Extinction

http://us.whales.org

The loss of any individual is a reminder that the best way to live life is to be free from all responsibilities and focus on whatever makes you happy. If that’s the case for having a “happy life”, one might say that everyone and everything should live life the way they want to and not be dictated by others. It is always mournful when a person full of potential is taken away, the same goes for other animals that roam our waters, yet somehow they have it much worse. The human population is 7 billion strong, but whale and dolphin species go extinct annually. Every year there are entire species of a dolphin or whale being wiped away; a life that will cease to ever exist.

In the last few years we have likely lost a species, the baiji (Chinese river dolphin), while others are hanging on by the slimmest of margins. The North Atlantic right whale may have been reduced to less than 450 individuals. The New Zealand Maui dolphin may now number less than 55 individuals and yet they are still dying in fishing nets. In the Pacific Ocean, the western gray whale is down to fewer than 130 individuals, with oil exploration a major issue in its habitat. Some species of porpoise are also under threat, with the vaquita, found only in the Gulf of California in Mexico, numbering less than 100 individuals. River dolphins in Asia (South Asian river dolphin) and South America (Amazon River dolphin) are also under enormous pressure as human activity encroaches on many of their key habitats. We are always amazed by the human involvement to “better” the world we live in, but wouldn’t a world full of life be better than a place where death secretes through another amazing oil discovery. The loss of any one distinct population of whale or dolphin may have dramatic long-term effects on what remains of the species.

It’s estimated that hundreds of thousands of whales and dolphins are dying annually in fishing nets worldwide with few countries successfully addressing this issue. In the United States, the Marine Mammal Protection Act prohibits “takes” of marine mammals and the Act includes specific processes to assess fishery bycatch and mitigation.  Unfortunately, the US metric of Potential Biological Removals’ (PBR), a model developed to identify populations who are significantly impacted by humans as a means to prioritize actions to reduce impacts, has been taken out of context by some countries. Europe may be attempting to use a similar mathematical approach as way to measure sustainable removal rates, for example: how many whales and dolphins can be killed without harming the population. The 1982 International Whaling Commission (IWC) moratorium, despite the best efforts of the commercial whaling interests, has meant that some populations of certain species are, far from the reach of mankind, slowly stabilizing and some even starting to recover. The US's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) estimates that southern hemisphere humpback whales may have recovered from previous whaling to some 25,000 individuals. However, it should be noted that the pre-whaling population was estimated to be some 100,000 individuals. New Zealand has one of the best records internationally in the field of cetacean conservation, but the Maui dolphin is now believed to number less than 55 individuals. Accidental entanglement in gill nets, and trawl fisheries, is the biggest threat to the New Zealand Dolphin and where cause of death is known, over 60% are attributed to bycatch.