Tag: whales

  During a series of conferences in Southern Sri Lanka, Friend of the Sea’s director Paolo Bray has exposed the problem of the increasing number of endangered whales being killed by cargo ships strikes. Pigmy blue whales and other whales feed and breed in the area of the Indian Ocean just South of Sri Lanka. The same area is crossed by the most intense cargo ships traffic in the world: over 5000 ships per month. Dead whales are often carried on the bowls of the 300 meters long vessels. More whales are found floating or stranded with evidence of having been struck by cargo ships. In addition the ships form a “wall of noise” which negatively impacts whales feeding and breeding behavior. “An estimated 50 to 100 whales are struck to death each year by these vessels,” explains Dr. Bray. “Pigmy blue whales could be led to extinction in the next few years if the shipping lines continue to ignore their impact.” Friend of the Sea has urged the World Shipping Council and ten shipping companies (NYK, Maersk, Evergreen Marine Corporation, CMA-CGM, MSC, Hapag-Lloyd, APL, Cosco, Hanjin, and CSCL) to immediately engage at slowing down their ships to less than ...

(Image Credit: Craig Hayslip/Oregon State University) Bruce Mate has been tagging blue whales since 1979. After 35 years, he has yet to lose his sense of wonder. "The term 'awesome' is almost trite nowadays, people use it a lot. But for blue whales it's an appropriate term," said Mate, director of the Marine Mammal Institute at Oregon State University. "They're the biggest animal that's ever lived on Earth, over 100 feet long, over 100 tons in weight, and their color is a sort of iridescent blue. When you see them rising to the surface you start seeing this glimmer that keeps getting bigger and bigger. They're just amazing," he said. A new online tool funded by NASA that helps protect this endangered whales is set to be released this year by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The WhaleWatch tool will help decrease whale mortality due to collisions with shipping and fishing gear. About a fourth of the roughly 12,000 blue whales in the world today live in the Pacific Ocean, said Mate. Most of them, along with other endangered whale species, migrate up and down the California coast – along with heavy fishing and shipping traffic to and from the ...

  For millions of years, blue whales have cruised the world's oceans with hardly a care, their sheer size making them largely free from predator attacks. The downside to being the largest animals in history, however, is that the species was never pressured to evolve defensive behaviors. Now, the suggest that this lack of an evasive response might make the whales particularly susceptible to deadly collisions. "It's not part of their evolutionary history to have cargo ships killing them, so they haven't developed behavioral responses to this threat," said Jeremy Goldbogen, an assistant professor of biology at Stanford's Hopkins Marine Station, and the senior author on the study. "They simply have no compelling response to avoiding these dangerous ships." The study, published in Endangered Species Research, could help improve methods to protect blue whales and other marine animals from deadly ship collisions. Collisions with ships are a major threat to whales and pose a significant threat to the recovery of some endangered populations. Efforts to reduce collisions have mostly involved placing speed limits on ships passing through busy whale habitats or rerouting shipping channels around these areas altogether. However, a critical piece of information needed to make these decisions and ...

Environmentalists have called on the eight Arctic nations of the Arctic Council to enact a ten-year moratorium on any increase in Arctic shipping to protect endangered beluga whales from the threat of growing ship traffic in their habitat. The moratorium will enable nations to finalize and implement the “Polar Code,” an agreement currently being negotiated under the auspices of the International Maritime Organization (IMO), that aims to establish environmental, safety, and shipping controls, in order to constrain industrial accidents and ecosystem impacts in the Arctic. A new report released  by the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA),  Endangered Belugas and the Growing Threats of Climate Change, Arctic Shipping and Industrialization  comprehensively documents the plight of the beluga whale, a species that was hunted to near extinction throughout its range. Today it continues to face a barrage of threats, including poorly-regulated subsistence hunting, climate change, oil and gas drilling, ship traffic, pollution, and live capture for aquariums. The EIA report reveals that belugas are the most widely exploited whale species in the world today. Of the 29 populations of beluga whales, 15 are already depleted, and ten populations continue to be overhunted, including five depleted populations. Only six subpopulations are considered to have stable or ...

Marine industry groups announced the launch of a new trial incentive program in the Santa Barbara Channel to slow cargo ships down to reduce air pollution

Ship traffic threatens blue whales

NOAA's policy of notifying -- but not necessarily citing -- speeding vessels in protected areas along the East Coast was effective in lowering their speeds through these sensitive areas

NOAA has announced that a voluntary speed restriction zone (Dynamic Management Area- DMA) has been established south of Nantucket to protect an aggregation of 7 right whales sighted in this area on 7 April 2014. This DMA is in effect immediately through 22 April 2014. Mariners are requested to route around these areas or transit through them at 10 knots or less.

NOAA has announced that a voluntary speed restriction zone (Dynamic Management Area- DMA) has been established south of Nantucket to protect an aggregation of 8 right whales sighted in this area on 2 April 2014.

NOAA Fisheries announced today final regulations requiring the United States Navy to implement protective measures during training and testing activities off the coasts of California and Hawaii and on the high seas of the Pacific Ocean to reduce the effects on marine mammals.