Last chance for right whales

Animal Advocates Watchdog

Last chance for right whales
U.S. and Canadian scientists hope to save the vanishing giant

Carla Wilson
CanWest News Service

Monday, May 05, 2003

VICTORIA -- What are believed to be the world's most endangered large whales are the target of an international rescue effort involving Canada and the U.S.

Fisheries and Oceans Canada has developed a draft recovery plan for the north Pacific right whale that includes participation by Canadian and U.S. marine mammal experts.

Researchers are stepping up efforts to find out more about the rare whales as the long-term strategy is being defined.

The north Pacific right whale, which can grow to 18 metres in length and weigh up to 70 tonnes, is so rare that no one knows how many remain. Experts believe fewer Pacific right whales exist than their relatives, Atlantic right whales, which number only 300 to 400.

Researchers in the eastern north Pacific were thrilled last year when they spotted a calf with its mother. It was the first such sighting in the area in 150 years.

John Ford, a senior marine mammal scientist at Fisheries and Oceans Canada's Pacific Biological Station in Nanaimo, tries to be optimistic about the chances to save the north Pacific right whale.

"But it does at times seem like it could be a bleak outlook for these animals. We are just hopeful that it is not too late for them."

Ford will depart in a few weeks with fellow researchers to look for large whales. Their ship will visit areas such as the west coast of the Queen Charlotte Islands and waters northwest of Vancouver Island. The ship will tow a hydrophone to listen to whale sounds, and scientists will scan the sea with binoculars.

"We first need to determine if any are off our coast," he said.

A prototype underwater listening device is moored 100 metres under the ocean's surface, 1,200 kilometres off Vancouver Island to try to detect sounds from whales. It will be retrieved in a couple of months and computers will scan the results.

If the effort is successful, more of these devices will be moored off the coast.

There was a reported sighting of a right whale off B.C.'s coast in 1970, but Ford does not consider it confirmed. The last, best information was taken in June 1951, when a right whale was killed under a scientific permit off B.C.

North Pacific right whales are gaining attention because of the new federal species-at-risk legislation. A draft recovery plan has been posted on the fisheries' Web site. Blue whales are next on the list of whales to be monitored.

Right whales are huge, slow-moving animals, mostly black with some white patches. They are baleen whales, swimming close to the surface to capture zooplankton -- tiny creatures in the water -- and can gobble up to several tonnes of food a day.

Their population once numbered in the tens of thousands, but the whales were decimated by overhunting. In 1935, they were the first whales to win international protection, but in the 1950s and 1960s, hundreds were killed illegally by Soviet Union whaling.

"They appear to represent an extreme example of the inability of whale stocks to recover from severe depletion," says the fisheries department's recovery plan.

U.S. officials have also carried out research on the animals. Every year since 1996, between four and 13 have been spotted in the southeast Bering Sea. The only female known so far is the mother of the calf seen last year.

Victoria Times Colonist

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NORTH PACIFIC RIGHT WHALE FACTS

Scientific Classification: Kingdom Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Subphylum: Vertebrata

Class: Mammalia

Order: Cetacea

Suborder: Mysticeti

Family: Balaenidae

Genus: Eubalaena

Species: Japonica

Average Length: Adults may range to 17 metres in length. Females are larger than males. Newborns are 4.5 to 6 metres in length.

Average Weight: Adults weigh upwards of 100 tonnes

Prey: Planktonic copepods and euphausiids and other zooplankton.

Ran with fact box "North Pacific right Whale facts", which has been appended to the end of the story.

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