No North Atlantic right whales killed in Canadian waters in 2018

Protection measures appear to be working, but the outlook for the whales remain bleak as only 411 are believed to remain worldwide

Leyland Cecco in Toronto

Wed 2 Jan 2019 18.14 GMTLast modified on Wed 2 Jan 2019 18.25 GMT

No North Atlantic right whales were killed in Canadian waters last year – a rare glimmer of hope for officials working to protect one of the world’s most endangered species.

While the government protection measures appear to be working, the outlook for the whales remains bleak: only 411 are believed to remain worldwide, with fewer females giving birth than in previous years.

Facing extinction, the North Atlantic right whale cannot adapt. Can we?

The urgency in deploying environmental protections comes after a catastrophic 12 right whales were killed in Canadian waters in 2017 – the deadliest year on record for the species. Most of the deaths were the result of collisions with marine vessels. Rope entanglements from fishing boats were also suspected in two deaths. Another six were killed in American waters.

Sweeping measures introduced last year by Canada’s government include a 100-meter buffer zone between the whales and boats, fishing closures and vessel slowdowns. Violations of the rules can run steep: fines range from C$100,000 ($73,000) to C$500,000 ($366,543) – with repeat offenders facing potential jail time.

Large boats, including cruise ships, are required to slow their speed down to 10 knots in protection zones, reducing the risk of colliding with whales. The new limits have prompted some cruise ship companies to modify itineraries and bypass the region.

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Protecting adult female north atlantic right whales from injury and death key to recovery

Date:  November 7, 2018

Source:  NOAA Northeast Fisheries Science Center

Why is the endangered western North Atlantic right whale population growing far more slowly than those of southern right whales, a sister species also recovering from near extinction by commercial whaling?

NOAA Fisheries researchers and colleagues looked more closely at the question and have concluded that preserving the lives of adult females in the population is by far the most effective way to promote population growth and recovery. Most of these deaths are attributed to entanglement in fishing gear and collisions with ships. The findings are reported in Royal Society Open Science.

"Had North Atlantic right whales increased at the annual rate that we show they are capable of, the population number would be almost double what it is now and their current situation would not be so dire," said Peter Corkeron, who is lead author of the paper and heads the large whale research effort at NOAA Fisheries' Northeast Fisheries Science Center.

The North Atlantic right whale, Eubalaena glacialis, is one of three species of right whales. Of the three, it lives in the most industrialized habitat and migrates close to shore.

From 1970 to 2009, 80 percent of all North Atlantic right whale deaths (70 of 87) for which the cause is known were human-induced, mainly from entanglement in fishing gear and collisions with ships. By comparison, most deaths of southern right whales that have been observed were calves in their first year of life and very few were directly attributable to human activities.

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North Atlantic right whales may face extinction after no new births recorded

Declining fertility and rising mortality, exacerbated by fishing industry, prompts experts to warn whales could be extinct by 2040

Joanna Walters

Mon 26 Feb 2018 21.04 GMT

The dwindling North Atlantic right whale population is on track to finish its breeding season without any new births, prompting experts to warn again that without human intervention, the species will face extinction.

Scientists observing the whale community off the US east coast have not recorded a single mother-calf pair this winter. Last year saw a record number of deaths in the population. Threats to the whales include entanglement in lobster fishing ropes and an increasing struggle to find food in abnormally warm waters.

The combination of rising mortality and declining fertility is now seen as potentially catastrophic. There are estimated to be as few as 430 North Atlantic right whales left in the world, including just 100 potential mothers.

“At the rate we are killing them off, this 100 females will be gone in 20 years,” said Mark Baumgartner, a marine ecologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. Without action, he warned, North Atlantic right whales will be functionally extinct by 2040.

A 10-year-old female was found dead off the Virginia coast in January, entangled in fishing gear, in the first recorded death of 2018. That followed a record 18 premature deaths in 2017, Baumgartner said.

Woods Hole and other groups, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, have been tracing right whale numbers in earnest since the mid-1980s.

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North Atlantic right whales on the brink of extinction, officials say

Fishing nets and lack of food blamed for pushing number of the world’s most endangered marine animal to just 450

Associated Press

Monday 11 December 2017 00.56 GMT

Officials with the US federal government say it is time to consider the possibility that endangered right whales could become extinct unless new steps are taken to protect them.

North Atlantic right whales are among the rarest marine mammals in the world, and they have endured a deadly year. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has said there are only about 450 of the whales left and 17 of them have died so far in 2017.

The situation is so dire that American and Canadian regulators need to consider the possibility that the population won’t recover without action soon, said John Bullard, the Northeast Regional Administrator for NOAA Fisheries. The high year of mortality is coinciding with a year of poor reproduction, and there are only about 100 breeding female North Atlantic right whales left.

“You do have to use the extinction word, because that’s where the trend lines say they are,” Bullard said. “That’s something we can’t let happen.”

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Feces from entangled North Atlantic right whales reveals 'sky-high' stress levels

November 30, 2017

In a new study published this week in Endangered Species Research, North Atlantic right whale scientists found that whales who undergo prolonged entanglements in fishing gear endure "sky-high hormone levels," indicating severe stress, which researchers discovered using a pioneering technique of examining scat from live, entangled, and dead whales over 15 years.

"For the first time, we can get hormone levels on not just dead, but living whales," said Dr. Rosalind Rolland, D.V.M., the study's lead author and a senior scientist in the Ocean Health and Marine Stress Lab at the Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life at the New England Aquarium who developed this technique. "These levels show stress from extreme physical trauma. It's an animal welfare issue."

For the highly endangered North Atlantic right whale population, it was a devastating summer with 16 deaths - 12 in Canada and four in the US - due to vessel strikes and entanglements for a population that now only numbers around 450. For five of the dead whales, Rolland and the Anderson Cabot Center team were able to use this critical fecal stress hormone test to investigate the timeline of death. The levels of hormone indicated if whales died quickly or over several days or more. "This is one more tool in the toolbox for determining cause of death," she said.

Read more at: 

North Atlantic right whales decline confirmed: 458 remaining

Study confirms need for urgent action

Date:  September 19, 2017

Source:  NOAA Northeast Fisheries Science Center

Summary:

Marine biologists have developed a new model to improve estimates of abundance and population trends of endangered North Atlantic right whales, which have declined in numbers and productivity in recent years. Between 1990 and 2010 abundance increased to 482 animals, but since 2010 the numbers have declined to 458 in 2015, with 14 known deaths this year.

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Distinct whale ‘voices’ identified by researchers

May 19, 2015

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck

There are certain people who can be easily identified by their voices. For instance, if you close your eyes and listen, you can undoubtedly tell when someone like James Earl Jones or Morgan Freeman are speaking–simply by the tone and timbre of the sounds they produce.

Now, a team of researchers from Syracuse University have found that the same is true of North Atlantic right whales, as they have managed to correctly distinguish between 13 different whales in an initial study by using a combination of different characteristics, including the fundamental and harmonic frequencies they produced and the length of their calls.

In a statement, the scientists explained their research could allow them to identify and to track individual right whales, which could make it easier to study this elusive endangered species. The team will present their findings at this week’s spring meeting of the Acoustical Society of America.

Upcall duration key to distinguishing between different creatures

North Atlantic right whales, which eat tiny zooplankton in the waters along the east coast of the US and Canada, produce approximately a half-dozen different types of calls, the researchers said. They focused their research on a vocalization known as the upcall, which has a duration of about one or two seconds and increases in frequency from about 100 Hz to 400 Hz.

This places is at the low-end of the frequencies audible to humans, they added. The upcall is one of the most commonly produced types among right whales of all ages and sexes, and is probably used to signal their presence to other members of their critically endangered species.

Jessica McCordic, a masters student in the biology department of the New York university, and Syracuse biology professor Susan Parks, studied more than 10 years worth of acoustic data that had been collected from sensors attached to whales in Cape Cod Bay in Massachusetts, the Bay of Fundy in Canada, and in the waters of the southeastern coast of the US.

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Endangered right whales to be tracked using autonomous gliders

North Atlantic right whales greatest threats include ship strikes and entanglements in fishing gear

By Alison Auld, The Canadian Press Posted: Aug 06, 2014 7:36 AM AT Last Updated: Aug 06, 2014 7:36 AM AT

The team is hoping the gliders — long, slender electric devices that can quietly collect data on the marine ecosystem and its inhabitants — might identify areas where the whales congregate when they're not in their usual haunts. 

(Courtesy: New England Aquarium)

Sleek yellow gliders will soon cruise the waters off Nova Scotia in a high-tech bid to track down one of the world's most endangered marine mammals and possibly provide clues to an ecological mystery.

Canadian and American scientists are getting ready to deploy autonomous underwater vehicles around the Scotian shelf to look for rare North Atlantic right whales and learn more about their habitats.

The team is hoping the gliders — long, slender electric devices that can quietly collect data on the marine ecosystem and its inhabitants — might identify areas where the whales congregate when they're not in their usual haunts.

"We're going to put eyes and ears into the water and go looking for those missing whales and their habitats," said Chris Taggart, a professor in the Oceanography Department at Dalhousie University in Halifax.

"We know that these whales are going somewhere else and we haven't a clue where."

Taggart is one of several researchers from the New England Aquarium, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and the University of Victoria collaborating on the glider project to see if they can help determine the whales' migratory paths and critical habitats.

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Are North Atlantic Right Whales Mating in the Gulf of Maine?

July 24, 2013 — Using data obtained during six years of regular aerial surveys and genetics data collected by a consortium of research groups, scientists have strengthened evidence pointing to the central Gulf of Maine as a mating ground for North Atlantic right whales, according to a study recently published online in the journal Endangered Species Research.

The North Atlantic right whale (Eubalaena glacialis) is one of the most endangered marine mammal species in the world and has been intensively studied for decades. Much has been learned about its habitat, behavior, and population demographics. But until now, there was little to indicate where these whales mated, a big missing piece in the puzzle of their life history.

"A high proportion of potential mates aggregated in the central Gulf of Maine between November and January, and these same individuals produced a calf a year later. We concluded that this is a pretty strong indication of a mating ground if the gestation period is 12 months," said Tim Cole, lead author and a biologist at the Woods Hole Laboratory of NOAA's Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC).

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Scientists Use Marine Robots to Detect Endangered Whales

Jan. 9, 2013 — Two robots equipped with instruments designed to "listen" for the calls of baleen whales detected nine endangered North Atlantic right whales in the Gulf of Maine last month. The robots reported the detections to shore-based researchers within hours of hearing the whales (i.e., in real time), demonstrating a new and powerful tool for managing interactions between whales and human activities.
The team of researchers, led by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) scientists Mark Baumgartner and Dave Fratantoni, reported their sightings to NOAA, the federal agency responsible for enforcing the Marine Mammal Protection Act. NOAA Fisheries Service, in turn, put in place on Dec. 5 a "dynamic management area," asking mariners to voluntarily slow their vessel speed to avoid striking the animals.

The project employed ocean-going robots called gliders equipped with a digital acoustic monitoring (DMON) instrument and specialized software allowing the vehicle to detect and classify calls from four species of baleen whales -- sei, fin, humpback, and right whales. The gliders's real-time communication capabilities alerted scientists to the presence of whales in the research area, in the first successful use of technology to report detections of several species of baleen whales from autonomous vehicles.
Read on: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130109124237.htm