http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030615/ap_on_sc/drowning_whales_2
Sun Jun 15, 2003, 12:25
PM ET
Study: Nets Drown 1,000 Cetaceans Daily
By JOSEPH B. VERRENGIA,
AP Science Writer
Nearly 1,000 whales,
dolphins and porpoises drown every day after
becoming tangled in fishing nets and other equipment, scientists
say in what appears to be the first global estimate of the problem.
Annually, the researchers
said 308,000 of the marine mammals die
unintentionally in fishermen's hauls.
There are more than
80 species collectively known as cetaceans,
or fishlike sea mammals. They range from porpoises weighing 100
pounds
to the blue whale, the world's largest creature at more than 120
tons.
Many species are near extinction because of centuries of overhunting.
The new study, conducted
by American and Scottish biologists,
suggests that accidental captures, known as "bycatch"
in the
fishing industry, may be the biggest immediate threat to these
animals' survival - even more than ship collisions and pollution.
The report was released
by World Wildlife Fund, a Washington-based
advocacy group, as governments gather in Berlin for the 55th annual
International Whaling Commission (news - web sites) meeting that
begins Monday.
Fishing industry officials
did not respond to interview requests.
"This level of
bycatch is no doubt significantly depleting and
disrupting many populations of whales, dolphins and porpoises,"
said the study's lead researcher, Andy Read of Duke University
Marine Laboratory in Beaufort, N.C. "Several species will
be lost
in the next few decades if nothing is done."
Marine researchers
who did not contribute to the study said
the new mortality estimate is "very distressing."
"There is need
to harvest seafood," said Michael Moore of the
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute on Massachusetts' Cape Cod.
"We should be able to feed the planet without driving non-food
species to extinction. But I'm not sure we can."
Since the 19th century,
commercial whaling turned millions of
whales into lubricants, cosmetics, margarine and meal. The IWC
banned most whaling in the 1980s. Norway ignores the ban, while
Japan takes nearly 700 whales a year under a controversial IWC
research exemption. Some native cultures are allowed to conduct
strictly limited hunts.
Cetaceans still patrol
the same waters, now described by biologists
as an undersea forest of lobster pots, baited long lines and huge
nets.
To prepare the bycatch
estimate, Read and scientists at the University
of St. Andrews in Scotland analyzed cetacean deaths in 125 marine
mammal populations in 1990-99. Most of the deaths occurred in
U.S.
waters.
Commercial fishing
advocates point out that cetacean deaths
decreased 40 percent in the United States in the last decade
as new federal laws were enacted and equipment improved.
Other measures, including
underwater acoustic alarms, were
employed in the late 1990s with the help of fishermen.
But, scientists say,
some fishermen rush to cut away lines and
nets cinching the bodies of dead whales before investigators
can trace them through the equipment.
The decrease also reflects
the collapse of once-productive
fisheries, as well as drastic declines in cetacean populations
overall.
To reach the worldwide
estimates, the researchers resorted
to multiplying the U.S. statistics. They acknowledged their
results were "very crude," but said mortality figures
in more
remote countries were not available.
The true numbers may be even higher, Read said.
Cetacean survival depends
on species' behavior, too.
In the North Atlantic,
humpback whales are increasing 7 percent
annually, but the northern right whale remains critically endangered,
numbering just 350.
The disparity may be
due in part to the way a humpback safely eats,
by taking one big gulp of food. The right whale, however, swims
with its mouth wide open through curtains of plankton. Lines snag
in the creatures' filtering combs called baleen, becoming what
researchers call "whale floss."
"The whale starts
to struggle and spin and the line wraps around
its flippers and tail," Moore said.
Most northern right
whales bear entanglement scars.
In 1991, researchers
tried to rescue a right whale tangled in rope
at a cost of more than $250,000 but failed to save it.
Last August, spotters
identified a 10-year old female ensnared
in fishing line off southeastern Canada. The same whale was spotted
off Cape Cod in March, still entangled.
"They lose weight
and slowly go downhill," Moore said.
"We don't see them regularly enough to know they when they
are dead."
