The population of critically endangered North Atlantic right whales appears to be stabilizing after years of decline, according to new data released Monday by an international team of marine scientists.
While this news is encouraging, a scientist with the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium points out that the latest data also shows that the number of human-caused injuries continues to rise.
“There’s a delay in recognizing these injuries,” Philip Hamilton, senior scientist at the New England Aquarium in Boston, said in a weekend interview. “People are very focused on counting [baleines]. They want to succeed. But we haven’t succeeded yet, even if things are stabilizing. We are still in a pretty dire situation. »
In other words, the recent flattening of the population trend indicates that human activities are now killing as many whales as are born each year. This represents an “untenable burden on the species,” said Heather Pettis, a researcher at the New England Aquarium, in a statement released Monday.
The latest estimates are based on new data which led to a recalculation of population figures produced since 1990.
The recalculated estimate for 2021 now stands at a total of 364 right whales in the North Atlantic, a significant increase from the 2021 estimate released last year, which was 340. A total of 18 calves were born that year, but many of them were only recently added to the consortium’s database.
For 2022, the recently published estimate is 356 animals, suggesting that “the downward trajectory of the species may slow,” the consortium said.
“There’s always a delay in adding pups to the population because we have to be sure of their identity,” Hamilton said. Sometimes it takes several years. »
Few deaths, many injuries
Meanwhile, researchers in Canada and the United States have recorded only two deaths so far this year: a 20-year-old male struck by a ship, and a newborn, orphaned baby.
Again, this low number is good news for the species, but there continues to be a high number of human-caused injuries. So far in 2023, researchers have noted 30 fishing gear entanglements and two ship strikes.
Mr Hamilton says many of these injuries will likely result in death, while other injured or sick whales may not be able to reproduce due to poor health. “We know that we still have very strong repercussions [par les blessures] “, he recalled.
“We are talking about very few whales. And we have a lot of females that are old enough to give birth and haven’t. »
The number of calvings remains lower than what scientists observed 10 years ago. Last season, only 11 pups were born. This is fewer than the previous two years: 18 in 2021 and 15 in 2022. As a result, the North Atlantic right whale remains one of the most endangered large whale species in the world.
“We continue to injure and kill these whales at an alarming rate, such that they can no longer perform their basic biological functions like growth and reproduction,” said consortium president Scott Kraus in a statement. communicated. “While absolute population numbers are important, other indicators are discouraging. »
Adaptation of the fishing industry
Mr. Hamilton will be among nearly 500 delegates gathering in Halifax this week for the consortium’s annual meeting, which will bring together in-person and virtual participants from around the world. Efforts to protect whales will be high on the agenda of researchers, fishing industry representatives and conservationists.
Among other things, there will be plenty of discussion about vessel speed limits and the need to persuade the fishing industry to move to ropeless or “on-demand” gear.
While traditional lobster and crab traps are dropped to the ocean floor and then retrieved using long ropes suspended from buoys, ropeless gear does not use lines or buoys. The traps are found using an electronic guidance device — a sort of virtual buoy — and they are retrieved using remotely inflated spools of rope or lifting bags.
Removing floating gear could significantly reduce the risk of entanglement, which accounted for 82 percent of documented right whale deaths last year, according to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Falmouth, Massachusetts.
“I had a lot of hope for it,” said Mr. Hamilton. It seems like a solution, even if the transition will be very difficult. »
The fishing industry needs financial and technological support, and legislative changes are needed to move things forward, he said. “Canada is doing a lot and I applaud that. But despite all these efforts, many whales find themselves entangled in Canadian waters. »
The right whale population is thought to have peaked at around 21,000 individuals in the North Atlantic before whaling nearly wiped out the species in the 1920s. After a ban on whaling, imposed in 1935, the population rose to 483 in 2010, then began a further decline.