Shipping Lane Shift

A shipping-lane shift is the rerouting of a traffic separation scheme or recommended route to reduce the overlap between dense vessel traffic and whale aggregations, cutting the risk of lethal ship strikes. The IMO has approved several: the 2007 shift of the Boston traffic separation scheme to reduce North Atlantic right-whale strikes, a 2009 area-to-be-avoided in the Great South Channel, and routing changes in the Santa Barbara Channel and off Sri Lanka. Lane shifts pair with seasonal speed restrictions, typically 10 knots in designated management areas, since strike lethality rises sharply above that speed. The measures are evaluated against modeled whale density and AIS traffic data.