Saving Seafood

Right whale deaths raise concern for species’ survival

October 24, 2017 — CAPE COD, Mass. — The discovery Monday of another dead North Atlantic right whale off Cape Cod escalated the already fevered concern among Canadian and U.S. marine scientists and fishery managers on the imperiled state of the highly endangered species.

The discovery of the severely decomposed whale brings the 2017 death count to at least 16, with the majority of the mortalities — attributed exclusively by researchers to ship strikes and gear entanglements — occurring in Canadian waters.

Four of the right whale deaths have occurred off the coast of Massachusetts.

“Our research and data have shown us that ship-strike or entanglement are the only definitive cause of death,” said Mike Asaro, NOAA Fisheries’ Gloucester-based marine mammal and sea turtle branch chief for the Atlantic region. “There’s nothing else we’re aware of.”

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times 

Right whale deaths called ‘apocalyptic’

October 23, 2017 — NEW BEDFORD, MASS. — Whale scholars, lobstermen, conservationists and government officials converged Sunday in Nova Scotia to save right whales.

“Everybody is running out of adjectives,” Defenders of Wildlife attorney Jane Davenport said of the death of 12 North Atlantic right whales since June in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and another three off the U.S., totaling 3 percent of the total population. “It’s apocalyptic. It really is.”

At the annual North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium meeting in Halifax, right whale researchers released their latest population tally of 451 for 2016, typically counted with a year’s lag. But it’s easy to see where next year’s number is headed given the 15 known deaths and only five known births, said consortium chairman Mark Baumgartner, a Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution scientist.

“2017 will be another year of decline,” Baumgartner said.

In early October, the Defenders of Wildlife and three other conservation groups sent a 60-day notice of intent to sue the National Marine Fisheries Service for failure to protect North Atlantic right whales from fishing gear entanglement, believed by researchers to be one of two primary right whale killers, along with ship strikes.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard Times

A new model for right whale estimates

New system confirms population decline as another death is reported in Canada.

September 21, 2017 — NEW BRUNSWICK, Canada — Another North Atlantic right whale death in Canadian waters has brought further attention to the threat of fishing gear to the endangered marine mammals.

“It’s considered a severe entanglement,” New England Aquarium spokesman Tony LaCasse said of the dead female, believed to be around 3 years old. Fishing rope and gear, including a snow crab pot, entangled the pale, deeply cut carcass, estimated to be 36 feet long.

The right whales, which frequent Cape Cod waters in late winter and early spring, are among the rarest whales in the world, with 524 estimated in 2015 in a report by the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium. The death brought the total fatalities this year to 14, representing about 3 percent of the population.

The carcass was spotted by airplane surveyors Friday off Miscou Island, New Brunswick. The dead whale was towed to the island Monday, and a necropsy was performed Tuesday.

“The key thing is that the animal was entangled,” said Tonya Wimmer of the Marine Animal Response Society in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

Recent Right Whale Deaths Have Scientists Worried

July 7, 2017 — The deaths of six North Atlantic right whales in the Gulf of St. Lawrence last month have raised alarms among whale biologists who fear for the future of one of the rarest whales on the planet.

Robert Kenney, a marine mammal expert at the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography, called the unexpected deaths “a major concern” because the population of right whales totals fewer than 500 animals and their numbers have been declining since 2011. The dead whales represent more than 1 percent of the population.

While the deaths raise many questions, one of the first, according to Kenney, is what were they doing in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in the first place?

“Right whales go to the same places to feed every year — the Great South Channel, the Bay of Fundy, the Nova Scotia shelf — feeding grounds they probably learned from their mothers in their first year of life,” said Kenney, who manages the sighting database for the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium. “But recently they seem to be wandering farther afield. If there’s not enough food where they traditionally feed, they go to other places. That’s what we think is going on.”

What caused the deaths of the six whales in the Gulf of St. Lawrence — the water body surrounded by Newfoundland, Quebec, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick — is uncertain. Preliminary results of necropsies on three of the animals showed evidence of blunt trauma from ship strikes on two of the whales and fishing gear entanglement on the third. But a news release from Canada’s Marine Animal Response Society said other problems that “may have predisposed these animals to this trauma cannot be ruled out at this stage.”

Read the full story at ecoRI News

MASSACHUSETTS: Endangered whales visit Cape Cod in record number

April 13, 2017 — More than 100 North Atlantic right whales, including two mother-calf pairs, were spotted in Cape Cod Bay on Sunday, breaking a record for previous sightings, according to the Center of Coastal Studies.

An aerial survey team researching the rare marine mammal took thousands of photos of the 112 animals, which were scattered across two-thirds of the bay from the Cape Cod Canal to Provincetown, where there was a large concentration of the animals, according to Charles “Stormy” Mayo, right whale habitat expert at the center. There are 524 North Atlantic right whales in the world, according to the Center.

The number of right whales spotted may still increase, as researchers analyze the photographs taken during the flight, according to the center.

This year, only three right whale births were recorded, and two of those calves were spotted Sunday with their mothers, Mayo said. The number of calves has dropped precipitously during the past 10 years, from a high of 39 in 2009, according to data from the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium.

“It’s a pretty special situation that this many whales and arithmetically two-thirds of the calf population was here in Cape Cod Bay,” Mayo said. “The people who fly in our airplanes, who are trained researchers, said all 112 animals had their mouths open.”

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

Troubling signs for right whale population

April 10, 2017 — The quickly fading population of vaquitas sets a worrisome example for those trying to save North Atlantic right whales.

“It has me slightly terrified,” said Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution biologist Mark Baumgartner, who heads up the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium, at the annual U.S. Marine Mammal Commission meeting, held last week at the Sea Creat Beach Hotel in North Falmouth.

In 1997, scientists first counted 567 of the small porpoises in the Bay of California in Mexico, but in 20 years that has dropped precipitously — to 30 — as the vaquitas drown when caught underwater in gillnets.

The North Atlantic right whale population, at 524 animals, is currently on a downward trend, too, members of the consortium announced in November. This year’s low calving rate —only 3 right whale calves were documented — is one thing, Baumgartner said.

But a low calving rate coupled with increasing deaths due to fishing gear entanglement spells trouble.

“What could we expect in the next 5 to 10 years?” he said.

At the annual commission meeting, scientists delivered the sobering news that, starting in October, several vaquitas would be captured in the wild and placed in a conservation area for safekeeping and breeding. A recent and intense market in China for the swim bladder of totoaba, which is caught illegally in the bay using gillnets, “caught everybody by surprise,” said Peter Thomas, Marine Mammal Commission International and Policy Program Director. The vaquitas get caught in the gillnets and drown; their corpses are then brought up with the fish and are discarded by the fishermen.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times