"Shipping Lanes Threaten Pacific Blue Whales"

"Two major feeding grounds for Pacific blue whales are bisected by busy shipping lanes near major seaports in San Francisco and Santa Barbara, Calif., a new study reports.

“It’s an unhappy coincidence,” said Ladd Irvine, a marine biologist at Oregon State University who led the study, published in the journal PLOS One. “The whales are purely there because they need to find the densest food aggregations possible.”

Large ships could easily injure or kill whales that are looking for food, he said. And blue whales, an endangered species, have few feeding options. Although they are enormous, they rely almost entirely on krill, a tiny shrimplike creature."

Sindya N. Bhanoo reports for the New York Times July 28, 2014.