『The Length of a Football Field』のカバーアート

The Length of a Football Field

The Length of a Football Field

無料で聴く

ポッドキャストの詳細を見る

ince January of 2025, every vessel in Washington waters has had to stay 1,000 yards from a Southern Resident killer whale. That is more than half a mile, it applies to kayaks and paddleboards, and the fine is $500. Federal law in the same water still says 200 yards. Canada, as of this June, says 1,000 metres. This episode asks where those numbers came from and finds that nobody ever solved for one. The oldest was chosen in 1995 because prosecutors found it a useful line, and the rest are copies, roundings, and a nautical unit that was already the working radius of the whole system before it was ever a rule. Then it finds the harder problem underneath: the rule turns on telling a Southern Resident from a Bigg's killer whale at half a mile, which the state's own advisory group calls very difficult and which the federal government declared flatly infeasible back in 2011.

Go look at: the Guemes ferry crossing, which is about three quarters of a mile. The setback is most of the way over but not all of it. Then find two photographs, a Bigg's and a Southern Resident, taken at distance in ordinary grey light, and decide honestly whether you could tell them apart from a moving boat at that range. That judgment is what the whole rule rests on.

adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_t1
まだレビューはありません