Humpbacks Whales Remain

All 34 people on board a whale-watching boat are safe after one of the vessel’s engines overheated while off the South Coast of B.C. on Tuesday morning, prompting a Coast Guard rescue.

The vessel Jing Yu, operated by Wild Whales Vancouver, was in the Strait of Georgia when a mayday call was sent at about 11:45 a.m. PT, according to the Joint Rescue Coordination Centre.

The Canadian Coast Guard and a BC Ferries vessel responded. All passengers were taken to shore by Coast Guard hovercraft, and the company towed the damaged boat….
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After a multi-year legislative battle, a bill to outlaw keeping cetaceans like whales and dolphins in captivity has cleared the Senate – all but ensuring the end of a once-popular theme park attraction in Canada.

S-203 – first introduced by now-retired Liberal senator Wilfred Moore in December 2015, with the backing of Green Party Leader Elizabeth May – would ban keeping and breeding these marine mammals in captivity through amendments to the Criminal Code.

Fines of up to $200,000 could be imposed on parks flouting the law – a sum set deliberately high as a deterrent….
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With Arctic shipping routes increasingly used by merchant shipping, an ice-free Arctic Ocean could put the resistance and adaptability of marine mammals to the test. Ship strikes and increased light and noise pollution can be problematic for whales and seals. Experts expect these problems to become more and more common with the emergence of Arctic shipping lanes such as the Northwest Passage and the Northeast Passage.

Dany Dumont, oceanographer at the Rimouski Institute of Ocean Sciences (ISMER), explains that, according to some climate models, "within the next few decades, in September, when the Arctic is at its warmest, it will be possible to pass directly through the North Pole. In this context, how can the promising economic development of the Arctic Ocean be reconciled with its increasingly vulnerable ecosystem?

The study conducted by Donna Hauser and her collaborators demonstrates the vulnerability of 42 of the 80 Arctic marine mammal subpopulations sampled. Of the seven species observed, narwhals, walruses, bowhead whales and belugas are at high risk with regard to shipping. The narwhal is particularly sensitive, since its range, which occupies about a quarter of the Arctic, lies smack in the middle of several shipping lanes….
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All it takes is a quick paddle from the western shore of Hudson Bay and the smiling, curious face of a beluga whale peeks out of the water to greet kayakers floating by.

The northern Manitoba community of Churchill is known as the polar bear capital of the world, but the largest population of beluga whales also calls its Hudson Bay coastline home.

Dressed in a wetsuit, with the cool air of the bay at your back, you can kayak just past the community’s port and meet the inquisitive stares of dozens of the greyish-white whale. It’s an up-close and personal experience that you can’t get many other places in the world when a beluga whale swims around your kayak, giving it a playful nudge.

As the ice melts in the spring, more than 57,000 whales – one-third of the world’s population – head into the warm waters of the estuaries formed by the Seal, Nelson and Churchill rivers to breed, feed and molt….
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In the new study, published online Sept. 27 in the journal Diseases of Aquatic Organisms, a team of marine researchers from Canada tested the brain and heart tissues of 34 beluga whales. The animals died in Quebec, Canada’s St. Lawrence Estuary between 2009 and 2012. The researchers were looking for parasites – in particular, Toxoplasma gondii. This single-celled parasite is commonly found in cats and is notoriously good at spreading to other animals, usually through feces. The team found that 15 of the whales (about 44 percent of the samples) tested positive for T. gondii.

Still, these findings don’t prove that the whales died from this parasite, study co-author Stéphane Lair, a professor of veterinary medicine at the Université de Montréal, told the CBC. Rather, “it means [that the parasite was present] either in their heart or their brain.” [7 Strange Facts About the ‘Mind-Control’ Parasite Toxoplasma Gondii]…
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In a stunning new insight into the lives of wild dolphins, this film follows six remarkable months in the life of the ‘Beachies’: a family of six dolphins led by mother-to-be Puck, who live in the shark-infested waters of Western Australia’s Shark Bay. Using the latest miniature cameras to eavesdrop on the Beachies’ underwater lives, this moving story follows Puck and the challenges she faces bringing up her newborn calf Samu. From learning to fish, to the ever-present threat of a shark attack, no day is ever the same. Including rarely seen footage of young dolphins and revelatory new behaviour, this is a heart-warming and emotional portrayal of one of the ocean’s most revered creatures….
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The Myanmar government has expanded the Irrawaddy Dolphin Protected Area, initially spanning 74 kilometers (46 miles) of the Irrawaddy River, to include a 100-kilometer (62-mile) stretch of the river.
Use of gillnets is restricted within the new protected area, and damaging activities such as electric or dynamite fishing and gold mining are strictly prohibited.
An additional 100-kilometer stretch has been designated as a buffer zone, with milder restrictions.
A survey this year put the number of critically endangered Irrawaddy dolphins in the Irrawaddy River at 78….
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A team of researchers from the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science and Cornell University found that dolphins in the Western North Atlantic modified their whistle calls in response to high noise levels caused by ships, possibly hindering their ability to talk to each other.

Previous research has indicated that increased ambient noise levels may hinder the perception of acoustic signals (known as masking) in marine animals and have been associated with negative impacts on health and reproduction. In many species, vocal communication plays a critical role in bonding, parent-offspring interactions, warning calls, mating signals and territorial defense.

Between July and September 2016, the team made a series of recordings using underwater microphones about 30 kilometers off the Maryland shore. They calculated levels of ambient noise and the recordings were examined for indications of bottlenose dolphin whistles. These whistles were then measured for 11 characteristics, including duration and frequency.

The team found that the dolphins changed their vocalization characteristics during increased ambient noise. Specifically, the calls were higher in frequency and became more simplified in order to overcome the masking effect. The authors speculate that this could reduce the information content in the whistles and thus may be detrimental to the social cohesion of the group, although more research is needed to better understand this process….
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Researchers from along South Africa’s east and south coasts gathered at the Nelson Mandela University’s Ocean Sciences Campus in August 2018 to discuss how to conduct a country-wide assessment of skin diseases and other injuries observed in these dolphins.

Guided by Ocean Health Researcher, Dr Stephanie Plön, they developed a strategy to assess the diseases, ailments, and injuries visible on the skin of the dolphins and how these vary through time and space.

One particularly intriguing skin disease, tattoo skin disease, presents as an intricate stippled pattern in an oval shape.

The negative impact of human activities is a threat to humpback dolphins
Humpback dolphins are endangered because they only occur in a narrow band of very shallow coastal waters, close to shore, where they are exposed to the negative impacts of human activities occurring both on land and the marine environment.

Worrying threats include overfishing, which leads to a reduction in dolphin prey; pollution from the land such as pesticides; noisy boat traffic; and shark nets. There may be as few as 500 adults left and they are slow to reproduce. Few people have even heard of humpback dolphins. They are quite rare and shyer than their better-known cousins, the bottlenose dolphins….
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A conservation charity has called for greater protection for sea life off Scotland’s west coast after extensive and "pioneering" research that identified the area as a hot spot for whales, dolphins and porpoises.

The "extraordinary biodiversity" was revealed by the first Hebridean Marine Mammal Atlas that was compiled after 15 years of work by the Hebridean Whale and Dolphin Trust (HWDT).

Collectively, the creatures are known as cetaceans and the waters of the Hebrides are teaming with 30,000 sightings of 23 different species or a quarter of the world’s known species – including minke whales and basking sharks.

The survey area covered an enormous swathe from beyond Cape Wrath south to Kintyre and Northern Ireland and as far west as St Kilda, taking in the waters in and around the Outer and Inner Hebrides.

Among the trust’s discoveries are that the Hebrides provide a vital feeding ground for minke whales and basking sharks and its researchers were the first to suggest that bottlenose dolphins live all year round off the west coast.

The region is one of the most important areas for harbour porpoise in Europe with more than 5,000 sightings over the years – by far the most for researchers on any of the surveys.

Despite the high porpoise numbers being reason for cheer for conservationists, other species of marine life are not so fortunate such as the UK’s only resident population of killer whales or orca….
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Leonardo DiCaprio used his star power to issue a plea on Twitter with the World Wildlife Fund to save the world’s rarest porpoise from extinction. And it appears Mexico’s president was listening.

Enrique Peña Nieto responded on Thursday to the actor’s missive about the vaquita â?? a critically endangered mammal that only lives in a small region in the Gulf of California. In a series of tweets, the president said his country was focusing "all its efforts to prevent the extinction of the species."

Peña Nieto’s reply represents one of the most high profile pledges to save the animal, which has seen population numbers plummet from about 60 to just 30 in the past year.

The WWF launched a campaign this week to urge the Mexican president to address the increasingly dire threat faced by the vaquita, saying there was still time to save the few that remain.

Researchers have been scrambling to save the elusive porpoise, which has seen populations fall by 90 percent in the past five years.

The animals are continually threatened by illegal fishing operations and often find themselves trapped in gill nets used to catch a critically endangered fish called the totoaba. The totoaba’s swim bladder is considered a delicacy in parts of Asia, where it’s known as "aquatic cocaine" that can sell for as much as $10,000 a kilogram….
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When a ship cuts through the ocean, its churning propulsion system generates underwater noise that’s as loud as a rock concert. For the animals that live under the passageways of commercial vessels, this is a huge problem. Scientists increasingly understand that these ship sounds are detrimentally affecting marine life, and a new study adds singing humpback whales to the list of animals impacted by passing ships.

In a study released Wednesday in PLOS One a team of Japanese scientists reveal that male humpback whales that live around the Ogasawara Islands are changing their tune because of the sounds emitted by a passenger-cargo liner that sails past them once per day. With the help of underwater acoustic measurements, the scientists determined that the whales reduced their singing after the ship passed. At some times, the whales even stopped singing altogether….
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