indeed, your death goes unnoticed; the vessel barely registers the impact of hitting a member of the largest animal species on Earth.

Collisions with ships are a critical threat to many large whale species. …