Alaska Oil and Gas Drilling Threaten Endangered Whales

INFOZINE

Endangered Cook Inlet beluga whales are threatened by oil drilling and exploration, according to a lawsuit filed by the Natural Resources Defense Council, Native Village of Chickaloon, Center for Water Advocacy and Center for Biological Diversity.

Anchorage, AK – infoZine – The suit challenges a permit issued by the National Marine Fisheries Service to Apache Alaska Corporation to allow oil and gas exploration in Alaska’s Cook Inlet, home to a dwindling population of 280 beluga whales protected by the Endangered Species Act.

“Each year, there are fewer and fewer of these whales left,” said Taryn Kiekow, staff attorney with NRDC. “Oil and gas drilling activities expose Cook Inlet beluga whales to ear-splitting underwater noise that threatens their survival. All that noise in the marine environment makes survival impossible for these endangered whales.”

Apache Alaska Corporation has acquired more than 300,000 acres of oil and gas leases in Cook Inlet. To find and develop oil and gas fields, Apache intends to conduct seismic exploration in the inlet over the next three to five years. Every year that Apache conducts its survey operations it will spend 160 days surveying the inlet for oil and gas, 24 hours per day. For 10 to 12 of those hours, Apache will deploy in-water airguns, operate pingers and detonate explosives. Airgun noise is loud enough to mask whale calls over thousands of miles, destroying their capacity to communicate and breed; it can drive whales to abandon their habitat and cease foraging, and closer in it can cause hearing loss and death.

“Belugas are sacred to my tribe and part of our tradition,” said Gary Harrison, traditional chief of Chickaloon Native Village. “Because so few of the whales remain, we no longer hunt them. Indigenous peoples are working to protect these whales, yet industry can come into the Cook Inlet and harass 30 beluga whales every year as they look for oil and gas. It’s simply wrong.”

“Our concern is that, with all the attention on the Arctic, Cook Inlet is falling through the cracks. With fewer than 300 beluga left in the Cook Inlet, it is hard to imagine that the Incidental Harassment Authorization could not significantly contribute to their extinction. This is a no brainer for us,” said CWA President, Hal Shepherd.

“Cook Inlet is rapidly losing its belugas, and these smart, beautiful animals are unique and irreplaceable,” said the Center for Biological Diversity’s Alaska Director Rebecca Noblin. “The Fisheries Service should be doing everything in its power to protect them from dying off, not rubber-stamping every risky oil and gas project that comes along.”

Of the five genetically unique beluga populations in Alaska, Cook Inlet belugas number the fewest. The group is under great duress from increasing industrialization of their habitat near Anchorage. In recent years, the population has plummeted from approximately 1,300 to 284 whales. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Alaska Fisheries Science Center’s annual survey of endangered Cook Inlet beluga whales shows a 20 percent decline in population estimates from previous years – 321 in 2009 and 340 in 2010 compared to 284 in 2011. The 2011 estimate is the second-lowest since annual surveys began in 1993. (The lowest estimate was in 2005, when belugas numbered just six fewer than this year’s estimate.)

In April 2006, NRDC and the Center for Biological Diversity joined other conservation groups in petitioning the Fisheries Service to list Cook Inlet belugas as endangered under the Endangered Species Act. The government listed the whales as endangered in October 2008 and designated more than 3,000 square miles of the Cook Inlet as critical habitat essential to the whales’ survival in April 2011.

Canadian killer whales face extinction

INTERNATIONAL ANIMAL RESCUE

Killer whales in British Columbia’s waters could be extinct in as little as a century, wildlife experts have warned.

Only 87 resident killer whales now live off the Canadian province, after a 20 per cent decline between 1993 and 2003, and to protect the remaining few eight environmental groups have filed a lawsuit against the government, alleging that it has failed to protect the whales’ habitat.

These groups say the Orcas’ population is declining due to threats to their habitat, including a sharp fall in salmon stocks, increased boat traffic, toxic contamination, dredging, and military sonar testing.

Dr Lance Barrett-Lennard, an international expert on killer whales, explained to the Edmonton Journal the severity of the situation.

He said: “For most species a population reduced to 87 … would be toast. We wouldn’t even be considering recovery as a viable possibility.”

The Orca is the largest species of the oceanic dolphin family and is found in all the world’s oceans, some populations feed on fish while others hunt marine mammals, including sea lions and seals.

News brought to you by International Animal Rescue, leaders in wildlife rescue and rehabilitation.

Endangered species relying on change in focus

NEW ZEALAND HERALD – BRIDGET VERCOE

Last year, China’s baiji dolphin was declared extinct. The fates of the western grey whale, northern right, vaquita and New Zealand’s Maui and Hector dolphins now hang in the balance.

Surely this should serve as a guide to the International Whaling Commission of where its direction lies.

Undoubtedly it is time the commission was modernised. If we are to have any hope of protecting the world’s whale and dolphin populations, this modernisation must outstrip the pace at which these mammals are becoming extinct.

The IWC was set up in 1946 to conserve whales and regulate an out of control whaling industry.

It has has been dominated by unproductive discussions on commercial whaling – a subject over which the commission is deeply divided.

It has become obvious to all that the commission can’t stay locked in this bitter stalemate for ever.

It is definitely time for a change in direction. It is time the IWC took a progressive step and shifted its focus from the exploitation of whales and dolphins to their conservation and protection.

Instead of debating the merits of whaling, the IWC needs to redirect its energies towards increasing our scientific knowledge of the ecology, biology and behaviours of these magnificent mammals.

Studies should be funded to increase our understanding of whale numbers, their migratory paths, communication skills, social dynamics, and culture.

The IWC should be conducting research to predict and quantify the effect on whales and dolphin populations of climate change, noise pollution, ship strikes, toxic pollution, habitat destruction and entanglement.

Methods should be developed to evaluate the effect of whale watching and to facilitate sharing of information within the global whale watching industry.

More than nine million people go whale watching every year. The global economic value of the whale watching industry is estimated to be more than US$1 billion ($1.27 billion).

Instead of brokering deals on new categories of whaling, the IWC should be taking steps to ensure that whaling for commercial purposes comes to an end for good. Now is not the time to compromise.

In today’s world any attempt to hunt these long-lived, slow-breeding mammals can only be considered irresponsible and needlessly cruel.

* Bridget Vercoe is the New Zealand programmes manager for the World Society for the Protection of Animals. WSPA leads the Whalewatch Network – an international coalition of more than 140 anti-whaling groups from more than 55 countries.

Right Whales Remain Rare and Elusive

Associated Press – Mary Pemberton

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Scientists searching for what is likely the world’s most endangered whale came up empty-handed this summer during a one-month tour of an area in the Bering Sea where Pacific right whales like to feed.

From July 31 to Aug. 28, an international team of scientists surveyed an area almost the size of New York in search of Pacific right whales, which have been teetering on extinction for decades.

“We did not see a single whale the entire time,” said Phil Clapham, team leader and chief scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Alaska Fisheries Science Center in Seattle. “The bottom line, they were not in the places they had traditionally been in the last six or seven years.”

This summer’s survey where scientists used high-powered binoculars and underwater listening devices is part of a larger four-year project to assess the seasonal distribution of the whales, their numbers and where they travel in the Bering Sea.

The Minerals Management Service is paying for the surveys at an annual cost of about $1 million. The research is required under the federal Endangered Species Act because the area where the whales like to spend summers overlaps an area the federal government this year approved for oil and gas development. Lease sales could begin by 2011.

The whales weren’t found this summer because it is a “cold pool year” in the Bering Sea, Clapham said. That means the water is colder than normal. The colder water likely affected the distribution of plankton, which is what the large whales feed on, he said.

Many scientists considered right whales a lost cause until a few years ago when 23 were spotted, including two with calves, in an area of the Bering Sea where they like to feed.

However, numbers remain exceedingly small, making it difficult to find them, Clapham said.

“It is very much like a needle in a haystack given there are so few animals,” he said.

Right whales have been listed as endangered since the early 1970s.

Scientists spent two weeks aboard a NOAA research vessel that departed from Dutch Harbor in late July. Scientists from Russia, the Dominican Republic, Brazil and South America joined the NOAA scientists.

For the last two weeks of the survey, the team took up the search in a 155-foot crab boat.

“We had a lot of humpbacks,” said Clapham, who for 20 years has hoped to see a right whale. “We saw a lot of fur seals. You kind of get sick of fur seals.”

The Bering Sea is changing as rapidly as any ocean on the planet because of global warming, said Brendan Cummings, ocean programs director for the Center for Biological Diversity, which successfully sued the federal government to get critical habitat designated for the whales. Those changes have affected where animals go, he said.

While it will take a longer, wider look to find out what is happening with right whales, some things are apparent now, he said.

“We know … for the past decade that the southeastern Bering Sea is the most important spot on the planet for North Pacific right whales. We need to not open it up for oil drilling,” he said.

The whales, which can grow to more than 60 feet long and weigh 100 tons, have been protected since 1935.

Clapham said this is the first time that there has been dedicated funding to survey the whales, which he described as “arguably the most endangered population in the world.”

He said scientists will go out again next year.

“It is very important for a lot of reasons to keep up with them,” he said.

On the Net:

• http://www.biologicaldiversity.org
• http://www.fakr.noaa.gov
• http://www.afsc.noaa.gov