The Canadian government has since enacted voluntary and mandatory seasonal slowdown zones in this region from around April to June and late September to November, which has helped reduce vessel strikes in this area, authorities say. Lawrence, you’re going to have a big problem.” “If you’re protecting the Gulf of Maine, but the right whales are, in fact, in the Gulf of St. “There’s a mismatch between where the right whales are distributed and where the policies are distributed,” Meyer-Gutbrod said. Ship collisions were responsible for at least eight of these deaths, necropsies revealed. The whales’ initial arrival in these areas was unexpected and few policies were in place to protect them, which led to a devastating mortality event between 20, in which 20 North Atlantic right whales were found dead in the Gulf of St. Lawrence near Canada, leaving them vulnerable to new threats, according to a 2022 study led by Meyer-Gutbrod. As a result, whales have been forced to seek other areas to forage in the waters of Cape Cod and the Gulf of St. However, due to the effect of climate change on ocean circulation, there has been a steep drop in copepod abundance throughout Maine in recent years. They were chosen based on historical data of when and where the right whales pass through a certain region. Monitored by NOAA’s Office of Law Enforcement, these fixed “ Seasonal Management Areas”-the equivalent of school zones for whales-can be found along the northeastern coast where the North Atlantic right whales migrate and feed, including Maine. To protect these giants as they eat, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) enacted a speed restriction rule in 2008 that requires vessels 65 feet or larger to slow to 10 knots, around 12 miles per hour, during certain times of the year in designated ocean zones. And in order to maintain that size when the food that right whales are eating is smaller than the size of a grain of rice, you have to be able to find a lot of it and in really dense patches,” said Erin Meyer-Gutbrod, an assistant professor at the University of South Carolina who studies whales. “It takes a lot of food to maintain these huge animals. The main item on the menu? Millions of tiny crustaceans known as copepods. The Gulf of Maine is one of the most crucial feeding grounds for the endangered North Atlantic right whale, which has just 340 individuals remaining in the ocean. A growing body of research shows that climate-driven ocean warming and increasingly frequent marine heatwaves are throwing many whale migrations out of whack, which could push these marine giants into new ocean regions and closer to busy shipping lanes. However, there is another factor making this issue increasingly complex and unpredictable: climate change. To combat this, governments must better track when and where ship traffic overlaps with marine mammal migratory routes, and reduce ship speeds or reroute traffic in those areas, according to a recent Nature comment paper co-authored by Sims. “I don’t think people realize that there are these unrecorded, undetected fatal collisions with some of the world’s most iconic and charismatic species,” Sims said. These numbers are likely an underestimate because many large shipping vessels may not even be aware that they’ve hit and killed a whale-and carcasses will often sink to the bottom of the ocean before being documented, according to David Sims, a senior research fellow at the Marine Biological Association in the United Kingdom. In the United States, 80 endangered whales become “ocean roadkill” each year off the West Coast, and more than a third of all Atlantic right whale deaths along northeastern coastlines can be attributed to ship collisions. Shipping, cruise and fishing vessels fatally strike an estimated 20,000 whales around the world annually. This whale’s suspected death is not the first of its kind-not by a long shot. This massive marine mammal provided crucial data to help scientists understand the intricacies of humpback feeding and breeding behavior-information crucial to the long-term survival of this enigmatic species.Ī later necropsy revealed that the beached whale had a fractured vertebrae, severe chest bruising and her skull was dislocated from her spine, all injuries consistent with a ship collision. Fran had visited these waters for the entirety of her 17-year life, easily recognized by Californians due to the distinctive markings and shape of her tail. The 49-foot humpback nicknamed Fran washed up on a beach in the coastal city of Half Moon Bay.
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