Only 16 whale sightings were reported anywhere south of Virginia this winter. The lack of sightings, coupled with at least 18 whale deaths reported in Canada and the United States between April 2017 and January 2018, leaves those interested in right whales concerned.
Scientists studying the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale logged another depressing statistic this winter.
In the more than 30 years scientists have tracked the movements of the whales between New England and Nova Scotia and the warmer waters off the Florida coast, this was the first time no calves have been sighted. That fact has only added concern to the growing sense of urgency after right whale deaths skyrocketed last year.
“Obviously you can’t tell a right whale it’s time to have a baby,” said Michael Moore, a senior scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and director of its marine mammal section.
But Moore and many other right whale scientists watching the highly endangered population dwindle before their eyes are seeking answers to the deadly perils the animals face, including collisions with the ships that share their space, commercial fishing gear that tangles the whales, and a warming ocean that appears to be wreaking havoc with their food supply and changing their migration patterns.
“We have to communicate the extent to which these animals are suffering," said Moore. But at the same time, he and other whale scientists work to remain optimistic and hopeful about the animals' future.
“One has to maintain optimism because otherwise you’d walk away from it," he said.
Only 16 whale sightings were reported anywhere south of Virginia this winter. The lack of sightings, coupled with at least 18 whale deaths reported in Canada and the United States between April 2017 and January 2018, leaves everyone interested in right whales concerned, said Philip Hamilton, a research scientist with the New England Aquarium's Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life.
“There’s still a slim hope that one or two (calves) will be seen this spring, but that hope is dwindling," Hamilton said.
It was a sad winter for local volunteers in Volusia and Flagler counties who watch for right whales, said Jeff Majewski, a whale watch volunteer with the Marineland Right Whale Project.
“We all are concerned,” said Majewski, a retired respiratory therapist who lives in Palm Coast. “All of us want to see right whales, especially mother-calf pairs.
“The concern is not only that we are not seeing anything this year, they’re saying only about 100 of the whales are of child-bearing age,” he said. “The concern is getting the governments of the United States and Canada to strive harder to do prevention to keep the waters as safe as possible for the whales that migrate.”
Right whales are among the world’s most endangered. They were hunted to the brink of extinction, and scientists estimated the population may have been reduced to around 100 early in the last century. Once whaling was banned, the population began to recover. But now, scientists fear a deadly trend has taken hold.
Despite measures and regulations enacted in recent decades to protect the animals, the right whale population was estimated at around 450 in February 2017. That was before the documented loss of 17 whales later in the year. It's possible that other whales also died but weren't documented. That deadly period followed one of the lowest calving seasons on record in 2017, when the Marine Fisheries Commission reported the five calves sighted were the smallest calf production in 38 years.
“There are some people who take this information and start to lose hope, and potentially want to give up,” said Hamilton, who oversees the North Atlantic right whale photo identification catalog. He and other scientists use the database to identify the whales by the unique fleshy callosities that grow on their heads and stand out against the whales' darker skins during ocean surveys.
Hamilton believes the whales can recover. Reproduction has taken downturns in the past. In 2000, just a single calf was born. But then calving rebounded to the point the population was producing an average of 17 calves a year.
“We know these guys can handle short-term interruptions or reductions in their reproduction,” Hamilton said. “It’s a long-lived population and long-lived individuals that reproduce through their lifetimes. We just really need to stop killing them and stop injuring them and they can recover from this, no doubt.”
Searching for solutions
Efforts to save the right whale are focused on figuring out where the whales are going, how their food supply is being affected and how to address the vessel strikes and fishing gear entanglements.
The declining trend in calving lies with the health of the breeding female whales, said Hamilton and Moore. To get pregnant and carry a calf to term, female right whales have to be in good body condition, which for a whale means fat, loaded with blubber. A female whale will lose up to a third of her body weight nursing a calf. She has to recover from that and be in robust condition to get pregnant again, and that means she has to find plentiful food.
The whales aren’t finding enough food in their traditional foraging grounds, possibly because the copepods they graze on are moving northward as water temperatures warm in the Gulf of Maine and elsewhere, said Hamilton. The whales have "virtually abandoned several of their stalwart feeding grounds."
“We do think it’s related to climate change," Hamilton said. “The Gulf of Maine is warming faster than almost any other part of the ocean. It’s increasing a half-degree a year."
As the whales roam farther afield in search of food, it requires more energy and more effort. Moore compares it to watching a healthy, rotund cow in a pasture of deep, green grass. The cow is fat because it doesn’t need to travel all over the pasture to eat because grass grows all around. But if the food supply for right whales "is too scarce and spread out too much," he said, "it’s not going to work because they’re going to have a tough time trying to get it."
And the increasing travel increases the risks they face of getting entangled in the submerged traps, pots and lines used to trap snow crabs, lobsters and other seafood popular on restaurant menus.
Deadly fishing gear
Traps with long trailing lines become entangled in the baleen plates inside the whale's mouths that capture their food from the water. Ropes and gear wrap around their jaws and prevent them from foraging for food. The gear wraps around fins and carves excruciatingly through their skin and into tissue.
“More than 85 percent of the whale population has been entangled at least once in their lives,” said Moore. Many whales have been entangled more than a half-dozen times. As much as 25 percent of the population suffers new entanglements every year.
Whales dragging fishing gear or recovering from an injury may burn more calories than they consume.
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution scientists have taken gear off entangled whales and then loaded it onto a boat and towed it around to measure the drag, Moore said. “The cost of entanglement per day can be comparable to what it takes to get pregnant and maintain that pregnancy," he said.
The trailing gear has "a direct impact on their reproduction," Hamilton said. Females that have been entangled and seriously injured are not reproducing at the same rate as females that weren’t entangled.
Necropsies on the whales killed in the Gulf of St. Lawrence last summer found several whales died from the blunt force trauma of being struck by a vessel. But fishing gear entanglements were also implicated in some of the deaths.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service has been asked to strengthen measures aimed at reducing entanglement. The agency is employing a number of different strategies, said Shelley Dawicki, a spokeswoman for NOAA's Northeastern Fisheries Science Center.
The agency is also working to collect genetic samples to learn more about the whales, conducting aerial flights to document the presence of whales to warn mariners and search for entangled whales and using passive acoustics to track their movements. NOAA also has instituted a voluntary slow speed zone to protect right whales off the coast of Cape Cod this spring, she said.
When the deaths occurred last year, the government of Canada took several immediate steps, including shutting down snow crab fishing in the area where whales were believed to be struck, increasing surveillance and imposing speed limits on large vessels. Fisheries and Oceans Canada recently announced several measures for 2018.
“Following a devastating summer in 2017 and a worrying breeding season where no new calves were sighted this winter, we need to do everything we can to help ensure the survival of the species,” said Dominic LeBlanc, minister of Fisheries and Oceans Canada, in a news release. “We must rise to the challenge of reducing threats to whales by reducing and preventing gear entanglements and vessel collisions.”
The measures include mandatory speed restrictions for large vessels in the western Gulf of St. Lawrence, opening and closing the snow crab fishery earlier, licensing requirements for certain segments of the fishing industry to keep better track of ropes and buoys on fishing gear, and mandatory reporting of lost gear. They’re also increasing surveillance for whales.
In Moore’s view, the Canadian government has made greater advances more quickly than the U.S. government to restrict fishing and boating to protect the whales.
Scientists in New England and Canada are also working directly with fishermen to try to figure out different technologies fishermen could employ that would be safer for the whales.
Trap fishermen in areas where the governments have imposed restrictions, such as in Cape Cod Bay, are more willing to look at alternatives to “reduce the entanglement risk substantially," said Moore. “They are willing to talk to scientists and engineers who say ‘You know, there’s a different way of doing this.’"
Even ropes just a little weaker could increase the chances of right whales surviving entanglements, said Hamilton. New England Aquarium scientist Amy Knowlton and a colleague at the aquarium, Scott Kraus, are working with fishermen, engineers and other scientists to research other technologies that might be useful.
In addition to the issues with food, vessels and fishing gear, Majewski and others remain concerned about the specter of offshore drilling and live sonar activities by the U.S. Navy.
“Certainly what’s done to the ocean affects them (whales) greatly,” he said.
NOAA Right Whale Video