Yet another right whale found dead
Seventh death in two months leaves scientists racing to learn if gulf is new habitat
HALIFAX — More research is needed in the Gulf of St. Lawrence to determine if it has become an emerging habitat for endangered North Atlantic right whales, experts said Friday after the badly decomposed remains of a seventh whale were found floating in roughly the same area as six others.
The overturned male was seen north of the Magdalen Islands late Wednesday, but it was not clear what may have caused this death.
It follows the deaths of two female and four male North Atlantic right whales found last month.
Tonya Wimmer, of the Marine Animal Response Society, said scientists need to intensify efforts to find out if the lumbering giants are making the Gulf one of their primary feeding grounds in a shift away from their traditional habitats in the Bay of Fundy and Roseway Basin.
“All of that together is saying there needs to be a very strong focus on the gulf to really look at what’s going on and potentially try to figure out where they are and then what can be done to protect them,” she said.
Wimmer is hoping Fisheries officials will arrange to do necropsies, or animal autopsies, on the latest dead whale to determine what killed him. Three of the other six North Atlantic right whales were necropsied after being hauled on shore in P.E.I. late last month. Scientists say inspections suggest two suffered blunt trauma injuries consistent with ship strikes — one of the deadliest threats to the animals. The third died from a chronic entanglement in fishing gear that was wrapped around a fin and inside its mouth.
The deaths are a devastating blow to the whale’s fragile population and the scientists who have been working to rebuild a species that was once hunted to the brink of extinction and now numbers about 525.
Robert Michaud, of the Group for Research and Education on Marine Mammals in Quebec, said he was stunned to hear of so many casualties in one season, when they would normally see about two cases involving whales being hit by ships or getting entangled in fishing gear.
He added that an eighth right whale was freed from a snarl of fishing line on Wednesday by a team on board a research vessel in the same area.
“It raises our concerns — when will this ever stop,” he said from Tadoussac. “It is a problem. We don’t know exactly what’s going on.”
The losses also come after a low calving season, with the deaths now outpacing the number of babies born this year.
Moira Brown, a right whale expert with the Canadian Whale Institute, said she shifted her research to the Gulf region when she and her team noticed there were fewer North Atlantic right whales in their traditional haunts in the Bay of Fundy.
The challenge, she said, is determining that this is a whale habitat and then working with the fishing and shipping industries to protect the animals, as has been done in other parts of the Maritimes by rerouting shipping lanes, alerting fishermen to whales’ presence and setting speed limits for vessels.
“I think they’re shifting based on lack of sightings in the Gulf of Maine and less sightings in the Bay of Fundy,” she said. “The fishing industry and the shipping industry are aware of right whales elsewhere, but they’re not aware of them there because it’s really early days in us figuring out whether the whales are using this habitat.”