Stellwagen: The Making and Unmaking of a National Marine Sanctuary

7: Whales Ho!

Chapter 7 Whales Ho! To the casual observer aboard a whale-watch vessel or ferry gazing over the blue-green water under a clear sky with the towers of Boston or the ProvincetownMonumentbarelyvisibleonthehorizon,StellwagenBankmay seem like paradise. That is, if you are not a whale. For these giants of the sea, which aggregate in high numbers within the sanctuary, making it the whale-watching capital of the world, the risks of collision with vessels and entanglement in fishing gear are extreme. For starters , over twenty-five hundred large vessels, including gigantic container ships, barges, liquefied natural gas tankers, naval ships, ferries, and ocean liners transit the sanctuary every year going to and from the Port of Boston. Then there is the commercial fishing fleet of about three hundred vessels. In the spring and summer, traffic picks up with the addition of thousands of recreational boaters and fifteen whale-watch companies carrying more than one million visitors. On some summer weekends when whale-watching is reported to be especially good, a swarm of high-powered recreational boats descends on the large whale-watch boats to form an annoying “mosquito fleet” operated by some of the most irresponsible and inebriated boaters on the water. For whales just passing through as they migrate along the coast and for those that come to feed, socialize, and nurse for months, the Stellwagen Bank area (including Boston Harbor and Cape Cod Bay) is a dangerous, even fatal place to be. Ship Strikes and Entanglements Even the most stoic researchers examining the problems of ship strikes and entanglements were taken aback when NOAA released a report in 2007 on serious injuries and mortalities among baleen whales along the eastern seaboard and Canadian Maritimes. Between 2001 and 2005, the agency verified Whales Ho! 63 that 42 ship strikes and 133 entanglements had occurred, resulting in 27 whale deaths caused by ship strikes and 26 deaths by entanglement.1 The ship-strike mortalities included eight right whales, seven humpbacks, eight fins, two sei, and two minkes. These numbers might not seem startling to some, but they are only a hint of what might be the actual killing rate, for out of a total of 292 confirmed deaths, the cause of death could not be determined for 223 animals, because the carcasses either were too badly decomposed or could not be retrieved for necropsy. Further obscuring the true dimensions of the problem is the fact that many serious injuries and mortalities are never reported. This has been borne out by the sight of large tankers entering ports with the carcasses of large whales draped over their bow bulbs.2 In such instances, the captains and crews invariably claim that they were unaware that they had collided with anything. As for entanglements, they rarely are witnessed. Studies of humpback whale scars conducted by the Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies, however , indicate that as many as 75 percent of all whales are entangled in fishing gearatsomepointintheirlives(somemorethanonce)andthatonlybetween 3 and 10 percent of entanglements are witnessed or reported.3 The numbers in NOAA’s report therefore “represent the minimum values for human-caused serious injury and mortality to large whale stocks.” Twenty-seven fatal ship strikes, minimum. Twenty-six fatal entanglements, minimum. While statistically humpback and fin whales seem just as likely to be struck as right whales, the death of a single right whale, especially a female, is catastrophic for the species, which currently totters on the brink of extinction.4 Within the arcane lexicon of the Marine Mammal Protection Act, there is a somber term called the potential biological removal level (PBR), which is defined as “the maximum number of animals, not including natural mortalities that may be removed from a marine mammal stock while allowing that stock to reach or maintain its optimum sustainable population.”5 For the North Atlantic right whale, PBR is zero.6 At an average rate of one or two fatal collisions per year and perhaps half as many deaths due to entanglement, the right whale crisis could not be more palpable.7 At the center of what can only be called a crusade to break the iron grip of rightwhaleextinctionisScottKraus,directoroftheNewEnglandAquarium’s Edgerton Research Laboratory. Kraus and a team of dedicated researchers have been surveying right whales from Florida to the Bay of Fundy for the past twenty-five years and maintain the official sightings catalogue, which 64  N I N U...