There’s a new and encroaching threat to whales: a big increase in the number of tanker ships off the West Coast pumped full of dangerous liquified natural gas (LNG) exports.
Tankers enable and produce incredible amounts of pollution that threatens wildlife and human health. They can also cause underwater noise pollution and collisions with wildlife like orcas and humpback whales.
From proposed or approved LNG projects, the Salish Sea and the waters surrounding Vancouver will experience 6,600 tanker voyages – that’s more than 4 tankers per week competing for safe navigation. Up in the Great Bear Sea on B.C.’s North Coast, 36,900 voyages are expected over the lifetime of currently approved export licenses. By 2030, that’s at least 2 LNG tankers per day crossing northern, wild and critically important ecosystems.
Tankers are a big problem, but the bigger issue is that Canada is adding this new kind of maritime traffic without thinking about how to do it safely. If ships slowed down, if they avoided key mating and feeding seasons, and if we make sure that maritime incident responses are coordinated and funded, then the risks and impacts reduce wildly. But right now Canada just isn’t doing that.
As Canada seeks to recklessly export more and more fossil fuels, they do so at the expense of whales that are critically endangered. We can’t allow whale families – some that have only just come back from the edge of extinction – to be forced to dodge their way around polluting LNG tankers.
Send a letter to the Minister of Transport calling for better rules to protect whales from the harmful impacts of increased LNG tanker traffic.
