Right Whale Study Planned for Bering Sea

The Minerals Management Service (MMS) and the National Marine Mammal Laboratory of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have agreed to collaborate on a $5 million research program to study the endangered North Pacific right whales.

The study in the Bering Sea, north of the Aleutian Islands, will begin this summer and continue over the following three-and-one-half years. Making use of advanced equipment and methods proven successful in earlier studies of the North Atlantic right whale, researchers plan to study the distribution, relative abundance, and habitat usage.

Hunted intensively during the 19th and early 20th centuries the right whale was granted international protection in 1935 and 1946. Annual sighting records from the mid-20th century suggested the right whale population was growing, but large illegal catches during the 1960’s in the eastern North Pacific and Bering Sea appear to have had crippled their recovery.

Once abundant during the summer throughout the eastern North Pacific and Bering Sea, today the North Pacific right whales are a small remnant of their former population, likely numbering fewer than 100.  There is little known about the right whales’ abundance, movements, and current habitat usage in this area. Because of its endangered status under the Endangered Species Act, the North Pacific right whale is now is one of the rarest stocks of baleen (filter-feeding) whales anywhere in the world and is among the highest priorities for recovery efforts. The studies will include:

• Visual observations made from aircraft and ships;
• Right whale sounds will be detected via shipboard listening devices to help locate the whales for tagging and long-term monitoring of their distribution and abundance;
• Over the course of the project several right whales will be tagged with satellite and acoustic tracking devices so that researchers can determine the locations and dive behavior of the whales in real-time over long distances;
• Samples of copepods – planktonic animals commonly eaten by the whales – will be taken to study the whales’ diet and investigate anthropogenic compounds that may be in the whales’ prey.
• During the tagging operations, small tissue samples from the whales will be taken to:
  • Genetically identify individual whales through DNA genotyping;
  • Study the types of pollutants resident in their bodies; and,
  • Study the right whales diet.
     

The MMS has delayed a planned oil and gas lease sale in the southern Bering Sea until 2011 to allow sufficient time for the collection of environmental data on all marine organisms living full- or part-time in this area. During this delay, exploratory drilling and related operations would not begin until 2012 or later.

The data gathered from this cooperative research on the right whales will provide additional information required for the completion of the environmental impact assessment for the proposed oil and gas development.

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