Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) is in the process of determining if a North Atlantic right whale carcass spotted floating near Nova Scotia late last week has already been counted among the eight casualties tallied for 2019 so far.
A tweet issued by the DFO earlier this week, alleging that a ninth North Atlantic right whale had been found dead in Canadian waters off of Cape Breton, “was premature,” department officials told CBC News. The department is using photos to confirm if the whale fatality spotted on Sunday, 21 July, should be counted as an additional death, according to Matthew Hardy, a division manager of fisheries and ecosystems science with the DFO. Officials were hoping to retrieve the whale carcass on Monday, 22 July, to conduct a necropsy, CBC News said.
Canada has confirmed two recent North Atlantic right whale deaths, with a male right whale discovered via aerial surveillance flight just last Friday, 19 July, drifting in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. An initial necropsy completed in Grand-Étang, Quebec, showed no evidence of fishing gear entanglement playing a part in the whale’s death. A full report on the fatality is expected by the end of July, CBC News reported.
Up to five aircrafts are deployed each day in Canada to monitor the Gulf of St. Lawrence for whales, Jonathan Wilkinson, the federal fisheries minister, confirmed when visiting a facility in Dieppe, New Brunswick, Canada to thank some of the 200-plus people directly involved in wahle-related efforts at the beginning of the week. Crews have spent approximately 1,150 hours in the air surveying since April, Wilkinson told CBC News.
A whale fatality discovered in the waters off Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, last month was identified as a right whale on 19 July. A fish harvester reported the whale carcass on 24 June, with the DFO able to identify the species last week. The carcass has yet to be located, so a necropsy has not been conducted, CBC News noted.
Two five-year-old male North Atlantic right whales (No. 4423 and No. 4440) were partially disentangled from fishing gear last week in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, rescue crews reported. Meanwhile, another 18-year-old male right whale (No. 3124) sighted with fishing gear trailing from its head is being tracked by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) as of 19 July. Recent attempts to disentangle the whale – which was first discovered on 4 July by a Transport Canada aircraft east of Quebec’s Gaspe Peninsula – were postponed due to foul weather, according to a statement issued by the Canada’s Federal Fisheries Department on Sunday, 21 July.
Five of the right whale carcasses found this year have had necropsies conducted on them by federal officials and marine mammal experts, according to a report from Global News Canada. Three of those necropsies yielded results consistent with vessel strikes, it reported.
In response to the deaths, several policymakers have attempted to roll out new measures, Transport Canada and NOAA among them. A NOAA-organized task force — formally known as a take reduction team — recommended state fisheries regulators in the United States reduce overall lobster lines in the water, and weak rope toppers on lines in deeper water, to reduce whale entanglements. The move was resisted by Maine Governor Janet Mills, who said the state would not go along with the federal plan to reduce lobster lines by 50 percent. Mills prompted state Department of Marine Resources Commissioner Pat Keliher to come up with an alternate plan for contributing to a coastwide goal of cutting losses of the highly endangered species by 60 percent, according to a report from National Fisherman.
“I stand with you,” Mills wrote in a 11 July open letter to the lobster industry. “I will do everything I can as your governor to protect your rights and your livelihoods, and defend Maine’s lobster industry in the face of absurd federal overreach.”
