In an unexpected cascading effect, wars and tensions in the Middle East are affecting groups of whales living part of the year in the ocean at the tip of Africa thousands of kilometers away.
The risks of collisions between ships and cetaceans off the coast of South Africa “have increased considerably” with the postponement of traffic from the Suez Canal to the Cape of Good Hope, according to a scientific report presented this month to the International Whaling Commission (IWC) which AFP consulted.
The subject has long been identified as a real problem by scientists and environmental advocates. Collisions, largely under-documented, constitute a “major cause of mortality in whales”, according to an article published in 2024 in the journal Science.
Videos published by sailors on social networks finally convinced Els Vermeulen, head of the cetacean research unit at the University of Pretoria, to study this risk at the tip of Africa.
“We saw people on board cargo ships crossing dense schools of humpback whales saying ‘Wow, look at all these beautiful whales we see.’ It made my heart freeze because we knew they were hitting some of them,” she tells AFP.
The effect of the increase in trafficking could be analyzed because it precedes the war led by the United States and Israel against Iran. On November 19, 2023, the Houthi rebels in Yemen, supported by Iran, attacked and captured the cargo ship Galaxy Leader. This episode, followed by others targeting merchant shipping in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, shifted maritime traffic.
The halving of the passage of commercial boats through the Strait of Bab-el-Mandeb and Suez – between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean – resulted in a doubling of traffic at the Cape of Good Hope, according to data from the Portwatch platform of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Between March 1 and April 24, 2026, 89 commercial ships passed the Cape of Good Hope on average each day, compared to 44 over the same period of 2023.
– Traffic quadruples –
“Estimates of the density of maritime traffic have increased considerably since December 2023, as has the risk of collision (proportional to this density),” observes the report led by Els Vermeulen.
Worse, “the fastest traffic, which presents the greatest risk of accident, has quadrupled”, notes the document about boats sailing at more than 15 knots (27.7 km/h).
All this while southern Africa was already previously identified as one of the “regions at high risk of collision”, in the article in the journal Science.
“The animals have not had time to adapt to maritime traffic,” Chris Johnson, head of the NGO WWF’s Whale and Dolphin Protection initiative, explains to AFP.
“You might think that when you hear a loud noise, you move away. But that’s not the case for certain species,” he explains, describing the case of blue whales in the United States. “When (they) hear a ship, they stop and dive just below the surface.”
– Route alternative –
For the southern right whale, the intensification of traffic comes at a time when “the recovery of populations has slowed down due to climate change”, specifies Els Vermeulen.
Another development is that super-groups of humpback whales now feed seasonally near the South African city of Cape Town.
If it is difficult to attribute this novelty to climate change, “it is something that we have observed since 2011”, indicates Ken Findlay, consultant in the blue economy. “This contributes to increasing the risk of collisions,” adds this contributor to the report.
“As they feed, they are absorbed by something else, which increases the risks,” adds Els Vermeulen.
Its report proposes an alternative navigation route which would, according to estimates, be able to reduce the risk of collision by 20% to 50% depending on the species, while extending the journey by only 20 nautical miles, negligible over distances up to 10,000 nautical miles.
The world’s leading shipowner, the Swiss MSC, has for example already modified its shipping routes for these reasons, off the coast of Sri Lanka and Greece.
To move forward on this path at the tip of Africa, more data is required. At the head of the NGO Ocean Action Network, Estelle van der Merwe imagines a dedicated application or location sharing via messaging to collect them.
On-board cameras whose images are analyzed by AI should also offer interesting perspectives in several years.
“All available solutions and mitigation measures will be examined,” assured the South African Department of the Environment (DFFE) in a press release to AFP.
published on May 11 at 09:39, AFP
