If they could do it in their own language, thousands of migrating whales would probably want to say thank you. So now, a group of marine scientists is saying it for them.
They're awarding several whale tail trophies to commercial shipping companies, thanking them for slowing down to help protect the whales from deadly collisions. "And I think it's something that's well deserved because we have a number of shipping lines, who have drastically changed their operations and drastically changed their scheduling, to ensure that they're slowing down to ten knots for hundreds of miles off of our coastline to protect whales," says Jess Morten, with the California Marine Sanctuary Foundation and NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.