BY JIM WAYMER • FLORIDA TODAY • April 27, 2009

The endangered whales gave birth to 39 calves, breaking the modern record of 31 set in the 2000-01 calving season. Several of the mother-calf pairs passed by the Space Coast this past spring.

"They had an awesome year," said Julie Albert, who runs a volunteer right whale monitoring network for the nonprofit Marine Resources Council in Palm Bay.

The Marine Resources Council keeps watch off the coast for whales each winter and spring.

Since 1994, hundreds have reported whale sightings that warn harbor pilots and captains to beware, especially in waters near Port Canaveral. The ships and whales share the same travel routes.

Right whales also saw a record five "entanglements," when they swam through fishing gear during their winter and spring migration. One incident was the first time ever that biologists were able to inject a right whale with a sedative in the open sea and then disentangle the animal.

All of the tangled-up whales either were freed or were expected to shed the fishing gear on their own after biologists intervened, Albert said.

We’ve got speed limits on highways and city streets and winding country roads. Now, thanks to rules approved by NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service in late 2008, we’ve also got new speed restrictions in shipping lanes along the Atlantic coast. The new rules require all vessels that are 65 feet or longer to obey a 10-knot seasonal speed limit in various locations along the Atlantic coast. The seasonal restrictions are based upon the North Atlantic right whale migration patterns, and are meant to help reduce the risk of fatal encounters between right whales and large vessels.

Right whales, which are one of the world’s most endangered animals, spend their summers off the coast of New England and Canada, and travel south to the coastal waters off Georgia and Florida for the winter months. Already, speed restrictions are in place in various locations along the Atlantic coast, from Florida to Massachusetts. As the whales migrate north, the speed restrictions will follow them -- the seasonal restrictions in Florida and Georgia end April 15, and those restrictions extending through Rhode Island are in effect through the end of April.

Beginning April 1, the Great South Channel -- an important shipping lane off the east coast of Cape Cod -- will begin observing the new 10-knot speed limit. Since the Great South Channel is am important migratory route and feeding area for right whales during the spring and early summer months, this restrictions will remain in effect through July 31.

 Only 300 to 400 North Atlantic right whales are left alive today, and the species is officially considered critically endangered. Accidental collisions with ships, boats and large vessels is believed to be their greatest threat, and strict speed limits could represent their best hope for survival. Cargo vessels and cruise ships may complain about the seasonal speed limits, but we think saving a species is worth slowing down a bit. Don’t you?

Choppy seas. A small boat. And 40 tons of frightened, uncooperative whale. These are the ingredients for every attempt to rescue an entangled right whale from the fishing gear that binds it. When you consider these obstacles, it’s no wonder many disentanglement efforts fail. After all, how do you get 40 tons of whale to hold still while you carefully cut away a mess of rope or net?

Before March 6, rescuers could only hope for a lucky break or a tired whale. But, now, they’ve got a better option—sedation. On Friday, March 6, NOAA Fisheries Service and its Atlantic Large Whale Disentanglement Team partners successfully sedated an entangled right whale, for the first time ever. The sedation was a success, and rescuers were able to cut away 380 feet of rope that had been wrapped around the animal’s upper jaw. In total, they removed approximately 90% of the entanglement.

This particular whale is in pretty poor shape and rescuers don’t know if it will survive. Still, while rescuers are concerned about this whale, they are (deservedly) ecstatic about the successful use of a sedative. Michael Moore, a veterinarian and whale biologist with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, says the use of sedatives is “an exciting new tool in the large whale disentanglement toolbox.” He’s right—sedated whales will be calmer and rescuers will be able to remove entangling ropes and nets more easily. This new technique could save many critically endangered right whales from near certain death.

Now, if we could only figure out how to prevent them from becoming entangled in the first place.

Post written by Patrick Ramage, IFAW's Global Whale Program Director

Many people think commercial hunting of whales ended in the 1980s. Sadly, this is not the case! More than 30,000 whales have been killed since the 1986 commercial whaling ban and Japan, Iceland and Norway continue to slaughter whales for products that nobody needs. The Government of Japan leads this effort and its factory ship and fleet are killing whales right now in the waters of the Southern Ocean Sanctuary around Antarctica!

Whales face more threats today than at any time in history -- from marine pollution and habitat destruction, to entanglement in fishing gear and collisions with high-speed vessels. New and emerging threats such as global warming and ocean noise pollution are also threatening the ways whales breed, feed and migrate across our oceans

For more than two decades, IFAW has been giving hands-on-help to whales around the world. Not just on the water or on the beach but also in the halls of government. IFAW is a leader in the fight to protect our planet's great whales at the International Whaling Commission (IWC) the global body charged with protecting whales and managing whale stocks. On Sunday, January 25th, the Washington Post broke the news of a secret Bush administration plan to allow the Government of Japan to kill more whales.

Read the Post story and join our campaign to encourage governments worldwide, including the Governments of Japan, Iceland and Norway to put down the harpoon, pick up the camera and join the emerging global consensus for whale conservation in the 21st century!

Join our fight to protect whales - take action today at www.stopwhaling.org

One way we work to protect whales is by advising governments on policies that impact whales. In the US this is done is by submitting comments in support of better protections for National Marine Sanctuaries. Over 20 species of marine mammals call this area off the Massachusetts coast home. It's even the feeding grounds for the population of humpback whales that have been studied more than any other place on earth.

The government is required by the National Environmental Policy Act to solicit comments from interested persons or organizations before undertaking a 'major federal action' as finalizing the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary Management Plan. The government asks the public to submit comments on their plans first because they are required to by law, but also because members of the public may know the affected area, the resources, and the community more intimately than any government agency or consulting firm ever will, and they may have a personal stake in the outcome of environmental decisions. This notice and comment allows the government to make informed decisions.

IFAW, with its heaqquarters mere miles from the Sanctuary, decided to comment on the Stellwagen Bank Plan because we are interested in the wise management and protection of the Sanctuary's rich resources. Specifically, IFAW feels that the government can immediately implement a number of measures designed to protect large whales; endangered right whales, whale food stocks, and habitat incuded within the 842 square mile sanctuary.

By Marsha Walton
CNN

BARNSTABLE, Massachusetts (CNN) -- Whaling fleets nearly wiped out North Atlantic right whales last century. Now these huge mammals are threatened by other human behavior: big ships, fishing gear and entanglement in federal bureaucracy.

For centuries, whale hunters nicknamed the species "right whales" because their mellow personalities, shallow feeding habits and lumbering, 70-ton bodies made them the easiest, or the right, whales to kill.

By the early 20th century, their numbers were so depleted that in 1935, hunting was banned.

Yet 73 years later, the species has not bounced back. Their habitat ranges from the Bay of Fundy off Nova Scotia, Canada, to the coast of north Florida.

Kudos to our friends at the Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies who successfully removed a 150-foot length of rope that was tangled around the tail of a humpback whale calf. The calf of the Humpback known as Tongs was first reported on June 1.

 

The calf was first spotted early Sunday afternoon by a whale watching vessel and a the disentanglement team from the center was immediately dispatched to the area around 26 miles east of Boston. The team determined that the rope was wrapped around the fluke, or tail, with 70 to 80 feet of rope trailing, and that it needed to be removed because of its position, the nature of the calf's wounds and the age of the whale.

The team used a grappling hook and buoy to remove the line while the calf and its mother swam at high speeds and with quick changes in direction.

Just today confirmation came that a buoy was present at the time of entanglement indicating the possibility of a vertical line being the culprit of the entanglement.

NOAA’s Fisheries Service is proposing that East Coast trap/pot fishermen get six additional months to switch from floating to sinking groundline, a conversion that will help reduce the risk of entangling large whales in fishing gear. NOAA is proposing the extension to ensure all crab and fish trap/pot operations, which are newly required to use modified gear, understand they are affected by the requirement and how to comply.

The extension would also apply to American lobster trap gear, which has been managed under rules for reducing entanglement risk since 1997. NOAA believes that the extension will have minimal effect on entanglement risks to large whales.