Apr. 11,
2013 — In 1972, a U.S. Senate committee reported, "Many of the great
whales which once populated the oceans have now dwindled to the edge of
extinction," due to commercial hunting. The committee also worried about
how tuna fishing was accidentally killing thousands of dolphins, trapped in
fishing gear. And they considered reports about seal hunting and the decline of
other mammals, including sea otters and walruses.
In October of
that year, Congress passed the Marine Mammal Protection Act.
Four decades
later, new research shows that the law is working.
Not only has
the act "successfully prevented the extirpation of any marine mammal
population in the United States in the forty years since it was enacted,"
write University of Vermont conservation biologist Joe Roman and his colleagues
in a new report, but also, "the current status of many marine mammal
populations is considerably better than in 1972."
Their study,
published online on March 22, in the Annals of the New York Academy of
Sciences, shows that population trends for most stocks of these animals remain
unknown, but of those stocks that are known, many are increasing.
"At a
very fundamental level, the MMPA has accomplished what its framers set out to
do," says co-author Andrew Read, professor of marine biology at Duke University
Some marine
mammals, like endangered right whales, continue to be in deep trouble, but
other populations "particularly seals and sea lions, have recovered to or
near their carrying capacity," the scientists write.
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