‘Save Willy Act’ introduced in California to help save whales in Bay Area
In a move that will certainly tug on the heartstrings of anyone that grew up in the 90s, Representative Sam Liccardo (D-Ca.)and other co-sponsors have introduced the Save Willy Act, aiming to protect the whales that enter the San Francisco Bay. The bill’s appropriate name is inspired by the 1993 drama Free Willy, in which an orphan boy befriends and ultimately saves a captive orca.
“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 in a statement.
If passed, the Save Willy Act would create a “Whale Desk” in the U.S. Coast Guard’s San Francisco station, where the public and mariners can report sightings and warn vessel operators of whales in the bay to avoid often fatal collisions. Additionally, the bill instructs the Coast Guard to assess new whale tracking and alerting technologies.
“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,” Rep. Liccardo explained. “A whale desk will protect these magnificent creatures and help mariners avoid costly, harrowing collisions. Together, let’s Save Willy.”
According to Rep. Liccardo, 24 whale deaths were documented in the San Francisco Bay Area region last year alone, a record for the past quarter century. Twenty-one of those whales were gray whales (Eschrichtius robustus)—mammals weighing around 90,000 pounds and threatened by climate change and human activity. A study recently published in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science in April also found that 18 percent of all grey whales who enter San Francisco Bay die there.
The bill’s introduction comes in the wake of a letter Rep. Liccardo wrote r in response to the whale deaths in 2025. He asked the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) if funding and staffing cuts influenced their capacity to protect the United States’ oceans and marine life. The agency’s reply allegedly mentioned “ongoing ecosystem changes in Arctic feeding grounds—driven in part by climate change—that alter gray whale behavior and drive whales to enter the Bay in search of food,” as summarized by the statement.
Rep. Liccardo and his co-sponsors intentionally introduced the Save Willy Act on April 22, aka Earth Day.It is currently endorsed by the Marine Mammal Center, Monterey Bay Aquarium, and California Academy of Sciences, among others.
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