Experts tackle threat to whales, dolphins

BOSTON, July 23 (UPI) -- A group of the world's leading marine mammal scientists announced Tuesday the formation of a global rapid response team to reduce the inadvertent deaths of whales, dolphins and porpoises as a result of entanglement in fishing gear.

The unintentional deaths of these animals -- known scientifically as cetaceans -- now numbers nearly 60,000 a year, or 150 a day, according to new research released at a news conference at the New England Aquarium in Boston.

"The problem is far more serious than many had realized, and has received less attention than it might have," said William Reilly, chairman of the World Wildlife Fund, an international conservation organization.

He said entanglement in fishing nets and lines -- referred to as bycatch -- is the "number one killer of whales and dolphins" around the world.

Dolphins, for example, become the bycatch of tuna fishermen hauling up their nets, and whales -- such as the endangered North Atlantic right whale -- often face death when they become entangled in nets and fishing lines.

The rapid response team, known as the Cetacean Bycatch Action Network, is made up of 25 of the world's leading whale and dolphin scientists. The network hopes to help reduce bycatch by providing scientific expertise to regions of the world where cetaceans are in crisis.

Reilly said the network is "the first coordinated effort by the world's experts to tackle the global problem of death from entanglement."

Reilly said the WWF joins with the scientists and others who are prepared to assist in "identifying solutions and responding to specific problems of entanglement wherever it may occur in the world."

"Many populations are threatened with extinction as a result of these bycatches," said Andy Read, assistant professor of marine conservation biology at Duke University marine Laboratory.

"The good news is that solutions do exist," he said. In the United States, for example, he said bycatch of these animals has been reduced by almost 90 percent as a "result of good public policy, pressure from the public and most of all to the innovation of American fishermen."

The scientists said bycatch reductions in U.S. waters came about because fishermen and scientists have worked together to find innovative solutions to this conservation problem.

And the scientists said it is very critical to recognize that consumers have a very big role to play.

"One of the reasons the tuna-dolphin problem can now in some ways be viewed as a success is because Americans don't want to buy tuna unless it says dolphin safe," said Andy Rosenberg, former deputy director of National Marine Fisheries Service and dean of the Life Sciences College at the University of New Hampshire.

"But there are a lot of other fisheries that aren't dolphin safe, aren't whale safe," he said. "That kind of market pressure, that kind of public attention is critically important to really get things implemented in the water."

In most cases of bycatch, the whales, dolphins and porpoises are simply killed and discarded.

"That doesn't make a lot of sense," Rosenberg said.

Bycatch has pushed some cetacean species to the brink of extinction. In Mexico's Gulf of California, for example, up to 15 percent of the critically endangered vaquita population is killed every year in fishing nets. With a population of only around 500, the small porpoise -- found nowhere else on Earth -- is being decimated by bycatch.

Also threatened with extinction by entanglement in fishing gear are the Irrawaddy dolphin in the Philippines, with fewer than 50 left, and New Zealand's North Island Hector's dolphin, of which there are only about 100 remaining.

High bycatch rates have also caused steep population declines of harbor porpoises around the world, particularly in the Baltic and Black seas.

"The U.S. has been very forward thinking in trying to deal with bycatch problems," said Rosenberg.

"That's not to say we have all the answers to solve our problems, but we have had some success," Rosenberg said.

The focus of the network's "Call to Action" is to "translate the success stories in places like New England to elsewhere in the world, particularly in developing world where the resources are so limiting," said Read, chair of the International Whaling Commission Small Cetacean Subcommittee.

The Call to Action is really a call to the U.S. government and other governments to take some leadership on this issue, the scientists said.

"I think we know what the tools are," Rosenberg said. "We need to have the political will to really push forward, and we need the public support to make that happen in the U.S. and in other countries."

The network also announced it launched Tuesday a new website to serve as a virtual resource center, cetaceanbycatch.org.