Proactive conservation management strategy urged for North Atlantic right whale

Date:  June 11, 2018

Source:  University of California - Santa Barbara

These are not good times for the North Atlantic right whale. Ship strikes and gear entanglement play major roles in the mortality of these highly endangered mammals, which now number fewer than 500. Making matters worse, climate-mediated shifts are pushing their prey out of the whales' usual feeding grounds, rendering traditional habitat-focused protection policies less than optimal.

This reality was starkly apparent in the summer of 2017, when 17 right whales turned up dead in U.S.-Canadian waters -- a mass mortality event attributed in large part to gear entanglement and ship strikes. The event also revealed that the whales had gone beyond their typical distributional boundaries. Scientists estimate that unless protective policies are expanded to cover their shifting distribution, right whales may face extinction in less than 30 years.

That's according to a new study by researchers including UC Santa Barbara Marine Science Institute ecologist Erin Meyer-Gutbrod. With atmospheric scientist Charles H. Greene, of Cornell University, and postdoctoral research associate Kimberley T. A. Davies, of Dalhousie University, Meyer-Gutbrod authored the paper "Marine Species Range Shifts Necessitate Advanced Policy Planning," which appears in the journal Oceanography.

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