Right whales enter a new year filled with uncertainty

Doug Fraser Cape Cod Times 

Published Dec 23, 2020 

For North Atlantic right whales, the most endangered great whale — and marine mammal —  on Earth, the good news for the new year started early, with the birth of three calves in the fall.

But a fourth calf washed up dead on a North Carolina beach in late November, believed to have died of natural causes soon after birth.

For a species that now numbers 366 individuals with less than 100 females, the births were hailed as a sign that something at least was going right.

“One of the positives is that two of the three mothers are new mothers,” said Philip Hamilton, a research scientist at the New England Aquarium’s Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life. Hamilton oversees the Anderson center’s North Atlantic right whale photo-identification catalog. 

After years where the numbers of calves fell below the number of dead whales lost to entanglement in fishing gear and collisions with ships, Hamilton found solace in these new mothers.

“It suggests that their physical condition is finally good enough to support a calf,” he said. “I’m am hopeful that some of the other long-term moms will have also reached that condition.”

It takes a lot of energy for a yearlong pregnancy and nursing a 14-foot long calf.

Entanglement injuries and problems finding food are two prime reasons why there were just 22 births from 2017 to 2019, one-third the average annual birth rate according to NOAA.

Right whales prime food source is zooplankton that researchers think have shifted the timing and location of their blooms in response to climate change and warming waters in the Gulf of Maine. Researchers have found that right whales are underweight and showing up in unlikely places such as the Gulf of St. Lawrence in Canada as they search for food. 

According to NOAA, the historic average of three years between births has lengthened to six to 10 years. While females reach sexual maturity at 10 years, Hamilton said a large number of potential new mothers have still not had their first calf. 

Hamilton was reluctant to make a prediction, but a significant number of prospective mothers appeared to have been feeding in the Gulf of St. Lawrence this year, and he said it was conceivable that as many as 20 calves could be born in 2021. 

“I’m going to stick with hope,” Regina Asmutis-Silvia, North American director of Whale and Dolphin Conservation, said when asked whether she was optimistic for the coming year. 

More calves born than dead whales is a good start, she said, but she thinks the plight of the right whale has finally grabbed the attention of the public, fishermen and regulators. 

“I think there’s a lot more awareness. A lot more urgency, and I think there’s a lot more willingness in the (fishing) industry, as well as regulators,” Asmutis-Silvia said. 

Fearing draconian regulations, closures and even a shut down of lobster and gillnet fisheries, some fishermen and their trade organizations were initially reluctant to participate in finding solutions.

But the threat of widespread closures, in particular, and litigation helped push them to find ways to continue fishing while protecting whales. Asmutis-Silvia is cheered by fishermen's participation in various pilot projects to design and test whale-safe gear such as ropes and devices that break under the pressure of a swimming whale and ropeless systems that deploy buoys from the ocean bottom instead of the traditional vertical line connected to a surface buoy. 

“I think it is amazing to see manufacturers working with the fishing industry. ...That is critical, and it gives me a lot of hope,” she said.

With court judgments in two lawsuits applying pressure on federal and state agencies to come up with a plan to save right whales, the new year could see substantial changes to fisheries.

Amy Knowlton, a senior scientist at the Anderson Cabot Center, is hopeful that NOAA would meet a court-imposed deadline to have new regulations by May of 2021. In general, the new plan will shoot for at least a 60% reduction-in-fishing effort, including a 30% reduction in vertical lines in Massachusetts and a 50% reduction in Maine.

“There’s not a lot of denial going on (in the fishing industry),” she said. “But there’s still a lot of work to do to educate.”

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution whale researcher Mark Baumgartner agreed there is a lot more awareness now of the danger right whales face. With Massachusetts about to expand winter and early spring right whale closures to all state waters in 2021, Baumgartner says it places even more importance on developing ropeless buoy technologies that will be both affordable and reliable. But he does not see that happening in 2021.

“The technology is not there and what is there is in its early stages,” he said, adding he is encouraged that research has moved into the trial phase on a small scale.

On another front, progress could potentially be made on slowing ships down.

Ship strikes are the second leading cause of right whale mortality and injury. While there are seasonal mandatory speed limits of 10 knots along the right whales' migratory route and in feeding areas, the speed limits are voluntary in areas that haven’t yet been included as protected zones. Vessel studies have shown is that ships are violating the speed limit.

“We know the ships are a danger and that right whales are there. Why not have some accountability for companies that don’t slow down or make the speed limits mandatory,” Baumgartner said.

Tracking ship speeds is relatively easy since all commercial vessels over 65-feet long and all towing vessels over 26-feet long must have a tracker that identifies the vessel and tracks its course and speed.

Baumgartner said the tracking would make it possible to shame companies in the supply chain that get products shipped by repeat offenders as a way to force those shippers to slow down.