Critically endangered whale tagged for first time

Only about 130 western gray whales left


December 2010: One of the world's most endangered whales has been successfully tagged is now being followed off the coast of Russia's Sakhalin Island.

There are only about 130 western gray whales left, and they are listed as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, with perhaps only about 33 mature and reproductively active females. Their feeding grounds in the Russian Far East are known but details of their migration routes and breeding grounds are not.

'We wanted to take no chances'
This is the first time an individual from the Western gray whale population has been tagged and tracked using telemetry.

‘Tremendous care was taken to select a healthy adult male,' says Greg Donovan, head of science for the International Whaling Commission (IWC), who co-ordinated the project. ‘Although the risks associated with such tagging are minimal, we wanted to take absolutely no chances with females or young animals. The information we expect to get from this study is vital to international conservation efforts to preserve this population, as is the collaboration between governments, international organisations, international scientists, industry and other stakeholders.'

The tagged whale, known as Flex, has been seen regularly in the Sakhalin area in summer since it was photographed as a calf in 1997. The team has been following its movements via satellite with data beamed from the transmitting tag.

‘Not a lot is known about western gray whales, so finding out where they migrate to breed and calve will be a tremendous step forward,' says Bruce Mate, director of the Marine Mammal Institute at Oregon State University, who led the tagging part of the opration and has pioneered the use of satellites to track whales since the 1970s.

'This will help us to protect the whales'
‘Finding the migration routes and winter grounds of this critically endangered population will allow range states to develop or improve effective measures to protect the whales,' says Vyatcheslav Rozhnov, deputy director of the A.N. Severtsov Institute for Ecology and Evolution of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IPEE RAS), who led the scientific expedition.