Thursday February 22, 2024
Oregon Public Broadcasting —
Photographer Matt McDonald had lived on Puget Sound for years, but had never seen a whale, so he was elated when he spotted a giant marine mammal just off Seattle’s waterfront one evening.
The excitement was short-lived. As McDonald tracked the whale in his camera’s viewfinder, a state ferry that dwarfed the animal came into the frame. The next morning he saw on the news that the humpback whale had died in the collision he witnessed.
“I still remember the moment of when they crossed paths and my heart just sinking like, ‘Oh my God, the ferry just ran over the whale,’” he recalled of the 2019 encounter. “I wish there was something I could have done.”
Now, five years later, there is.
The U.S. Coast Guard has launched a pilot program to alert ships to whale sightings in Washington state’s Salish Sea. The goal of the agency’s ” cetacean desk ” is to keep the marine mammals safe from boat strikes and reduce noise in the highly transited inland seawaters by collecting sightings from civilians and mariners.