Ask anyone shopping in downtown Farmington “heard anything about the right whales?” and I guarantee a blank stare as response. Maybe followed by their asking “so what about them?” These whales are slow moving and once harpooned by whalers they conveniently floated, hence their name.
There are only 360 North Atlantic Right Whales left out of what used to be thousands. These rare whales are members of a notorious “top Ten” list of critically endangered species which includes the Rhino, the Amur leopard, two bird species in New Zealand and Samoa, a reptilian in India, sea turtles, and the Vaquita a small porpoise of the Gulf of California with only 22 left being killed by gill nets.
In recent years right whales have declined rapidly with far fewer breeding age females (85) than males able to keep the population stable. Each one is so rare that it is named, coded, filmed, and catalogued by the New England Aquarium and monitored as it feeds, breeds and calves up and down the Atlantic sea bord from the Gulf of Maine to Florida. Every mother giving birth to a calf is rejoiced by researchers and trackers. Two were born this past week. A young male calf had died 4 weeks before. Whales are mammals like us: they have babies, they suckle milk to their young, the mothers spend years protecting and raising their young, and they live as long as we do given half a chance (which they do not have). How come they are in peril?
The answer is twofold: ship strikes in heavily trafficked sea lanes like ours and entanglements in fishing gear and ropes – 83 percent of right whales show scars from entanglements and another approximately 100 whales are entangled each year (Myers & Moore) in lobster and crab fishing gear.
Lobster boats in Maine, the most harvested area for lobster of the entire sea bord, lay down traps tied up with ropes to vertical lines and buoys. We have over 5,000 licensed lobster boats. When each one lays traps – they are each allowed 800 – their vertical lines look like an underwater forest to males and marine life which once snagged means death slowly and painfully. Right whales are monitored dragging the equivalent of a monster pick up truck of ropes and buoys wrapped around their bodies, or worse in their mouths. They cannot feed. They die exhausted. Heroic whale disentanglement teams venture in open waters to try to cut the ropes and gear off; some of them are lobstermen. When unsuccessful as is most of the time, the whales suffer from ropes cutting into their blubber causing infection and a slow and painful death. An 11 year old male recently died this way in the north Atlantic. In anyone’s reckoning this is animal abuse and torture caused by human commerce. And who doesn’t love lobster?
What is to be done? The answer is high tech ropeless fishing where outfitting a lobster boat costs $215,000. That amount is cheap compared to loss of a critically endangered species that is also unique to our waters. Not every boat of 5000 has to be outfitted: 400 boats that fish in further out federal waters would be a good start because that is where most entanglements occur. After all we almost lost the American bison whose recovery has taken many millions to reconstitute a small herd. The U.S. government, namely NOAA, has been dragging its feet on implementing protections for the right whale or pushing for financing of rope less fishing boats. Our legislative people do not seem concerned at all about this critically endangered species. Meanwhile the Maine lobster industry is vocal and iconic. It is in either denial of its role in endangering right whales or exasperated at the costs of outfitting whale friendly boats. Both views are valid. The U.S. government spends huge amounts in agricultural programs even paying farmers not to farm crops. Why not spend money on whales and lobstermen? Public awareness will help get this issue out front and center. Time is of the essence. We only have 360 right whales left. And counting, less they go the way of the passenger pigeon.
