In April this year, two Bryde’s whales washed-up dead-on Dyer Island, a small nature reserve located a few kilometers off the coast of Gansbaai in South Africa’s Western Cape province. Both whales carried severe injuries; their vertebrae had been shattered. “It was very clear that it was [vessel] strikes, because both those whales were snapped in half, and you can also see the propeller marks,” Loraine Shuttleworth, head of research at the Dyer Island Conservation Trust, told Mongabay. Two whale strandings linked to ship strikes in one month alone is an unusually high number, Shuttleworth said. A new risk assessment has linked the increase in risk of ships striking whales to the rerouting of maritime traffic around South African coast. Due to the Houthi rebels attacks on ships traversing the Red Sea, which started in 2023, and the more recent fallout from the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, many cargo companies have rerouted their vessels around the Cape of Good Hope. With greater shipping traffic comes a growing threat to marine species inhabiting the region: collisions with large, fast-moving vessels. Between December 2023 and December 2024, the number of large vessels traveling through South African waters at average speeds above 15 knots (28 kilometers per hour) has quadrupled, satellite data show. The scale of the increased maritime traffic struck scientist Els Vermeulen from the University of Pretoria’s Mammal Research Institute Whale Unit, on a flight into Cape Town in 2025. “It was a beautiful day, and there were just…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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