Humpback Whales, Resident and Biggs Orca, and Dolphins

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REGIONAL

Fisheries Minister Dominic Leblanc says Canada will move to match a U.S. requirement that all boats stay at least 200 metres away from southern resident killer whales.

Leblanc told reporters outside the House of Commons he heard loud and clear from scientists at a symposium on the whales in British Columbia earlier this month that more needs to be done – not just to protect them but also to help recovery efforts to boost the population.

There are only about 78 southern resident killer whales in the Salish Sea, the series of waterways off the southern coast of B.C. and northern coast of Washington state that includes the straits of Georgia, Juan de Fuca and Puget Sound.

Scientific evidence shows noise from large ships and whale-watching tour boats is one of the biggest threats to the whales as it disturbs their ability to use sound to locate food sources.

Southern resident killer whales are at risk of extinction if drastic measures are not taken to increase their food supply and reduce underwater noise caused by boats, a new study finds.

The population of orca that inhabit the Pacific coast of Canada and the U.S. are "balancing on a knife-edge" and under current conditions have a 25 per cent chance of being wiped out in the next 100 years, according to the peer-reviewed paper published Thursday in Scientific Reports.

"What this study does is it really shows the power of human actions to dictate the future of these whales," said Misty MacDuffee, one of the authors of the report and a biologist with the Sidney-based Raincoast Conservation Foundation. "If we are able to reduce noise and increase chinook availability, we can change their trajectory from declining to increasing."

The research, completed by an international team of scientists from Canada, the U.S. and the U.K., evaluated the threats to resident killer whales’ survival based on 40 years of data and simulated various combinations of these threats to predict future scenarios….

The federal government’s southern resident killer whale Symposium, held as part of the Oceans Protection Plan this week in Vancouver, failed to identify concrete actions to ensure the recovery of the endangered killer whales, according to seven environmental organizations.

"Threats to southern residents are well-documented and to support recovery we need to be implementing tangible measures immediately," says Christianne Wilhelmson, Executive Director of Georgia Strait Alliance. "We were encouraged that the federal government spoke of having to make difficult decisions; however, we did not hear any specific steps or measures that will be taken in the short term. Now is the time for the federal government to show strong leadership to protect critical habitat because orcas can’t wait."

The southern resident killer whale population has had two deaths this year, seven in 2016, and calves have not been born since 2015. Today, there are 76 remaining, a very small population that is inherently vulnerable to the risk of extinction. This population of whales relies on B.C.’s southern coastal waters from May to October.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says oil pipelines have no place in B.C.’s Great Bear Rainforest. Opponents of the approved Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion to the West Coast and the cancelled Energy East pipeline to the East Coast argue pipelines and tankers don’t belong in any coastal areas. Research led by the Raincoast Conservation Foundation confirms the threat to marine mammals in B.C. waters from a seven-fold increase in tanker traffic is considerable.
After examining potential impacts of a 15,000-cubic-metre oil spill in B.C. waters on 21 marine mammals, researchers concluded most individuals would be at risk and a few local populations wouldn’t survive. Baleen whales, for example, are highly susceptible to ingesting oil because they breathe through blowholes, filter and eat food from the ocean surface and rely on invertebrate prey. Oil residue can stick to the baleen, restricting the amount of food they consume.

Resident and transient killer whales, sea otters and Steller sea lions were most likely to see a drop in population levels from an oil spill. Killer whales are especially vulnerable because of their small populations, low reproductive rates, dietary specialization, long lives and complex social structure. The 76 southern resident killer whales off the B.C. coast, Canada’s most endangered marine mammal, are particularly threatened by oil spills, as well as ship strikes and underwater noise that hinders their ability to feed and communicate.

If Trans Mountain’s Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion proceeds and an oil spill occurs, the study estimates it would affect between 22 and 80 per cent of these whales’ critical Salish Sea habitat…

NATIONAL & INTERNATIONAL

The trial of a tour boat skipper accused of disturbing a whale near Cape Spear two years ago will continue in provincial court in St. John’s today.
Walter Reddick, 64, has been charged under the Fisheries Act with unlawfully disturbing a marine mammal in connection with an incident alleged to have happened Aug. 5, 2014. Tour company Iceberg Quest Ocean Tours has also been charged, and will be tried separately.
It marks the first time the charges have been laid in this province….

Scientists at an annual meeting for North Atlantic right whales estimate the species has a little over two decades left to survive unless changes are made immediately.

The North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium’s annual meeting was held in Halifax on Sunday, and all of the scientists spoke with a sense of urgency about the fate of these whales.

This summer, at least 15 right whales died in Canadian and U.S. waters and scientists at the conference stressed that human activity is the primary cause of death for all right whales.

“The sense of urgency for me is finding out that the population that’s with us today, a lot of the breeding females may be gone in two decades. And that’s a really short period of time for us to do something about this,” said marine ecologist Mark Baumgartner from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution…

As the North Atlantic right whale nears the end of a year of dangerously high mortality, federal ocean regulators are calling for it to remain listed as endangered, according to a report released Friday.

Less than 500 of the right whales exist, and scientists have said at least 15 of them have died since the spring off the coast of U.S. and Canada. Many of the deaths were attributed to vessel strikes and entanglement in fishing gear.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s five-year review of the species states that the right whales are experiencing low reproduction, declining abundance and changes in the availability of food.

The review includes recommendations to protect the species…

In the first part of the 20th century, industrial whalers hunted a range of species to near extinction. But almost 100 years later, many of those populations-humpbacks, blue whales, southern right whales, and others-are still hurting. And even after 100 years of protection, many of these whale populations will still be less than half the size they were before the whaling era.

That’s the finding of a new study on southern hemisphere baleen whales. Researchers estimated how the populations of five whale species will change by the year 2100 by calculating various data, including: numbers from the historical whale catch; past and present population estimates; and estimated future abundances of phytoplankton and krill, the whales’ primary food sources….

The Green Party of Canada is applauding the Senate’s Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans after senators voted this morning to send Bill S-203 back to the upper chamber for third reading.

The bill calls for an end to the captivity of whales and dolphins in Canada.

Green Party Leader Elizabeth May has committed to sponsoring the bill when it reaches the House of Commons…

In November 2013, a four-year-old captive beluga whale moved to a new home. She had been living in a facility with other belugas. But in her new pool, the Koktebel dolphinarium in Crimea, her only companions were dolphins. The whale adapted quickly: she started imitating the unique whistles of the dolphins, and stopped making a signature beluga call altogether.

"The first appearance of the beluga in the dolphinarium caused a fright in the dolphins," write Elena Panova and Alexandr Agafonov of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow. The bottlenose dolphins included one adult male, two adult females and a young female. But the animals soon got along, er, swimmingly. In August 2016, one of the adult female dolphins gave birth to a calf that regularly swam alongside the beluga.

The researchers were curious about what the new pool-mates were saying to each other….

Scientists studying dolphins dining off the California coastline have found that the marine food web is starting to look a little threadbare. The length of food chains in that web appears to have gotten shorter in response to environmental changes – such as those caused by El Niño events.

The findings, published this week in the journal Science Advances, highlight a useful method for examining the ways climate change is affecting the structure of the world’s ecosystems.

As human-caused climate change continues its rapid pace, and as the oceans warm and acidify, it’s altering which marine species can survive. That means that key species in a food web may start to decline – which can have serious effects on this complex and delicate network.

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