Whales Keep Dying In The Bay Area. A New Bill Aims To Fix That

SAN FRANCISCO, CA — A new piece of legislation could help stave off the growing number of whale deaths in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The "Save Willy Act," a nod to the popular 90s movie "Free Willy," was introduced Tuesday by Rep. Sam Liccardo, who represents California's 16th District.

The legislation would establish a "Whale Desk" within the U.S. Coast Guard’s San Francisco station.

"Researchers track these whales daily, but we can scale their impact by crowd-sourcing data from the many more numerous commercial and recreational boats, and building a centralized alert system," Liccardo said in a statement on Tuesday. "A whale desk will protect these magnificent creatures and help mariners avoid costly, harrowing collisions. Together, let’s Save Willy."

The bill was co-sponsored by several other California representatives.

Liccardo says that nearly one in five gray whales that enter the San Francisco Bay die there. Usually, according to a BBC report, those whales died after being struck by a ship.

In 2025, 24 whales, including 21 gray whales, died in the San Francisco Bay Area, the highest number of whale deaths in 25 years.

So far this year, nine gray whales have died in the Bay Area. The latest Bay Area whale death came on Monday near Alcatraz.

The cause of death is still pending. Of those nine whales, experts at The Marine Mammal Center have only been able to identify the cause of death for one.

That whale was struck by a vessel, according to The Marine Mammal Center.

"With at least eight whale deaths already recorded this year in the San Francisco Bay Area, we welcome the attention this bill brings to protecting whales in coastal waters," Kathi George, Director of Cetacean Conservation Biology at The Marine Mammal Center, said. "We’re grateful for the chance to highlight the important, ongoing role of the U.S. Coast Guard’s Vessel Traffic Service in helping keep both marine life and vessel traffic safe where boats and whale habitats overlap."

Gray whale numbers have been rapidly declining, exacerbated by an unusual mortality event in 2023. Since then, low reproduction rates have kept the population in decline, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

As of mid-2025, there were only about 13,000 gray whales in existence, the lowest since the 1970s, according to NOAA.

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