Congress Moves to Protect Whales in San Francisco Bay with Save Willy Act
A coalition of California lawmakers has introduced the Save Willy Act, legislation designed to reduce whale deaths in the San Francisco Bay by establishing a dedicated coordination unit within the U.S. Coast Guard’s San Francisco station.
The bill, led by Representatives Sam Liccardo and John Garamendi and co-sponsored by eight additional members of the California and Puerto Rico delegations, would create a “Whale Desk” to centralize sighting reports from the public and commercial mariners and relay real-time alerts to vessel operators when whales enter the shipping corridor. It also directs the Coast Guard to assess emerging technologies for whale tracking and collision avoidance.
The legislative push comes against a backdrop of sharply rising mortality figures. The Bay Area recorded 24 whale deaths in 2025 — 21 of them gray whales — the highest annual toll in 25 years. Seven gray whales have already died in the Bay since the start of this year’s migratory season. Scientists estimate roughly 13,000 Eastern Pacific Gray Whales remain, the lowest population level since the 1970s, as deteriorating Arctic feeding conditions drive the animals further south and into the Bay in search of food.
Liccardo framed the Whale Desk as a force-multiplier for existing research efforts. “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,” he said. NOAA, responding to a 2025 congressional inquiry from the full Bay Area delegation, confirmed that Arctic ecosystem disruption linked to climate change is altering gray whale behavior and pushing them into busier nearshore waters.
The Marine Mammal Center, Oceana, Monterey Bay Aquarium, the California Academy of Sciences, and the Animal Welfare Institute have all endorsed the bill. Oceana’s California Campaign Director Geoff Shester described the approach as “smart and collaborative,” noting that the Bay Area functions simultaneously as a major economic shipping hub and critical habitat for migrating whales — a tension the legislation attempts to manage rather than ignore.