https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/feb/18/the-new-humpback-calf-sighting-sparks-hope-for-imperilled-right-whale

Shy giant’s journey back from the brink of extinction has received less attention than its charismatic cetacean cousin
https://www.youtube.com/embed/swRans1O4Ds?embed_config={%22adsConfig%22:{%22adTagParameters%22:{%22iu%22:%22/59666047/theguardian.com/environment/article/ng%22,%22cust_params%22:%22sens%3Df%26si%3Df%26vl%3D0%26cc%3DUS%26s%3Denvironment%26inskin%3Df%26se%3Dseascape-the-state-of-our-oceans%26ct%3Darticle%26co%3Dashifa-kassam%26url%3D%252Fenvironment%252F2021%252Ffeb%252F18%252Fthe-new-humpback-calf-sighting-sparks-hope-for-imperilled-right-whale%26br%3Df%26su%3D0%26edition%3Dus%26tn%3Dfeatures%26p%3Dng%26k%3Dwildlife%2Cworld%2Ccetaceans%2Cfishing%2Ceurope-news%2Cwhales%2Canimals%2Cspain%2Cenvironment%2Cmarine-life%2Cfishing-industry%2Cconservation%26sh%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fgu.com%252Fp%252Fgb88t%26pa%3Df%22}}}&enablejsapi=1&origin=https://www.theguardian.com&widgetid=1&modestbranding=100:39World’s most endangered right whale spotted off Spanish island – videoSeascape: the state of our oceans is supported by

About this contentAshifa Kassam@ashifa_kThu 18 Feb 2021 01.00 EST

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It was a memorable finale to a day out on the Atlantic: a four-metre whale calf gliding past the boat as the divers returned to the Spanish island of El Hierro in the Canaries. Their incredible luck, however, would be made clear hours later, as researchers around the world clamoured for more details after seeing the 47-second video of the encounter online.

The divers had unwittingly stumbled across a North Atlantic right whale – one of the world’s most endangered whales. What made the December encounter extraordinary was that the recently born calf, which appeared to be alone, was spotted thousands of miles away from the species’ usual haunts along the eastern seaboard of Canada and the US.

“When I realised what it was, my hair stood up on end,” says Natacha Aguilar, a marine biologist at the University of La Laguna in Tenerife. “This is a species that has been considered extinct on this side of the Atlantic for about 100 years. And all of a sudden this newborn calf appears in El Hierro.”

This is a species that has been considered extinct on this side of the Atlantic for about 100 years

Natacha Aguilar, marine biologist

More than a dozen volunteers sprang into action, combing the area for any sign of the calf or clues as to how it had ended up in the archipelago long after centuries of whaling wiped out all traces of the species from European waters.

A handful of sightings in European waters over the years had been linked to whales with a penchant for transatlantic journeys. But Aguilar was tantalised by another – albeit more unlikely – possibility. “It could suggest that the species could be starting to recolonise the north Atlantic on the European and African side.”

The sighting was a bright moment for scientists tracking a species that has long been in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons. Since 2017, records show that 47 North Atlantic right whales have been found dead or seriously injured – a devastating blow to a species that has dwindled to fewer than 400 members.

Most of these incidents have been linked to interactions with humans. As North Atlantic right whales turned up snarled in fishing lines, nursing deep wounds from ship strikes or reeling from ocean noise, fear began to set in that the species would be the first great whale to become extinct in modern times.

It was an unnerving turn for a species that just over a decade ago had been a symbol of resilience. Having been nearly hunted to extinction by whalers – right whales were easy targets as they move slowly, linger in coastal areas and float when killed – the species was the first whale to be protected by law, in 1935.Advertisementhttps://041e63b42a80c08ee9d3e2dca6ecb6b2.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-37/html/container.html

Safeguarded from commercial whaling, their numbers began to slowly increase, galvanising hope that the risk of extinction had been staved off.

Further optimism came from another species that had forged a remarkable comeback after as much as 90% of their population was wiped out by whaling: humpback whales, whose numbers have now climbed into the tens of thousands.

“Humpback whales are one of the greatest conservation success stories of the 20th century,” says Chris Johnson of the WWF’s Protecting Whales and Dolphins initiative. “It’s not perfect but they’ve bounced back.”

Even at its lowest point, however, the global population of humpback whales was believed to number in the thousands – far exceeding the estimated population of 356 North Atlantic right whales in 2019.

“Are North Atlantic right whales the new humpback? I would say yes,” says Johnson. “In that we can succeed at this, too. But it’s going to take all of us. There are important decisions that we need to make in the next few years if we’re going to have species like the North Atlantic right whale around.”

Central to saving these whales are the ships that ply the routes off the east coast of North America, as well as the fishers who harvest its waters, rich in lobster and snow crab. Data from US officials suggests that more than 85% of right whales, which can reach the length of a city bus and weigh as much as 70 tonnes, have been entangled in fishing gear at least once.Advertisement

Mitigation measures – put forward after right whales were found ensnared in hundreds of metres of heavy ropes or dragging traps that weigh as much as 60kg – have at times sparked protests from fishing communities who see such moves as an attack on their livelihoods.Calls from the deep: do we need to Save the Whales all over again?Read more

As a result, debate over how best to protect the whales has often been drawn out, wasting precious time for a species on the brink of extinction. “We can’t lose a single whale a year right now,” says Heather Pettis, a scientist at the New England Aquarium, Boston, US. “They really need some immediate action.”

The push for protections has been further complicated by a warming ocean. “This is climate change in action,” says Moira Brown of the Canadian Whale Institute. “You have the most endangered large whale in the north Atlantic having to go further afield to find food because the Gulf of Maine is warming up.”

This search for food has been blamed for the whale’s increased presence in Canada’s Gulf of St Lawrence, an area teeming with ship traffic. It’s a bitter twist on an earlier conservation victory: in 2003, shipping lanes were rerouted in the nearby Bay of Fundy to avoid an important area for the whales.

“When we think of climate change, we think of things happening like the glaciers melting over 100 years,” says Brown. “This has happened in a decade. The pace is phenomenal.”

The overlapping threats facing the whales hint at the complexity of the conservation issues involved, four decades after a groundswell of support pushed the International Whaling Commission to impose a moratorium on commercial whaling, says Greenpeace’s Willie Mackenzie.Advertisement

“Directly shooting them in the head with a harpoon is obviously a bad thing,” says Mackenzie. “But if we’re talking about ship strikes or fishing interactions, what’s the answer? You don’t get as many fish? You shouldn’t buy as much stuff? It’s not a direct cause and effect thing that people can understand very simply.”

He ascribes some of the success of the earlier campaign to imagery, whether it was the blood-soaked horror of commercial whaling captured by Greenpeace, or the awe-inspiring acrobatics of whales. The same strategy is now complicated by the fact that many of the species most at risk today are shyer and less well-known.

There’s a PR job here – humpbacks are really good at it and right whales not so much

Willie Mackenzie, Greenpeace

“There’s a PR job here and humpbacks are really good at it and right whales not so much,” he says, citing images of humpbacks spectacularly leaping out of the water or slapping their tails on the surface. “If you want to show people the majesty of a whale, that’s the picture you have to show them because they’re not going to be very excited about a black lump in the ocean or a really distant picture of something deep diving.”

Around the Canary Islands, more than six weeks after the North Atlantic right whale was spotted, researchers continue to search for clues. “Right now, there’s not much hope that it will appear again,” says Aguilar. “A newborn of that age is dependent on the mother. Maybe they’ve reunited and are still in the area. But if it is still not with its mother and has not been adopted by another whale, then it has died.”

Still, she is quick to characterise the sighting as a “historical moment” for the region. “It was a moment that gave me shivers and made me want to cry,” she says. “To have a whale considered extinct appear in the Canary Islands, it’s proof that nature, if we take care of it, has an enormous capacity to recover.”

The whales in the group seem to sing a unique song.

By Katherine J. Wu

• Dec. 23, 2020

Weighing up to 380,000 pounds and stretching some 100 feet long, the blue whale — the largest creature to have ever lived on Earth — might at first seem difficult for human eyes and ears to miss.

But a previously unknown population of the leviathans has long been lurking in the Indian Ocean, leaving scientists none the wiser, new research suggests.

The covert cadre of whales, described in a paper published last week in the journal Endangered Species Research, has its own signature anthem: a slow, bellowing ballad that’s distinct from any other whale song ever described. It joins only a dozen or so other blue whale songs that have been documented, each the calling card of a unique population.

“It’s like hearing different songs within a genre — Stevie Ray Vaughan versus B. B. King,” said Salvatore Cerchio, a marine mammal biologist at the African Aquatic Conservation Fund in Massachusetts and the study’s lead author. “It’s all blues, but you know the different styles.”

The find is “a great reminder that our oceans are still this very unexplored place,” said Asha de Vos, a marine biologist who has studied blue whales in the Indian Ocean but was not involved in the new study.

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Dr. Cerchio and his colleagues first tuned into the whales’ newfound song while in scientific pursuit of a pod of Omura’s whales off the coast of Madagascar several years ago. After hearing the rumblings of blue whales via a recorder planted on the coastal shelf, the researchers decided to drop their instruments into deeper water in the hopes of eavesdropping further.CLIMATE FWD:: Our latest insights about climate change, with answers to your questions and tips on how to help.Sign Up

“If you put a hydrophone somewhere no one has put a hydrophone before, you’re going to discover something,” Dr. Cerchio said.

A unique blue whale song

The song of the northwest Indian Ocean blue whale population, sped up 20 times to be more audible to human ears.Listen

A number of blue whale populations, each with its own characteristic croon, have long been known to visit this pocket of the Indian Ocean, Dr. Cerchio said. But one of the songs that crackled through the team’s Madagascar recordings was unlike any the researchers had heard.

By 2018, the team had picked up on several more instances of the new whales’ now-recognizable refrain. Partnerships with other researchers soon revealed that the distinctive calls had been detected at another recording outpost off the coast of Oman, in the Arabian Sea, where the sounds seem particularly prevalent. Another windfall came later that year when Dr. Cerchio learned that colleagues in Australia had heard the whales crooning the same song in the central Indian Ocean, near the Chagos Archipelago.

Data amassed from the three sites, each separated from the others by hundreds or thousands of miles, painted a rough portrait of a pod of whales moseying about in the Indian Ocean’s northwest and perhaps beyond.

Using acoustic data to pin down a new population is, by nature, indirect, like dusting for fingerprints at the scene of a crime. But Alex Carbaugh-Rutland, who studies blue whales at Texas A&M University and was not involved in the study, said the results “were very sound, no pun intended.”

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The researchers ruled out the possibility that the songs could be attributed to other species of whales. And side-by-side comparisons of the new blue whale tune with others showed convincingly that the northwestern Indian Ocean variety was distinct, Mr. Carbaugh-Rutland said. “I think it’s really compelling evidence,” he said, drawing a comparison to linguistic dialects.

Genetic samples would help clinch the case, he added. But blue whales, which spend most of their time far from shore, are difficult to study. Whaling in the 19th and 20th centuries also culled hundreds of thousands from their ranks; an estimated 10,000 to 25,000 blue whales are thought to remain.

Not much is known about blue whale songs, although most researchers think that they help males woo their mates, as is the case with closely-related species. That can make any modifications to a cetacean melody fairly high stakes, Dr. de Vos said: “If two populations can’t talk to each other, over time, they’re going to grow apart.”

Eventually, populations with different takes on a tune might splinter into subspecies, with their own behaviors and quirks. There’s not yet evidence to show that has happened with these blue whales, nor much information on what might have driven them apart from their southerly kin. But even if the whales in this new group don’t yet formally occupy a new branch on the tree of life, they are worth getting to know.

“What things like this show us is that there are different populations, with different adaptations, with potentially different needs,” Dr. de Vos said. To conserve the world’s blue whales, she said, “there’s not one single protection measure that’s going to work.”

By Alaa Elassar, CNN

https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/13/us/north-atlantic-right-whale-newborns-scn-trnd/index.html

Updated 2:27 AM ET, Sun December 13, 2020Pictured here is 16 year-old Millipede and her newborn baby. Images taken under NOAA Research Permit 20556-01.

(CNN)The year is ending on a positive note for North Atlantic right whales, a critically endangered species, with the spotting of two newborn calves.The right whale is one of the rarest marine mammals in the world, according the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and there are fewer than 400 of them left in the world, Jessica Powell, a marine mammal biologist for NOAA Fisheries, told CNN.One of the babies, spotted on December 4 off the coast of Cumberland Island, Georgia, was born to Chiminea, who is believed to be 13 years old and is a first time mom. The second calf, found off Vilano Beach in Florida three days later, was born to 16-year-old Millipede.The right whale’s calving season begins in mid-November and runs through mid-April.Content by TUMS®These Firefighters Know HeatWhen hungry heroes get heartburn, TUMS® is here to save the day.”With a population at such low levels, every individual counts, and it is great to see these two new calves at essentially the beginning of the calving season,” Jamison Smith, the executive director of the Blue World Research Institute (BWRI) who captured photos of the babies using drones, told CNN.”It gives us hope that there will be more over the next few months. This species needs all the help they can get so that we might be able to show our grandkids a right whale in the future rather than just tell stories about them.”Millipede and her newborn baby. Images taken under NOAA Research Permit 20556-01.The leading cause for whales’ deaths and injuries involve human interaction, including vessel strikes and entanglement in fishing gear, Powell said. It is illegal for anyone, including boats, drones, surfers, and swimmers, to approach whales within 500 yards without a research permit.close dialog

The day’s biggest stories in 10 minutes or less.Sign up and get access to videos and weekly student quizzes.Sign Me UpNo ThanksBy subscribing you agree to ourprivacy policy.“It’s a species that is struggling and it’s essentially all hands on deck to try and save these whales,” Powell said. “We advise folks anywhere in the southeast to be really cautious when on the water during the calving season, to look out for calves, slow down around them, and give them space. Whatever we can do to give these whales a fighting chance.”This species of whale has also been experiencing an unusual mortality event (UME) over the past three years, according to NOAA. Since 2017, at least 32 dead and 13 seriously injured whales have been documented by the organization.In November, biologists mourned the loss of a North Atlantic right whale calf who was discovered dead on the shore of a barrier island off North Carolina. Preliminary reports indicated that the animal died during birth or shortly after, according to Powell, but scientists are waiting for pathology results to confirm the cause of death.