It appears that as the whale populations recover, that they are
reaching out to expand their range. This is great news and sort of
expected but not so quickly. Hunting pressure has disappeared and
the natural pressure to find greener pastures will have also
intensified.
It still makes good sense to speed it all up with the movement of a
pod into the Irish Sea. We are otherwise talking decades here.
The complete restoration of the oceanic ecology is still some ways
off but it is pretty clear that the wild catch has cleanly plateaued.
Now the increasingly valid farmed fish equation is steadily
undercutting the remaining viability of the wild catch itself. It
will still take decades of adjustment and improved husbandry before
it is correctly stabilized. From there we will also see complete
restoration as well as successful optimization strategies as well.
It is good news and we can expect this to increase.
First grey whale
spotted south of the equator
Namibia sighting suggests much-hunted whales are regaining ancient
migratory routes, or may be down to climate disruption
Astonishing news from
Walvis Bay, Namibia, where scientists from the Namibian Dolphin
project on Tuesday confirmed the sighting of a grey whale. Not only
has this north Pacific species been extinct in the Atlantic since the
18th century, it has never been seen south of the equator.
The significance of
this sighting is creating excitement among marine biologists. It may
suggest good news – that the great whales are recovering from the
disastrous hunts of the 20th century. Or it may indicate that the
changing climate is disrupting their feeding habits – with unknown
consequences.
A unique sighting of a
grey whale in the Mediterranean in May 2010 – the animal got as far
as Israel – has overturned many preconceptions, with some
scientists speculating that this much-hunted great whale – reduced
to near extinction in the 20th century – is regaining ancient
migratory routes.
John Paterson, of the
Walvis Bay Strandings Network, says the whale was first sighted by
tour boats on dolphin watch on 4 May. The "strange whale"
was confirmed as a grey, and photographed, by a member of his team on
12 May.
"The question is
now, what is origin of this whale?" says Paterson. The
photographs prove this is not the same individual that turned up in
the Mediterranean, he says. "Is it another individual that has
traverse the North-west Passage, or perhaps travelled around the
southern tip of South America and across the Atlantic? Unfortunately,
we'll never know the route it followed to get here."
Known as "devil
fish" for the ferocity with which they fought the whalers
(usually because the hunters targeted the calves, which the mothers
fiercely defended), grey whales now permit themselves to be petted by
tourists from whalewatch boats off Baja California. Their historic
range included the Atlantic, with convincing historical evidence that
Icelandic people hunted them. The whales may have migrated south to
the Mediterranean to calve in the warmer waters of the Mediterranean,
where they would also be relatively free from attack by orca, their
only natural predators.
As shore-hugging,
bottom-feeders, grey whales may have also been once common off
British shores. A vertebra in the collection of the Royal Cornwall
Museum, Truro, found in Cornwall, has been identified as belonging to
a grey whale. The last records of grey whales in the Atlantic appear
to coincide with the start of modern whaling off the coast of New
England in the early 18th century, with the appearance of "scrag
whales" off the island of Nantucket.
The southern African
grey whale joins other whales where they should not be. In Cape Cod
Bay off New England last year, an aerial reconnaissance team from the
Provincetown Centre for Coastal Studies surveying the north Atlantic
right whales feeding in the bay were amazed to find a bowhead whale –
a strictly Arctic cetacean – among their number. Climate change and
shifting ice have been attributed to its surprise appearance – with
the same conditions possibly accounting for the Mediterranean grey
whale, which may have crossed from the north Pacific to the Atlantic
via the opened-up North-west Passage.
In his forthcoming
book, Feral, George Monbiot cites a contemporary proposal to
reintroduce grey whales to the Irish Sea by airlifting 50animals
there from California. Today's news from southern Africa (Walvis Bay
translates as Whale Bay) indicates that the whales may be about to
achieve their own reintroduction without the need of airpower.
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