Right Whales Again on Extinction Path

"Humback Whale Sighting is rare," New York Times

This year over 17 Whales were found dead in Canadian and US waters.  The historic battle to protect Whales is not over.

On December 1 CBC News reported that the Habitat Range of the North Atlantic Right Whales has shifted.

Using ocean microphones and analyzing data scientists assure to have discovered a new habitat for the endangered right whales.

Historically Whales have been hunted down for oil and grease. They were hunted in the past centuries until near extinction. With the arrival of fossil fuels the hunt for whales was over but the species took centuries to recover and international legislation and programs to protect the Whales began.

Now climate change, changing weather, ocean temperatures and alteration of currents and development is affecting whales indirectly but closely.

"After the whales started disappearing from the Scotian Shelf off southern Nova Scotia and other areas where they were common, scientists began pulling together data gathered from underwater microphones mounted to the ocean floor, CBC News reported.

"We had 19 different organizations that had passive acoustic data collected for various purposes from 2004 to 2014," Genevieve Davis, a researcher at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole, Mass., told CBC's Information Morning.

For some the situation is even more critical than a shifting of habitat. Mark Baumgartner, a scientist with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution -WHOI told the Vineyard Gazette on December 1 that Right Whale Population is actually on the brink of extinction.

“At the rate right whales are dying, we could lose this species,” Baumgartner of WHOI said. According to WHOI to the date there are about 500 of these individuals representing the entire specie -a state of sheer fragility.

“...could reach a point at which it’s not viable to recover in just about 20 years,” Baumgartner added.

As yet another "badly decomposed whale washes up on Chappaquiddick last month -identified as a North Atlantic right whale", biologists begin drilling hole in its skull to understand the cause of death.

"It is likely the 17th right whale found dead this year," officials said.

WHOI assures that this is tangible evidence of a bigger alarming story which can not be seen and takes place beneath the ocean surface. Solutions are urged.

WHOI scientists arrived to the Island with the sole purpose of examining the new right whale carcass. The whale was on its early November migration pattern in the surf to East Beach.

“At first glance, it was really difficult to tell just what it was, other than it was a whale,” Trustees of Reservations Martha’s Vineyard superintendent Chris Kennedy said.

"Unusually high mortality rate has triggered a federal investigation," Lenny Hall.

In Canada scientists which assure that increased mortality is related to a shift of habitat range say that their study was triggered when right whales usually found in usual breeding grounds disappeared. Using ocean acoustics and a network of ocean microphones set at the bottom floor scientists began to unravel secrets.

   

They recognized the up-calls "a distinctive whooping that ascends from low to high and which allows the whales to stay in contact with others throughout their range" in recordings.

"We can identify when they're in the area by finding these up-calls, so that's how we go through the sound data," the lead author of the new study, which is published in the journal Nature Scientific Reports said.

"We look at it through spectrograms, which are a visual display of sound, and we can pick them out that way."

The recording also registers shi traffic. North Atlantic is one of the most busy vessel routes. Noise pollution coming from vessel traffic and oil and gas exploitation developments has already been linked as of having a direct impact on Whales which rely on clean ocean sound acoustic channels to communicate, relate, live and navigate creating sonar maps.

Davis told the press that the Canadian government's efforts in the Gulf of St Lawrence, including vessel speed restrictions imposed in August, are a positive step to avoiding shift of habitat but called for more action and said that restrictions in small areas was simply inefficient due to the large migration pattern which Right Whales have.

Davis added that not only have Right Whales shifted their habitat range but that they in fact have moved significantly. The sound recordings prove this fact, researchers assure.

Mr. Moore from WHOI studying the last Whale carcass using DNA said that a cause of death was not possible at this time due to the state of decomposition of the body of the Whale.  

“Basically it’s confirmation of another death,” Mr. Moore said. “Getting an accurate handle on the mortality rate is really important,” Moore added. “Diagnosis about why the animal died . . . helps to try to avoid the future mortalities.”

North Atlantic right whales are the Massachusetts state marine mammal. They spend winters in warmer water off the southeastern United States before migrating north in the spring and summer, when they feed on plankton off New England and eastern Canada. They are dark gray with no dorsal fin and distinctive callosities on their heads. They weigh up to 79 tons and measure 50 feet long.

“This is an iconic animal in our area that we could lose, not just in your kids’ lifetime, but in our lifetime,” Mr. Baumgartner, the WHOI scientist who is also the leader of the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium jumped into the conversation.

Other reports signal to overfishing and industrial fishing as playing a major role in the protection of this Endangered Specie. NOAA Fisheries declared the number of deaths an unusual mortality event, triggering a formal investigation by federal scientists.

Long line and ghost nets entanglement is a death trap for Right Whales specially those deployed and lost by industrial shipping vessels which can run for miles. Scientists are working with the fishing industry in the zone to develop new technology which will not harm Right Whales.

“Let fishermen do what they do best, which is to innovate how to make the equipment easier to use, cheaper to use, more effective,” Mr. Baumgartner said.

The Habitat Range Shift Paper assures Right Whales have transitioned from the usual habitats, such as the Bay of Fundy and northern Gulf of Maine. The whales are instead spending more time in the mid-Atlantic region and the Gulf of St Lawrence.

Of the 17 Whales which have been confirmed dead this year 12 washed up in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. "Necropsies on seven showed four likely died after being hit by ships, and two were likely killed after becoming tangled in fishing lines," CBC News reported.

"The whales' appearance in the gulf -possibly as a result of warming ocean temperatures and changing prey behaviour -is surprising," Davis said.

Those most committed assure that ship hits and entanglements are in part the big problem, others argue that noise pollution and changing temperature and global patterns are also affecting Right Whales. The truth is that still to the date...even centuries after the Great Worldwide Hunt for Whales began...and conservation actions to protect the specie were installed...the Whale War is not over.