A new survey of the whales, which are amongst the largest mammals to ever live, found just a few hundred still live.
Presenter: Geraldine Coutts
Speaker: Dr Phillip Clapham, US Marine Mammal Laboratory
CLAPHAM: Some whales as you rightly say are doing very well and coming back from the whaling to which they were subject for a long time. The North Pacific Right Whale unfortunately is an exception to that, and the state of affairs today is due to a couple of things; due to pretty intensive historical whaling in the 19th century with the old Yankee and some of the other sail-based whaling ships, which really hunted down Right Whales pretty rapidly to low numbers. And then in the 20th century they were probably slowly coming back and unfortunately in the 1960s the Soviet Union, which was conducting this huge campaign of illegal whaling secretly worldwide starting in World War Two and going on into the late 70s, the Soviets killed a large number of Right Whales, particularly in the east and north Pacific. And it's that population in the east that we're really concerned about today and it seems to be very small. So the short version is they were probably coming back, and then the Soviets didn't quite wipe them out but they took them down to very low numbers.
COUTTS: And do we know approximately what the numbers are and are they redeemable, can they be saved?
CLAPHAM: Well the first question is a bit easier to answer than the second, the estimate that we have for the eastern north Pacific was 30 animals, and we think there were a few hundred in the western north Pacific, but there's not really a good estimate for that population. The 30 estimate for the east is probably an under-estimate, and for reasons I won't go into, but no one believes there's lots of Right Whales out there that we don't know about in the east and north Pacific. In terms ofo whether they can come back, it's really hard to say. They're no longer being whaled but they do suffer from other issues. There may be a genetic issue there in terms of in-breeding, but we really don't know that, there's not enough study been done. And the big emerging issue for Right Whales in the north Pacific is probably the fact that sea ice is now disappearing in the Arctic and that means that more and more shipping is going to come through going from Europe to Asia, and in doing so will create huge amounts of noise and pollution that just weren't there before.
COUTTS: And are countries like Russia and others that endangered the Northern Right Whale previously back on board now to help preserve it?
CLAPHAM: Not really, I mean it was the Soviets who wiped them out or came pretty close to doing it. Russia will tell you it's been out of the whaling business for some time, but it still maintains a sort of nominally kind of pro-whaling stance at the International Whaling Commission, it tends to vote with the whalers. There's not really much funding in Russia to do any work on this. Most of the work that's been done on Right Whales in the north Pacific has been funded by the United States, and there's frankly no money available for it right now.
COUTTS: What needs to be done then to turn it around?
CLAPHAM: Well the first thing we need to know is really what is the range of this species these days? It's clearly contracted from what it was at historical levels. If you look at the historical whaling data, the very first ship to arrive in the Gulf of Alaska, the first whaling ship in 1835 wrote that they saw a million whales, which was obviously an exaggeration, but it was an indication there were lots and lots of whales. Today we have no idea how many are in the Gulf of Alaska, that was formerly a very important habitat, and we need to get out there and do surveys. But that costs a lot of money. Once we've established how many animals there are, then we can also try to assess whether there are any human caused problems that we can mitigate. In other areas whales suffer from particularly entangled in fishing gear, there's not much evidence of this that's the case with Right Whales, but there really hasn't been enough surveying yet to determine that for sure.
COUTTS: And are they the other issues in trying to preserve the whales, fishing and nets and those types of things? What are the other issues?
CLAPHAM: Well there's also, if you look at another Right Whale, which is the North Atlantic Right Whales, which is also in pretty bad shape, although it's not as bad as the North Pacific, its entanglement in fishing gear and also ship's strikes, because a lot of Right Whales exist in the north Atlantic tends to be right in the vicinity of major shipping lanes, so they get hit by ships a lot. And when you have a small population obviously every mortality is very important and very significant. We don't have any evidence that that's really the case with North Pacific Right Whales, but there's a lot less survey effort out there, and as I said the big emerging issue now is going to be lots and lots of shipping coming across the pole through areas that had been historically pristine. That'll bring noise, it'll bring pollution and it'll bring the potential for ship collision, particularly in very narrow areas, such as the Bering Strait where all the shipping is funnelled through and where whales go.
COUTTS: The migratory patterns you've touched on there, recent research with whales has found that their migration is far more substantial and they travel a lot further than was ever thought before. Are you going to have to put tracking devices on to follow this process?
CLAPHAM: Yeah we've actually done that with a few animals and it's one of the frustrations, these are animals that range all over the ocean as you say, and remarkably they seem to have a sense of humour, because as soon as you put a tagging device on them they frequently just sort of stop there and don't do anything. We've had four tags on North Pacific Right Whales, they have remained pretty much in the area where they were tagged for up to two months with the tag. It's again difficult and expensive to get out and do this stuff, that tagging is one of the approaches we'd really like to pursue further with Right Whales to give us an idea of where they do, which habitats are important to them and where they migrate in the winter, which by the way we have absolutely no idea.
COUTTS: And have you started this process? You've put some tagging on, but what are the alternatives if they are camera shy so to speak and they don't move while they've got the tracking devices on?
CLAPHAM: Well you just have to keep trying to tag them. It's very difficult getting a tag on a whale, any whale, it's not like a wolf or a lion where you can put a collar around its neck. You have to basically implant a tag down into the very thick blubber these animals have. Now the tags tend to work their way out. Sometimes you get lucky and a tag will stay on for months, we've had some great examples of that recently. But we have not had that great success with Right Whales. The longest we've had a tag on a Right Whale is two months. But again you've got to get out there and find them and then approach them and tag them, and none of that is very easy, especially when you're talking about only 30 animals remaining in one area.