Steelman · slot B
The traffic-management case
A Coast Guard vessel traffic director would argue —Nearly one in five gray whales that enters San Francisco Bay dies here, and the proximate cause is usually a ship strike — not starvation itself. That's actually good news, because ship strikes are a problem we know how to solve. We're training ferry captains to slow down and call in sightings, coordinating with container lines and marinas, and preparing to mount infrared cameras on Angel Island to spot whales surfacing at night in high-traffic lanes. The bay is a confined, crowded estuary, and whales — dead or alive — don't belong in shipping channels. Every tool we can throw at this, we will. If we get the traffic piece right, we buy these animals time while the broader science catches up.