Humpback Whales May Not Migrate South

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REGIONAL

The world’s oceans are increasingly subject to a multitude of human-caused pressures, with continental shelf ecosystems among the most heavily affected. As a result, Canada’s Salish Sea is now a patchwork of degraded environments where harmful effects on marine mammals include damaging levels of noise, lack of food, toxic pollutants, fatal collisions with ships and disruptive vessel traffic. Predictably, the Salish Sea’s Southern Resident killer whale population is one of the most critically endangered populations of marine mammals in Canada and the U.S.

Both countries list this transboundary population as endangered, citing three primary risk factors: lack of the whales’ preferred prey, Chinook salmon; chronic and acute underwater noise and physical disturbance (e.g., from ferries, commercial ships, whale-watching boats, fishing boats, and recreational traffic); and high levels of contaminants, including polychlorinated biphenyls. Consequently, under existing conditions of food availability, pollutants and vessel traffic the Southern Residents face a highly uncertain future. Routine starvation of whales is one grim manifestation of these cumulative human caused disturbances.

Government action is needed now, on an emergency basis, to restrict vessels within the critical habitat of endangered southern resident killer whales, marine scientists warned Thursday in Vancouver.

"There are some short-term things that can be done – they’re practical, well-supported and cautionary," Vancouver Aquarium whale researcher Lance Barrett-Lennard told a federally sponsored symposium on the killer whales. "We’d better stop talking about them and start doing them."

John Ford, an emeritus federal scientist who now teaches at the University of B.C., agreed that sport fishing and whale-watching boats can physically interfere with the whales’ ability to hunt, including their key summer prey, chinook salmon.

"They need space," he said. "If there is a flotilla of boats around them, no matter what (the boats are) doing … they represent physical obstacles in these key spots."

In Washington state, there is a strict law that prohibits boats from approaching killer whales within 200 yards, yet on the B.C. side of the Salish Sea, there is only a guideline of 100 metres and a hard-to-prove prohibition against harassing or disturbing the whales….

Giant humpback whales, a once-threatened species, are making a comeback off B.C.’s South Coast, according to local whale-watchers and researchers.
"They have just come back like gangbusters. They’re in this area and people are seeing them more and more frequently," said Cedric Towers of Vancouver Whale Watch. "One or two whales we’ve been seeing now for five or six years in a row."
A pair of humpback whales was spotted near Galiano Island as recently as Wednesday….

Officials say a dead humpback whale that washed up near Ucluelet last week was likely hit by a large vessel.

Scientists from Fisheries and Oceans Canada said the juvenile male had its lower jawbone dislocated after being hit with significant force.

“When I hear it’s a vessel strike I’m not too surprised because the number of humpbacks are increasing in B.C.,” marine biologist Wendy Szaniszlo of the Vancouver Aquarium told CHEK News.

Malnutrition suspected in death of young killer whale
Orca found on Sunshine Coast died of blunt force trauma, DFO says
“If that’s what happened then it sounds like it was probably a ship versus a smaller vessel, and ship strikes further offshore have been known to kill larger whales.”

Curtis Fendelet, who owns the Mussel Beach Campground where the humpback washed up last week, said the carcass has attracted a lot of attention.

Fendelet said scientists from Fisheries and Oceans Canada took note of the dislocated jawbone when they took samples from the dead animal.

“They took some blubber samples and stool samples from the humpback and took an eyeball to see if it was stressed before it died.”

NATIONAL & INTERNATIONAL

VIDEO – Blue whales are the largest animals on Earth, but we know surprisingly little about their complex social interactions-and they’ve rarely been recorded on camera.

But new footage filmed off the coast of Sri Lanka by pro whale photographer Patrick Dykstra, in conjunction with blue whale scientist Howard Martenstyn, may be a first. Their video shows what they believe is the first known clip of a blue whale “heat run.”

Heat runs have been well documented in humpback whales, but no known footage exists of the behavior in blue whales (or at least that Dykstra or National Geographic could find).

For more details:
• Watch VIDEO

Like dancers on stage, the humpbacks move in synchronization. The lead whale expertly executes a looping series of turns toward the water’s surface-a spiral of bubbles trailing behind. Then, suddenly, the pod surges. The whales burst through the ring of bubbles, mouths agape.

These aren’t trained humpbacks, pirouetting for the pleasure of onlookers. Instead, these massive beasts are hunting using an ingenious method known as bubble-net feeding. A new video that surfaced on GoPro’s blog shows its Karma drone capturing the whales in action just west of the Maskelyne Island in British Columbia, Canada….

was telling a Londoner recently about the North Yorkshire coast. "I really must go one day," she said, sounding unconvinced. "But we’ve already booked for Mexico next year – we’re going whale-watching."

I had already sold my home county’s charms long enough, so I decided against landing another killer blow: God’s own county has whales, too. Sean Baxter, a fisherman who lives in the village of Staithes, has been encouraging me to search them out for years. "The summer herring shoals are back," he told me recently. "We’ve got all sorts of marine life living off them: minke whales, porpoises, dolphins, basking sharks – even humpbacks and sunfish some years."

This was another reason why I failed to mention the Yorkshire leviathans: I had never clapped eyes on them myself. Surely Yorkshire whale-watching could not be a patch on places with exotic names like Kaikoura, Anacortes and Isle St Marie? How could Yorkshire ever compete? Baxter was adamant that it could. There was only one way to test it out….

The rich social interaction and highly evolved brains of some whales are linked in a kind of evolutionary feedback loop, a newly published paper suggests.
The research, largely done at the University of British Columbia, sheds new light on similarities between whale and human evolution.
“Similar pressures and possibilities in the environment can select for a similar outcome,” said Kieran Fox, now a postdoctoral student at California’s Stanford University and co-author of the new paper in Nature Ecology and Evolution….

Whales and dolphins live in human-like societies and share similar brain evolution to primates and man, scientist have concluded.

A new study which looked at 90 species found a link between brain size and social and cultural traits in marine mammals.

It is the first time that scientists have considered whether “social brain hypothesis’ applies to whales and dolphins, as well as humans. The theory suggests that intelligence developed as a means of coping with large and complex social groups.

CBC New Brunswick has launched Deep Trouble: a podcast series that brings together the interviews and stories by CBC journalists who travelled far and wide to cover a deadly summer for the North Atlantic right whale. Only about 450 whales remain in the world.

Listen to the full discussion and subscribe to the Deep Trouble podcast from the CBC Podcast page or subscribe to the podcast in iTunes.

A record number of endangered North Atlantic right whales died this summer, most the apparent victims of ship collisions. Others whales got entangled in fishing lines.

Whales seemed at greatest risk in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. As deaths mounted, the federal government made emergency changes to protect the animals – a mandatory slowdown of large ships and an early closure of a snow crab fishery, hoping to regulate the human activity linked to the problem.

For more details:
• CBC Podcast page

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