Paul Eccleston, The Telegraph 12 Aug 08;
Almost a quarter of the world's whales and dolphins are now threatened and moving towards extinction, the latest survey reveals.
And more than 10 per cent of these - nine species - are now officially listed as either Endangered or Critically Endangered - the highest category of threat.
The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) which draws up the Red List of Threatened Species, says the situation is probably even worse because more than half of cetaceans - 44 species - are classed as Data Deficient which means that not enough is known about them to make an assessment.
It is the smaller coastal cetaceans who are facing the greatest threat, mainly from fishing boats.
The Irrawaddy dolphin (Orcaella brevirostris), the finless porpoise (Neophocaena phocaenoides) and the South American franciscana (Pontoporia blainvillei), are now all listed as Vulnerable, meaning they are threatened with extinction.
The study says the vaquita (Phocoena sinus), a porpoise in the Gulf of California, Mexico is likely to be the next cetacean species to go extinct. Already listed as Critically Endangered, an estimated 15 per cent of its dwindling population is killed in gillnets every year, leaving only about 150 alive in the wild.
The Yangtze River dolphin or baiji (Lipotes vexillifer) was classified as Critically Endangered, Possibly Extinct on last year's IUCN Red List and it is feared that the vaquita will follow the same path.
Randall Reeves, chair of the Cetacean Specialist Group of the IUCN Species Survival Commission, who led the Red List assessment, said: "Too many of these small coastal cetaceans end up as bycatch in fisheries. This remains the main threat to them and it is only going to get worse."
And Jean-Christophe Vié, deputy head of IUCN's Species Programme, said: "River dolphins are one of the most threatened cetacean categories, mainly because they are locked in competition with humans for dwindling freshwater resources."
But there is better news for at least some of the larger species. The humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) has moved from Vulnerable to Least Concern, meaning it is at low risk of extinction, although two subpopulations are Endangered. And the southern right whale (Eubalaena australis) has also moved to Least Concern.
"Humpbacks and southern right whales are making a comeback in much of their range mainly because they have been protected from commercial hunting. This is a great conservation success and clearly shows what needs to be done to ensure these ocean giants survive," said Reeves.
The blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus), fin whale (Balaenoptera physalus) and sei whale (Balaenoptera borealis) all remain listed as Endangered, pending more evidence of recovery.
The study says whales are under threat in many areas from ship strikes, entanglement in fishing gear, habitat deterioration, declining prey and noise disturbance.
With the decline in whale hunting over the last few decades, accidental killing in fishing gear has become the main threat to cetaceans.
Besides the vaquita, the Black Sea harbour porpoise (Phocoena phocoena relicta), which moved from Vulnerable to Endangered, the North Atlantic right whale (Eubalaena glacialis) and the western gray whale (Eschrichtius robustus), already listed as Endangered and Critically Endangered respectively, are among the cetaceans most at risk from this threat.
"Disentanglement programmes to release whales captured in fishing gear, already carried out in the United States, New Zealand and Australia, help some individuals survive," says Bill Perrin, chair of the IUCN Cetacean Red List Authority.
"However, areas of critical habitat need to be closed to certain types of fishing, at least seasonally, to ensure the survival of some species."
The IUCN said increasing use of military sonar also posed a severe threat to whales and particularly deep-diving beaked whales and other cetaceans like the melon-headed whale. Mass strandings of these species have occurred more often in the last 30 years.
"Large parts of the oceans are now filled with human-generated noise, not only from military sonar but also from seismic surveys and shipping. This noise undoubtedly affects many cetaceans, in some cases leading to their death," says Jan Schipper, Conservation International and IUCN global mammal assessment director.
"It may not always kill whales and dolphins, but it affects their ability to communicate and it can drive them away, at least temporarily, from their feeding grounds."
Climate change was also beginning to affect whales because it was bringing exposure to new diseases, inter-species competition and changes in prey populations. As an example the Antarctic great whales were dependent on krill for food but this was alongside rising water temperatures.
Julia Marton-Lefèvre, IUCN director general, said: "To save whales for future generations, we need to work closely with the fishing industry, the military and offshore enterprises including shippers and oil developers - and we need to fight climate change."
The humpback whale is back: hunting ban saves giant of the deep from threat of extinction
Lewis Smith, Times Online 12 Aug 08;
Forty years ago conservationists feared that humpback whales were being hunted to extinction. Now numbers have returned to such a level that they have been taken off the danger list.
The latest count stands at 40,000 mature individuals, meaning that, for now at least, the humpback is safe from the threat of extinction.
Several other whales, such as the blue whale, the biggest animal on earth, and the sei and southern right whales, are also growing in number after similar scares.
The populations of several smaller species of whales and other cetaceans are still falling, however, and it is feared that some may be close to disappearing, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature .
The vaquita, Phocoena sinus, a porpoise found in the Gulf of California, Mexico, is now thought to be down to the last 150 individuals and has been named by the union as the cetacean mostly likely to become extinct next.
The resurgence of the humpback, Megaptera novaeangliae, has nevertheless heartened conservationists. Whalers, especially the Soviet Union’s Antarctic whaling fleet, had caused devastation to the humpback population until hunting was halted in the Sixties.
The humpback had been described by the union as vulnerable to extinction, but it has now been reclassified as being of “least concern” – the lowest rating. Southern right whales, Eubalaena australis, have also been taken off the critical list after their population doubled from 7,500 in 1995. They, too, get a “least concern” rating in the union’s latest update of its Red List of threatened animals.
Researchers assessing the number of blue, sei and and fin whales concluded that their populations were also rising, but not enough for their endangered listing to be lifted.
Randall Reeves, a cetacean specialist for the union, believes that the improvement in the population of the bigger species of whales is mostly attributable to bans on hunting.
“Humpbacks and southern right whales are making a comeback in much of their range mainly because they have been protected from commercial hunting,” he said.
“This is a great conservation success and clearly shows what needs to be done to ensure these ocean giants survive. So long as commercial whaling isn’t happening, the increase should continue.”
The recovery has been going on for at least 20 years, he said, but it is a slow process because the large whales breed slowly.
He said that bowhead whales, Balaena mysticetus, found in the eastern Arctic, had taken a century to increase from the few hundred left by whalers to the 7,000 today. Bowheads can live for between 100 and 200 years, but do not breed until they are in their twenties and have one calf every three years.
Mr Reeves gave warning, however, that climate change could put an end to the resurgence by changing the availability of food, especially krill. Other species are still in decline, especially coastal and freshwater varieties.
Accidental death in fishing gear is now the most serious threat to cetaceans. Apart from the vaquita, those worst affected include the Black Sea harbour porpoise, Phocoena phocoena relicta, the North Atlantic right whale, Eubalaena glacialis, and the western grey whale, Eschrichtius robustus.
Bill Perrin, the chairman of the union’s Cetacean Red List Authority, said: “Disentanglement programmes to release whales captured in fishing gear help some individuals to survive. But areas of critical habitat need to be closed to certain types of fishing to ensure the survival of some species.”
Blowing bubbles, singing love songs
— Humpbacks blow bubbles to catch fish. By creating curtains of bubbles in the water they can trap shoals, which they then snap up
— Males sing for hours at a time and individual songs can last 20 minutes. It is believed to be mating behaviour Humpbacks have landed on small boats when breaching (soaring out of the water)
— They can swim 10,000 miles from their cold-water feeding grounds to tropical breeding territories
— Humpbacks grow to up to 16m and can weigh 40 tonnes. Calves are born more than 4m long and up to two tonnes in weight. They can live 50 years
— The whales usually dive for three to fifteen minutes. They can reach depths of about 150m
— Southern right whales got their name from whalers who considered them “the right whale” to hunt – slow, with large amounts of blubber, they floated when killed
— Tens of thousands were killed before the first world ban in 1937.
Nature group says humpback whales recovering
Bradley S. Klapper, Associated Press Yahoo News 12 Aug 08;
The humpback whale, nearly hunted into history four decades ago, is now on the "road to recovery" and is no longer considered at high risk of extinction, an environmental group said Tuesday.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature — the producer each year of a Red List of threatened species — also upgraded the status of the southern "right" whale from vulnerable. The right whale gets its name from whalers who deemed it a particularly good species to hunt, because it floats after being killed.
"Humpbacks and southern right whales are making a comeback in much of their range mainly because they have been protected from commercial hunting," said Randall Reeves, an expert on marine mammals for the conservation organization.
"This is a great conservation success and clearly shows what needs to be done to ensure these ocean giants survive," he said in a statement.
Bill Perrin, another expert at the group known by its acronym IUCN, said the humpback whale population dropped to the "low thousands" when it was finally banned from commercial hunts in 1966. Its numbers have since risen to at least 60,000, Perrin said, adding that the population is growing at a healthy rate of 5 percent each year in the North Pacific.
While the right whales that hug the southern coasts of Argentina, South Africa and Australia are also recuperating, their cousins in the north are struggling.
There may be only 300 North Atlantic right whales along the Eastern Seaboard, Perrin said. While hunting them is illegal, many continue to be wounded or killed in collisions with ships or entanglements with fishing gear, he added.
The Switzerland-based IUCN said a number of other large sea animals were moving closer to extinction. Overall, nearly a quarter of all such species are threatened and over a 10th are listed as endangered or critically endangered, representing the greatest threat of extinction.
The Irrawaddy dolphin of southeast Asia, the finless porpoise that swims from the Persian Gulf to the coast of north Japan and South America's franciscana dolphin are all considered vulnerable — largely because they are often a bycatch in fisheries.
In Mexico's Gulf of California, the vaquita porpoise will probably be the next animal of this type to become extinct. Already critically endangered, about 15 percent of those remaining are killed each year in gill nets, the organization said. It estimated that only 150 are left in the wild.
Noting the decline in hunts of whales and other sea mammals over the last few decades, the IUCN said accidental killing in fishing gear was now the "main threat" to these species.
The Red List includes around 41,000 species and subspecies around the globe. IUCN, which is made up of more than 1,000 government and non-governmental organizations, says it has almost 11,000 volunteer scientists in more than 160 countries.
Some big whales recovering since 1980s hunt ban
Alister Doyle, Reuters 12 Aug 08;
OSLO (Reuters) - Some large whale species such as the humpback, minke and southern right whale are recovering from a threat of extinction, helped by curbs on hunts since the 1980s, the world's largest conservation network said on Tuesday.
A review of cetaceans -- about 80 types of whales, dolphins and porpoises -- showed almost a quarter were in danger, mostly small species. Entanglement in fishing gear was the main threat, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) said.
"For the large whales the picture looks guardedly optimistic," Randall Reeves, chair of the cetacean specialist group of the IUCN, told Reuters of the assessment of marine mammals for the IUCN's "Red List" of endangered species.
"The large whales, the commercially important ones, have for the most part responded well under protection," he said. The IUCN groups governments, scientists and conservationists.
The world imposed a moratorium on all hunts in 1986 after many species were driven towards extinction by decades of exploitation for meat, oil and whalebone. Japan, Norway and Iceland still hunt minke whales, arguing they are plentiful.
The humpback whale, which grows up to 50 feet and is found in all the world's oceans, was moved to "least concern" from "vulnerable" in the new Red List.
The southern right whale, found in the southern hemisphere, and the common minke whale, living in the North Pacific and North Atlantic, were shifted down to the "least concern" category from the "lower risk" grouping.
ANTARCTICA
A related species, the Antarctic minke whale which is caught by Japan, was moved to a category of "data deficient", meaning that too little is known to judge how many there are.
Norway expressed hopes that the report would help Oslo's argument that there are at least 100,000 minke whales in the north Atlantic and that the International Whaling Commission (IWC) should relax the blanket ban on whaling.
"We would hope that some of the decisions might be reconsidered," Halvard Johansen, deputy director general at the Norwegian Fisheries Ministry, told Reuters of the IWC. "We will continue hunting minke whales."
Japan declined to comment directly on the IUCN's review given that it is not a member of the network, but said debate within the International Whaling Commission (IWC) should take into account data on stocks. The IWC oversees the 1986 ban.
"There have been many moments at the IWC this year when debate was not directly linked to stocks," Shigeki Takaya, assistant director of far seas fisheries at Japan's Fisheries Agency told Reuters.
Norway has a quota of 1,052 minke whales and Iceland 40 in the north Atlantic in 2008. Japan caught 551 minke whales off Antarctica in the past season. Hunts used to be far bigger.
"This strengthens our opposition to whaling," said Frode Pleym of Greenpeace of the IUCN report. "While some species have started to recover, none of them are back to the levels they had before industrial whaling started."
The IUCN said many species were still in trouble. The blue whale, the largest creature ever to have lived on earth, remained "endangered" along with the fin whale and sei whale.
"Overall, nearly a quarter of cetacean species are considered threatened...nine species are listed as 'endangered' or 'critically endangered'," the highest levels of threat, the IUCN said in a statement.
Among those most at risk were the vaquita, a porpoise in the Gulf of California off Mexico, with only about 150 left in the wild. Reeves praised Mexico for a recent conservation drive.
(Additional reporting by Takanori Isshiki in Tokyo; Editing by David Fogarty)
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