A rescue team from the Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies attempting to detangle a North Atlantic right whale. Photograph taken under NOAA-Fisheries permit 932-1489 with authority from the U.S. Endangered Species and Marine Mammal Protection Acts. Photographer: Katie Jackson, Florida Wildlife Research Institute.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) may reduce funds that the Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies allocates for its prestigious and much needed whale rescue program. The North Atlantic right whale or Eubalaena glacialis is a critically endangered baleen whale that benefits directly from the program. The western stock of Eubalaena glacialis numbers only 300 or so individuals and has never fully recovered from whaling and modern threats still prevent the species from recovering.

IMAGE: A month-old North Atlantic right whale calf is victim to a ship strike. Image by the Florida Wildlife Conservation Commission

Modern pressures that keep Eubalaena glacialis from recovering include ship strikes, which threaten the species with extinction. Ship strikes are preventable but the Bush administration has been slow to impose recommended speed limits. Interaction with fishing gear is another problem.

NOAA fisheries has limited the type of gear fishers can use on their gillnets, pot or trap gear. For example, fishers must use weak links on these gears. If an interaction occurs with a large whale, the weak links cause the gear to break apart. The new regulations are relatively recent and the Northeast Fisheries Observer Program has just started gathering data on gear using weak links in the past year.

Eubalaena glacialis has a Potential Biological Removal (PBR) Level of zero meaning that any loss of individuals is detrimental and significant to the survival of the species. NOAA defines PBR as “the maximum number of animals, not including natural mortalities, that may be removed from a marine mammal stock while allowing that stock to reach or maintain its optimum sustainable population.” The death of a female is particularly devastating because reproductive potential is lost.

The Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies has been instrumental in removing fishing gear from North Atlantic right whales and monitoring the species to ensure its survival. The group developed many of the techniques used in entanglement by employing techniques once used by whalers. Such techniques slow whales down long enough to detangle them from fishing gear. Any loss of funding to the Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies is detrimental to conservation. From the Provincetown Banner, MA:

The center is the only organization on the East Coast authorized to disentangle large whales. It also invented the way to do it. On Thanksgiving Day, 1984, the first whale was freed using disentanglement techniques developed by Stormy Mayo, now a senior scientist at PCCS, and David Mattila. Mayo and Mattila figured out how to slow down whales that were towing gear by attaching floats to them and then using various tools to cut them free. It is a technique based on the tactics whalers used to trap whales, only, “in that case, they’d lance them. In our case, we set them free,” Mayo said.

Now, said Mayo, that technique has been put to use throughout the world, in two hemispheres, to spare whales from torturous entanglements that can sometimes persist for months on end, causing the animals to literally saw their own bodies in half as they swim through the ocean.

Image Found Here
Image Found Here

On the Net: NOAA Fisheries Service Northeast Ship Strike Reduction Program
On the Net: Strategy to Reduce Ship Strikes to North Atlantic Right Whales
On the Net: Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies