VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — News 3 is learning new details about a beached whale mystery.
Hundreds of boats were speeding in mandatory and voluntary slow zones off Virginia Beach in the weeks leading up to the discovery of a North Atlantic Right Whale who had been struck and killed by a passing vessel.
That's according to a new report from Oceana, an organization that works to protect right whales and monitors the health of oceans.
"It's just an unfortunate literal collision course between the whale activity and all the vessel activity that happens there," said Regina Asmutis-Silvia, a whale and dolphin conservationist.
Silvia said vessel strikes are just one of the biggest threats to these endangered whales.
"It's very frustrating because we know that there's a solution and those delays of that solution are putting a species at risk," said Silivia.
Oceana used its ship speed watch tool, which monitors ship speeds in slow zones, to track boat speeds between February 1-11.
They say they were able to find more than 200 boats larger than 65 feet long that traveled through slow zones, and nearly seven out of the ten boats traveled above the speed limit of 11.5 miles per hour.
They also were able to determine the following:
- One boat traveled as fast as 26.7 MPH (more than double the speed limit) within the mandatory slow zone
- Around half of the boats were found speeding in the mandatory slow zone
- In the days immediately proceeding the discovery of the dead whale, more than 75% of boats did not comply with the mandatory or voluntary speed limits between Feb. 8 and Feb. 11
"It's not uncommon to see ships go faster than that. I'm sure it's hard for that to be monitored or forced. There's not like there's somebody out there checking the speed of ships that go by," said Brian Lockwood, a Hampton Roads boater.
For more than 20 years, Lockwood has been capturing photos of whales and dolphins while riding his jet ski along the shipping lanes at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay.
He told News 3 speeding vessels and slow swimming whales are a recipe for disaster.
"But it's almost an unavoidable situation where you have a shipping lane, where the ship has to be in that lane and whales for some reason tend to travel along the same routes the ships do. The whales, from my experience at least over the years, are oblivious. They're just doing what they know, moving from one place to another, or looking for food," said Lockwood.
NOAA has proposed new vessel speed regulations to help protect the endangered whales.
Those regulations are currently under review.
