A longtime legal gadfly billing himself as the ‘Man Against Xtinction’ is looking to block container shipping to much of New England for four months every year in an effort to save the whales.
Richard Max Strahan filed suit against the US subsidiaries of CMA CGM, Mediterranean Shipping Co and Cosco in the US federal court for Massachusetts requesting various limitations on their operations in the Boston area in an effort to protect endangered whale species, plus damages.
Strahan — who filed suit under the Man Against Xtinction moniker — alleges the companies’ ships kill, injure and otherwise harm the whales under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).
“Ship strikes on endangered whales [are] an increasing problem along the US coastline,” the complaint, filed earlier this month, read.
“Ship strikes now account for at least half the anthropogenic mortalities inflicted on endangered whales. Most endangered whales bear numerous scars from being individually struck by ships in the past and barely surviving the encounter.”
Strahan alleges that shipping activity in the region not only kills and injures whales — constituting an illegal taking as defined by the ESA — but pollutes their habitats and makes noise interfering with their communication.
He wants container ships to stay out of the northern black whale’s critical habitat from 1 February through 1 June each year, an area in the Atlantic Ocean stretching from the eastern tip of Cape Cod through the Massachusetts Bay, up the New Hampshire and Maine coastlines to the Canadian border and east to the end of the US exclusive economic zone.
He also wants to block transiting those same waters any time an ESA-listed species of whale is seen near shipping lanes, the liner operators to create a programme to track the species and to comply with voluntary speed limits.
Strahan blames shipping for the population of northern right whales falling below 380 and declining numbers of other species like black whales, humpback whales, fin whales, blue whales and sei whales.
He also alleges the whales are smaller due to the disruptions to their habitats brought on by ships.
None of the three defendants returned requests for comment.
Strahan has filed at least four federal lawsuits using the Man Against Xtinction name and dozens more using his real name stretching back more than two decades.
The lawsuits are often, but not always, over environmental matters and he represents himself.
Describing himself as a conservation biologist, chief science officer at Whale Safe USA and a licensed lobster fisherman, Strahan has used various New Hampshire addresses, including one in the University of New Hampshire's mailroom.
In 2007 and 2021, he sued the Massachusetts Port Authority, also known as Massport, over claims it was facilitating shipping activities that damaged whale populations.
According to court papers, he argued if the Port of Boston did not exist, ships would not hit whales.
Both were dismissed, with the 2021 lawsuit dismissed in February when the court ruled he lacked standing given he was making the same allegations as the ill-fated 2007 action.
Then, the court ruled Massport did not actually operate any of the ships and that it could not enforce a speed limit.
Strahan's most recent lawsuit comes as experts have pushed the US government to take the issue of whale strikes more seriously by enforcing speed limits and directing ships to avoid certain areas.
In February, tanker giant Euronav announced it would take up those measures voluntarily in the Mediterranean Sea, California and the east coast of Canada.
