The future of one of Canada's most endangered animals, the North Atlantic right whale, has just got a little brighter.
The Department of Fisheries and Oceans has issued its final recovery strategy for the species, and it designates as critical habitat for the marine mammals both of their main summer feeding grounds in Atlantic Canada, an area at the entrance to the Bay of Fundy, and the Roseway Basin just off the southeastern coast of Nova Scotia.
“These areas are critical to their survival and recovery so to not have had them protected would have been dire,” said Rachel Plotkin, a policy analyst at the David Suzuki Foundation, an environmental group.
The department issued a draft proposal earlier this year that would have protected only the Bay of Fundy area, but switched its position after new scientific evidence from its own researchers and those at Dalhousie University in Halifax confirmed that the Roseway Basin area was also rich in the main food of the whales, small krill-like creatures called copepods.
Calling the wide parts of the ocean critical habitat opens the way for efforts to ensure protection of the whales there.
The adoption of a Canadian recovery strategy is the latest piece of good news for the right whales, whose population biologists estimate to be only about 400, a number that had shown only painfully slow growth until recently.
But this year, to the delight of biologists, the whales have had a baby boom, with a record 39 calves born in their wintering grounds off the east coast of Florida, eclipsing the previous high water mark of 31 in 2001.
The whale numbers are increasing so rapidly that the population estimate of about 350 included in the department's recovery strategy and based on figures from several years ago is already considered out of date.
And in another sign that the numbers may be recovering, U.S. researchers with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced last month that they discovered evidence of right whales off the southern coast of Greenland, in an area where only a couple of sightings have been confirmed in the past half century.
The Greenland whales weren't seen, but their calls were recorded on underwater listening devices. It isn't known if the whales are a new group or are animals from Canadian waters re-colonizing part of the species' historic range.
The 17-metre whales are most often spotted from the Florida coast to the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
The mammals have their unusual name because whalers once considered them the “right” animals to hunt. The 70 tonne, rotund creatures were easy to approach and usually floated after being killed, attributes that almost led to their extinction during the 800 years they were hunted on both sides of the North Atlantic. The whales are long lived and have been known to live to be 70, about the same lifespan as humans.
Hunting them was banned in 1935.
A separate species of right whale on the Canadian Pacific Coast is considered equally endangered, but isn't part of the recovery strategy.
“A lot of people consider them to be the most endangered large whale,” observed David Millar, the Maritime regional manager for the department's species at risk program. He called the recent jump in the Atlantic right whale population an “initial indication that maybe things are starting to look up.”Scientists do not know how many of the ocean-going leviathans existed before they were depleted by hunters, but they suspect that the number was under 10,000. Genetic testing of the animals has found low diversity, suggesting it may have been fewer than 1,000.
Mr. Millar called the current population “a pretty small number of animals,” and the department's recovery strategy sets a goal of an increase over a 60 year period. Because so little is known about the historic abundance of the whales, scientists cannot estimate the population growth that would be needed to get them off the endangered list.
The main causes of premature mortality in adults are collisions with ships and entanglement in fishing gear. About 75 per cent of whales have scars from fishing gear.
Ms. Plotkin said the designation of the Bay of Fundy and Roseway areas as critical habitat will put pressure on conservation advocates, department officials, and the fishing industry to develop plans to minimize the impact of fishing on the whales.
The shipping industry has voluntary adopted measures, such as a change in sea lanes, to reduce collisions.
Pardeep Ahluwalia, director-general of the department's species at risk program, said fishing representatives participated in drafting the whale recovery strategy and he doesn't expect opposition to efforts to protect the species.
The final recovery strategy was posted on a federal website earlier this week.
