Background

The North Atlantic Right Whale is the most endangered large whale on the planet. Historically found throughout the Atlantic Ocean, it was named the “right” whale because its large body and thick blubber made it attractive to hunt – it can weigh up to 70,000 kilograms and measure up to 18 metres. This led to centuries of overexploitation.

Globally protected from commercial whaling in 1935, the North Atlantic Right Whale is now almost solely found in the Western Atlantic Ocean, from the coast of Florida up to Atlantic Canada. Increasing numbers of North Atlantic Right Whale are being killed by human activities, making this a major factor limiting the population’s recovery by impacting overall population survival. Specifically, North Atlantic Right Whales are highly susceptible to ship strikes and entanglement in fishing gear due to their habitat being heavily used by the shipping and fishing industries. This, combined with lower calving rates since 2010, is restricting the species’ ability to recover, placing them at risk for extinction in as little as 20 years.

With increasing risks to North Atlantic Right Whales from entanglement and ship strikes, we are working alongside government and industry to better quantify the risks, and to develop innovative approaches to decrease the threat of entanglement and improve fisheries management measures.

Program Overview

The purpose of this project is to conduct stewardship, monitoring and necessary research activities that will contribute to the recovery of North Atlantic Right Whales by reducing their likelihood of becoming entangled in fishing gear in Canadian waters. In other words, this project focuses on entanglement prevention.

In 2007, Grand Manan Basin in the Bay of Fundy and Roseway Basin off of Southwestern Nova Scotia were designated as critical habitat. This designation protects these important North Atlantic right whale foraging grounds from human activities that may result in destruction of the habitat. Shipping routes were also rerouted to mitigate the risk of ship strikes. In recent years, however, larger numbers of North Atlantic Right Whales have been seen feeding in the Southern Gulf of St. Lawrence. This change in distribution is thought to be due to increasing water temperatures causing copepods – their main prey – to be found in larger concentrations in the Gulf. The increase in North Atlantic Right Whale sightings in the Gulf brings new concerns about human activities in this area and the protection of North Atlantic Right Whales.

The project takes place in the Atlantic Canadian waters surrounding New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and southeastern Quebec.

The main project outcomes include fish harvester-led development and evaluation of fishing technology that will reduce entanglements; involvement of fish harvesters and Indigenous communities in active roles that reduce the threat of entanglement; and improved knowledge of the distribution, health and entanglement risks of North Atlantic Right Whales within Canadian waters.

Evaluating and informing fisheries management efforts for conservation

About the project: The Canadian Wildlife Federation is working alongside government to improve fisheries management measures and to support evidence-based decision making for the conservation of at-risk marine species.

Goal: We want to increase transparency and improve the effectiveness of fisheries management decisions made to protect Canada’s large whales from entanglement in commercial fishing gear. To do so we are developing tools, such as mathematical models, to evaluate the costs to fisheries versus the conservation benefits of fisheries management measures. By examining the tradeoffs between the two, we can make recommendations on how to enhance the effectiveness of entanglement mitigation efforts while minimizing disruptions to important commercial fisheries.

History: In 2017, North Atlantic Right Whale deaths from entanglement prompted the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) to implement new fisheries management measures, including large fishing exclusion zones designed to protect foraging whales by keeping certain areas free of fishing gear. However, these measures raised concerns about the costs to fisheries and the effectiveness at reducing the threat of entanglement.

We have developed a predictive model that allows us to examine where fish harvesters will move to if excluded from their primary fishing ground. For example, the snow crab fishery in the Southern Gulf of St. Lawrence has closed many areas to fishing activity due to the presence of North Atlantic right whales. The fish harvesters still need to be able to fish, however, so our model predicts where they might fish once their original location has been closed. Using this model, we can evaluate the socio-economic costs to the fishery as well as the conservation value (i.e. reduction of entanglement risk) of these closures.

Future: CWF recently completed validating the model by comparing model results with actual results. To do so, we used data from commercial fisheries and North Atlantic Right Whale sightings. Next, we will present the model to relevant stakeholders. Finally, we hope to adapt the model to other fisheries to be able to predict how they will react to closures. This would allow us to better inform management decisions and conservation efforts to mitigate the risk of entanglement.

Trials of ropeless fishing gear

About the project: The Canadian Wildlife Federation is partnering with fish harvesters and First Nations communal-commercial fish harvesters to test ropeless fishing technologies in Atlantic Canadian commercial fisheries.

Goal: We want to allow fish harvesters to test various ropeless fishing gear systems to determine whether they are a potential risk mitigation tool to help prevent marine mammal entanglement from fishing gear.

History: In 2017, the Canadian government began closing fixed-gear fisheries in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in response to a large number of North Atlantic Right Whales found dead in the area. With the development of ropeless fishing gear, it is possible that fisheries could co-exist in areas with a high presence of North Atlantic Right Whales. While these ropeless systems have been tested and proven in other applications, minimal testing has been conducted in Canadian commercial fisheries.

Future: With funding from the Canada Nature Fund and PEW Charitable Trusts, we will purchase and test various ropeless fishing gear systems in partnership with fish harvesters. Together, we will determine whether these systems may be a successful alternative to traditional fishing gear for use in areas currently closed to fishing due to the presence of North Atlantic Right Whales.

Biophysical model of whale-vessel collisions

About the project: The Canadian Wildlife Federation, in partnership with Dalhousie University, is striving to better understand the impact that ocean-going vessels have when they strike whales. By using historical whale-strike data, we have created an interactive biophysical model that illustrates the stress exerted on the internal structures of a whale (e.g. skin, blubber, bone) by vessels and the resulting injury.

Goal: To identify the degree of injury whales incur after a vessel collision and to determine whether vessel size impacts the severity of the resulting injury.

History: In 2017, 17 North Atlantic Right Whale mortalities were recorded – the most in recent history. Of those 17 deaths, five individuals died from blunt force trauma widely understood to have been caused by vessel strikes. Current management practices, such as diverting shipping lanes and implementing speed restrictions, look to reduce the occurrences of whale strikes, but neither practice by itself is a perfect solution.

Future: By creating a biophysical model, CWF provides a tool for scientists and managers to better understand what occurs to a whale during and after a collision event. The information derived from the model can inform current speed restrictions and support the idea of a more conservative speed.

Recent History

For many Canadians, it was the summer of 2017 when they first became aware of the terrible damage done to whales when they are hit by ships. News videos from the Gulf of St. Lawrence aired repeatedly, almost weekly, informing Canadians directly of the toll. Twelve individual Right Whales had been found dead in only three months, an extraordinary number, considering a total global population of only 356 individuals with only 70 breading females. Seven others had been observed entangled in fishing gear; two subsequently died and the other five faced the prospect of a long, painful death if they were not somehow extricated.

Following extensive necropsies on seven of the dead whales, specialist veterinarians concluded that four had died as a result of blunt force trauma – that is, being struck by a vessel – and two had been killed as a result of entanglement. It is important to note that, unlike most whale species, Right Whale carcasses float due to higher buoyancy; this means they are able to be recovered and studied. Most whales immediately sink to the ocean bottom at death, meaning there is no way to meaningfully study the effect of collisions, nor even be able to register that a death has occurred.

This was nothing new to the specialists on the water; at least 14 Right Whale carcasses and as many as 20 injured Right Whales were sighted in Canadian waters (including some in the Gulf of St. Lawrence) between 1988 and 2014. This despite some efforts on the part of the Federal governments of the time to protect Right Whales: shipping routes were changed around two well-documented habitats, one in the Bay of Fundy (2003) and the other in Roseway Basin, located on the Scotian Shelf (2008). These had proven somewhat effective in protecting the local populations. However, by 2010, Right Whales population numbers began to decline in these locations. This is presumed to be the result of diminishing food availability (due to human activity and global warming) in the Gulf of Maine and the Scotian Shelf regions. Within five years, Right Whales in significant numbers were being sighted in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence.

An official Government of Canada SARA recovery strategy had been published in 2009. There was no other significant federal action to protect Right Whales until the 2017 crisis. This lack of action was reported in a 2018 audit by the Office of the Auditor General of Canada, which concluded that the Canadian government, and its four responsible departments, had “failed to use existing policies and tools to proactively manage threats to marine mammals from commercial fisheries and marine vessels,” and that until the catastrophic summer of 2017, efforts to meet this responsibility had been “inadequate.”

To the agencies’ credit, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, and Transport Canada acted quickly and decisively in 2017 to try to address the problem. Within weeks of the first discoveries of dead whales, they introduced unprecedented monitoring and new risk-reduction regulations. Based on consultations with various experts from non-governmental groups and other stakeholders, speed restrictions were developed for vessels more than 20m in length across a large area of the Gulf of St Lawrence. While the response had been prompt, the majority of the mortalities and injuries had already occurred. By the time a mandatory slow speed was being enforced in key areas 63 days later, the carcasses of three more whales had been retrieved.

In the months following the crisis, the Canadian government worked with NGOs, researchers and other scientists to devise ways to minimize the possibility of future devastating collisions. A new regulation regimen came into effect at the end of April 2018, in preparation for the spring arrival to Canadian waters of the Right Whale population. Large ships could travel no faster than 10 knots in certain areas, well below the former speed limit, and policies were put in place for dynamic management of speeds in other zones. A large area of the Gulf of St. Lawrence was closed to fishing and further closures were possible if whales were sighted. Enhanced surveillance and reporting were also undertaken. In other words, federal officials were empowered, based on data from the active monitoring of whales’ locations, to severely limit or even close areas to shipping and other industrial activities hazardous to whales, such as the burgeoning Snow Crab and Lobster fisheries.

In 2018, the news had been encouraging and there were signs that the drastic measures borne of the 2017 crisis had a positive effect. There were no documented Right Whales’ deaths in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and environs and commercial shipping was able to continue largely unaffected while the Snow Crab fishery was able to meet its full quota. (There were however, 3 entangled whales, but these seem to have occurred following the closure of the crab fishery.) However, 2019 brought the issue back into high relief, with alarming fatality numbers.

Since 2020, the Canadian government have continued to put in place vessel traffic measures in the Gulf of St Lawrence, now for all vessels of 13 m or more in length. They included two seasonal speed limit zones, a restricted area near the Shediac Valley, and a voluntary slowdown zone in Cabot Strait.

What CWF is Doing

Atlantic Whale Conservation Program

The purpose of this project is to conduct stewardship, monitoring and necessary research activities that will contribute to the recovery of North Atlantic Right Whales by reducing their likelihood of becoming entangled in fishing gear in Canadian waters. In other words, this project focuses on entanglement prevention.

The main project outcomes include fish harvester-led development and evaluation of fishing technology that will reduce entanglements; involvement of fish harvesters and Indigenous communities in active roles that reduce the threat of entanglement; and improved knowledge of the distribution, health and entanglement risks of North Atlantic Right Whales within Canadian waters.

Reports and Papers

• Cole, Brillant & Boudreau 2021. Effects of time-area closures on the distribution of snow crab fishing effort with respect to entanglement threat to North Atlantic Right Whales.
• Kelley, Vlasic & Brillant 2020. Assessing the lethality of ship strikes on whales using simple biophysical models.
• Davies & Brillant 2019. Mass human-caused mortality spurs federal action to protect endangered North Atlantic Right Whales in Canada.
• Cockeron et al. 2018. The recovery of North Atlantic Right Whales has been constrained by human-caused mortality.
• Brillant et al. 2017. A timely opportunity to protect North Atlantic Right Whales in Canada.
• Brillant et al. 2015. Quantitative estimates of the movement and distribution of North Atlantic Right Whales along the northeast coast of North America.
• Knowlton et al. 2012. Monitoring North Atlantic Right Whale entanglement rates: a 30 yr retrospective. Analysis of entanglement rates.
• Brillant & Trippel 2010. Elevations of lobster fishery groundlines in relation to their potential to entangle endangered North Atlantic Right Whales in the Bay of Fundy, Canada.

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