Grim statistics are in showing that, during 2017, 16 North Atlantic right whales were found dead floating or ashore along the east coast; 12 were in Canadian waters! This represented 3.5 percent of the population of this critically endangered species. Out of an already small population, the whales are dying faster than they are being born, which, if not reversed, will bring certain extinction.
It appears that the right whales have changed their migration patterns, with a larger percentage of the population swimming into the Gulf of St. Lawrence than hitherto. This could be a result of changes in water temperature in response to well-documented climate changes, or the oceanic oxygen depletion that was recently in the news, or the vast amounts of plastics entering the oceans and oceanic food chains, not to mention depletions of fish stocks and destruction of ocean bottom or estuary and shoreline habitat forming the foundation of food chains. As vast as they are, our oceans are under massive assaults. We are reducing their once enormous ability to sustain life.
Scientists, fishers, and government types—mostly volunteers—have tried both to rescue whales and to figure out the proximal reasons for the deaths. Two such causes stand out: collision and entanglement. Some whale bodies had injuries from apparent encounters with boat hulls or propellers. Others were found to have been weighted down with fishing gear that can sap their energy to the point of lowered fecundity and increased morbidity. Causes of death of some of the animals simply couldn’t be determined.
In response, the federal government closed one snow crab fishery (after it was nearly over for the year anyway) and sought to have ships in critical regions slow down (some whale deaths are in a major shipping zone), a tactic that has worked to reduce “blunt force trauma” deaths of right whales in the Bay of Fundy, where a percentage of the remaining population also spends the summer. Efforts are underway to develop fishing gear that is more likely to break away and fall off if entangling a whale. Certainly, more research is needed on their movements and location at other times of the year throughout the North Atlantic region.
But, there’s something else that needs to be done. In 2012, the government of then Prime Minister Stephen Harper took measures to ease the ability of the oil industry to explore for undersea petroleum reserves in the region, including the use of seismic exploration, condemned by scientists as harmful to the survival of marine life. I know this area well, and if you check a map you’ll see that, for all its great size, the Gulf is virtually land-locked. An oil spill would be catastrophic for tourism and fisheries—and right whales and other wildlife.
Current Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has done nothing to change this horrendous decision (or others like it) by his predecessor. It is time for him to act.
Keep Wildlife in the Wild,
Barry