CNN is reporting that another Area To Be Avoided is being designated for the Roseway Basin off Nova Scotia, acrucial right whale habitat. NEAQ right whale researcher Dr. Moira Brown gets in a hopeful quote:
"It [the Bay of Fundy effort] has been a success story. It has reduced the risk by about 90 percent," said Dr. Moira Brown, senior scientist at the Canadian Whale Institute and the New England Aquarium's Edgerton Research Laboratory.
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She said the re-routed shipping lanes are considered one of the most important marine mammal protection measures in Canada.
"And there's been an unanticipated benefit," Brown said. "Mariner awareness about this whale species is huge."
Here's hoping this change has the same effect as the International Maritime Organization's decision to move ships around the Bay of Fundy. That move was a researched adjustment promoted by Dr. Brown and the NEAQ Right Whale Research Program. Considering the amazing effects it has had, it's easy to forget what a minimal change it was:
From the NEAQ marinegis.org site.
How many other small adjustments could be made like this? Researchers are already identifying high-traffic areas in the Mid-Atlantic and southeast U.S. that pass through right whale migration routes.
In the southeast, with so many heavily trafficked ports, the only way to protect right whales from ship strikes is to physically spot whales and warn ships to avoid them. It's a huge effort, and one that is frustratingly difficult execute successfully. (However it did result in the first ever right whale birth observation.)
One way to make the situation more tolerable would be to lower speed limits for large ships in right whale habitats. Unfortunately the current administration can't bring itself to do that.
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