This Week in Whales, 9/29/11

• A humpback whale baby boom is in full display off the southeastern coast of Australia.  According to Geoff Ross of the National Parks and Wildlife Service, there will be more baby humpback whales traveling the east coast over the next couple of months than have been seen since commercial whaling was banned in Australia in the 1960s.  Mr. Ross says, “It’s taken decades, but we’re starting to see remarkable year-on-year increases in the number of whales migrating along our coastline.”  Part of this baby boom includes an incredibly rare white whale calf, spotted near Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.  Witnesses described seeing the white whale calf as a “once in a lifetime event.”  And they’re not exaggerating – only about .1 percent of the humpbacks living along Australia’s east coast are white.
• Unfortunately, humpback whales are not out of the jungle just yet.  While we’ve stopped commercial whaling (well, most nations have stopped; Iceland and Japan are still up to no good) there is evidence that other human activities may lead to humpback whale starvation.  While humpback whale numbers are increasing, so are the number of strandings, with evidence of malnutrition.  An expert in Australia says that many of the calves “are skinny and sickly, they don’t have a lot of blubber and it looked like most of them hadn’t had a chance to feed from their mothers.”  And it’s not just the calves.  John Woodbury, a whale watching tour operator, says, “The adult humpbacks, the mothers, are looking thin,” which he blames on environmental pollution:  “The ocean is absorbing more and more carbon from the atmosphere, making it too acidic for Antarctic Krill [humpback whales’ traditional food source] to form a strong shell.”  Mr. Woodbury’s describing ocean acidification, which NRDC has been warning about, and working to halt, for years.  If we don’t get our carbon emissions under control, we’re going to see a lot more sickly whales. 

• Right whales are experiencing a baby boom too.  The North Atlantic right whale is one of the rarest whales on earth.  There are only about 300 to 400 of the animals left, after being savaged by whaling.  This year, scientists believe that 21 calves were born, which will go a long way to helping this species survive.  According to researcher Moira Brown, “the population is inching up and as long as the whales do their part and keep having babies, and the conservation efforts work and in the next few years we figure out how to stop entanglements in fishing gear, humans are doing a pretty good job to change the outcome for an endangered species.”  I hope Ms. Brown is right, but she left out one critical threat – the Navy’s plan to build a massive underwater warfare training range next to the only known calving grounds for North Atlantic right whales, which NRDC and other organizations have sued to stop.  I hope we win.
• Comments on the National Marine Fisheries Service’s Notice of Receipt of Application for the Navy’s SURTASS low frequency active (LFA) sonar system were due this week.  The Navy’s LFA sonar relies on extremely loud, low-frequency sound to detect submarines at great distances.  According to the Navy’s own studies, the LFA system generates noise intense enough to significantly disrupt whale behavior more than 300 miles away.  Scientists have observed that, under certain oceanic conditions, sound from a single LFA system could be detected across entire oceans.  In 2008, NRDC succeeded in limiting the Navy’s use of this new technology for training purposes to areas of the Pacific Ocean.  That agreement expires in a year and now the Navy’s back asking the National Marine Fisheries Service – charged with enforcing the Marine Mammal Protection Act – to allow it to use the technology in 70-75% of the world’s oceans.  NRDC submitted comments to the National Marine Fisheries Service and we will also submit comments on the Navy’s Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement, urging greater protections for marine mammals.  You can too, as described in the Navy’s Notice of Availability of a Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement for LFA.  This story is far from over… 
• Iceland continues its campaign to convince people that its slaughter of endangered fin whales is A-OK.  The latest salvo comes from Gísli Víkingsson, a specialist in whales at the Icelandic Marine Research Institute, who denies that fin whale hunting in Icelandic waters is unsustainable, criticizing the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (the world’s leading international organization for assessing the status of species) listing of the fin whale as endangered on its Red List.  According to Mr. Víkingsson, “most scientists who have covered this issue seem to feel the same way.”  I'm not sure who Mr. Víkingsson is refering to, but I do know that he failed to mention that the International Whaling Committee’s Scientific Committee has determined that Iceland’s current quota for killing fin whales is unsustainable, three times what the population of fin whales can spare to survive.  That’s one of the reasons the U.S. imposed diplomatic sanctions against Iceland for killing whales.

Meanwhile, this week in Wales…

It’s “hot” in Wales this week.  Yesterday, some areas of Wales were hotter than Hawaii.  Temperatures topped out at 25°C (77°F) in Colwyn Bay, reaching 24°C (75°F) in Aberystwyth, and 23°C (73°F) in Cardiff.  Usually for the end of September temperatures are more like 13°C (55°F).  Meanwhile, the temperature at Maui’s airport reached 22°C (72°F).  Watch out Hawaii, I may throw my next luau in Wales.