Marine Mammals: the Evolving Human Factor: The Evolving Human Factor (Ethology and Behavioral Ecology of Marine Mammals) [1st ed. 2022] 9783030980993, 9783030981006, 3030980995

Table of contents :
Introduction to the Series
Preface
Acknowledgements
Contents
1 Cetacean Conservation and Management Strategies
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Baiji
1.3 Vaquita
1.4 Right Whales
1.5 Buying Time
1.6 Why Preventing Extinction is so Important
1.7 Managing for Robustness
1.8 Why Cetacean Conservationists Should Stop Bickering and Start Cooperating
1.9 Final Thoughts
References
2 Conserving Marine Mammal Spaces and Habitats
2.1 Introduction: The Challenge of Marine Protection for Highly Mobile Species
2.2 What Are Marine Protected Areas? Are They Effective?
2.3 Status of Marine Protected Areas in General and Specifically for Marine Mammals
2.4 Giving Birth to Important Marine Mammal Areas—IMMAs
2.5 The Process of Identifying IMMAs Through Expert Regional Workshops
2.6 Focusing on Migratory Paths of Marine Mammals—MiCO
2.7 Ecologically or Biologically Significant Areas (EBSAs) from the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)
2.8 IUCN Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs)
2.9 IMO Shipping Directives and Particularly Sensitive Sea Areas (PSSAs)
2.10 Marine Spatial Planning and Comprehensive Ocean Zoning
2.11 Other Effective Conservation Measures that Might Benefit Marine Mammals
2.12 Spatial Considerations for Marine Mammals that Use Areas on Land or Ice, and/or Freshwater
2.13 What Does It Mean to Protect Marine Mammal Habitat in the Ocean?
2.14 Conclusion
References
3 Conservation Relevance of Individuals and Societies
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Individuals
3.3 Individuals and Social Groups: The Whole is Greater Than the Sum of the Parts
3.4 Conserving Cultures
3.5 Conservation Policy and Practice for Individuals and Societies
3.6 Conclusion
References
4 Cetacean Brain, Cognition, and Social Complexity
4.1 Introduction
4.2 The Evolutionary History of Cetacean Brains
4.3 Modern Cetacean Brains
4.3.1 Gross Size and Morphology
4.3.2 Telencephalon
4.3.3 Cytoarchitecture of Cetacean Neocortex
4.3.4 Basal Ganglia and Limbic System
4.3.5 Diencephalon
4.3.6 Mesencephalon
4.3.7 Metencephalon
4.3.8 Myelencephalon
4.4 From Structure to Function to Cognition to Behavior
4.4.1 Communication and Language
4.5 Back to the Beginning—Big Brains and the Social Intelligence Hypothesis
References
5 Marine Mammal Movement Ecology in a Conservation and Management Context
5.1 Movement: Linkages Across Space and Time in a Complex, Changing World
5.2 Studying Marine Mammal Movement
5.2.1 Observations
5.2.2 Resighting and Recapture
5.2.3 Acoustic Monitoring
5.2.4 Stable Isotopes
5.2.5 Telemetry
5.3 Movements, Big and Small
5.4 Movescapes
5.5 Variation in Movement Patterns
5.6 Movement Can Separate Population Effects from Their Drivers in Space and Time
5.7 Habitat Change and Movement Phenology
5.8 Conserving Marine Mammals on the Move
5.8.1 Place-Based Conservation
5.8.2 Pressure-Based Measures
5.8.3 Movement Data on the Pathway to Conservation
5.9 Conclusion
References
6 Marine Mammal Captivity, an Evolving Issue
6.1 Some History
6.2 Cetaceans in Captivity—Some Modern History
6.3 Taiji
6.4 Blackfish
6.5 The Value of Captivity
6.6 What is “The Wild”?
6.7 The Future?
Box 6.1: Sanctuaries Offer A New Future for Captive Cetaceans
Box 6.2: The Cetaceans Among Us, Comments on the Evolving Issue by Peter Corkeron
References
7 The History of Cetacean Hunting and Changing Attitudes to Whales and Dolphins
7.1 Introduction
7.2 Subsistence Hunting
7.2.1 Arctic Hunts
7.2.2 Other Areas
7.3 Commercial Hunting
7.3.1 The Early Years of Commercial Whaling
7.3.2 The Rise of Industrial Whaling
7.3.3 The International Whaling Commission
7.4 Drive Fisheries
7.5 Changing Attitudes to Cetacean Hunting
7.5.1 Studies on Public Attitudes to Cetaceans and Cetacean Hunting
7.5.2 From Whaling to Whale Watching
7.6 The Future
References
8 Tourism and Research Impacts on Marine Mammals: A Bold Future Informed by Research and Technology
8.1 Introduction
8.2 Evolution of Analytical Frameworks to Understand Non-lethal Disturbances
8.3 Management Approaches
8.4 Outlook of Marine Mammal Tourism Moving Forward: New Ideas and Concepts
8.5 An Integrated Approach to Mitigating Tourism and Research Impacts?
8.6 Harnessing the Potential of New Technologies
8.7 Conclusions
References
9 Impacts of Human Disturbance in Marine Mammals: Do Behavioral Changes Translate to Disease Consequences?
9.1 Introduction
9.2 Impact of Human Disturbances on Marine Mammal Behavior
9.2.1 Behavioral Competence
9.2.2 Immunological Competence
9.3 The Effect of Human Disturbances on Disease Transmission Through a Population
9.3.1 Modeling Human Disturbances
9.3.2 Disease Outcomes Under Disturbance
9.4 Discussion
9.4.1 Study Limitations
9.4.2 The Importance of Using Social Networks When Modeling Disease Spread
9.4.3 The Effects of Covariation on Infection Transmission
9.4.4 Considering Marine Mammal Cycles
9.5 Conclusions
References
10 Marine Mammals Seeking Human Company
10.1 Introduction
10.2 Minds and Motivations
10.3 Some Friendly Dolphins of the Twenty-First century
10.3.1 An Explanation of the Solitary-Sociable Dolphin Phenomenon
10.3.2 The Current Scale of the Phenomenon
10.3.3 Some Case Studies
10.3.4 Management of Solitary-Sociable Dolphins
10.4 Some Examples of Friendly Pinnipeds
10.5 Marine Mammals Cooperating with Humans
10.6 Marine Mammals Soliciting Human Assistance
10.7 Food-Sharing with Wild Marine Mammals
10.8 Conclusions
References
11 Elders’ Voices: Examples of Contemporary Indigenous Knowledge of Marine Mammals
11.1 Introduction
11.2 Methods
11.3 The Elders’ Voices
11.3.1 Ika-Moana (Large Whales) of Aotearoa, New Zealand
11.3.2 Dhangal (Dugong) of Torres Strait
11.3.3 Dolphins and Manatees of Amazonia
11.3.4 Marine Mammals of the Nunavik Region of North Quebec in the Canadian Arctic: Beluga Whale (Delphinapterus leucas), Atlantic Walrus (Odobenus rosmarus rosmarus), Bearded Seal (Erignathus barbatus), and Harp Seal (Pagophilus groenlandicus)
11.3.5 Marine Mammals of the Commander Islands, Russia: Sea Otters (Enhydra lutris), Spotted Seals (Phoca largha), Northern Fur Seals (Callorhinus ursinus), and Steller Sea Lions (Eumetopias jubatus)
11.4 The Voices of the Elders as Examples of the Faces of Indigenous Knowledge
11.4.1 Cosmology
11.4.2 Factual Observations
11.4.3 Management
11.4.4 Past and Present Uses
11.4.5 Ethics
11.4.6 Vector for Cultural Survival
11.5 Concluding Remarks
References
12 Cetacean Personhood, Rights, and Flourishing
12.1 Introduction
12.2 Who Are Cetaceans?
12.2.1 Cetacean Phylogeny and Evolution
12.2.2 Cetacean Brains and Cognition
12.2.3 Summary
12.3 Self-Awareness, the Ability to Choose, Emotional Vulnerability, and Personhood
12.3.1 Summary
12.4 Flourishing, Rights, and Harm
12.4.1 Human Flourishing, Harm, and Rights
12.4.2 Cetacean Flourishing, Rights, and Harm
12.4.3 Summary
12.5 Human Treatment of Cetaceans
12.5.1 Captivity
12.5.2 Free-Ranging Cetaceans
12.5.3 Summary
12.6 Toward the Future
12.6.1 Declarations and Proclamations
12.6.2 Legal Personhood
12.6.3 Humans and Cetaceans: The Larger Challenge
References
13 “Save the Whales” for Their Natural Goodness
13.1 Introduction
13.2 Save the Whales
13.3 From Saving Whales to Sustainable Development
13.4 A Moral Shift
13.5 Forms of Life
13.6 Implications for Conservation
13.7 The Theory of Natural Goodness as a Groundwork for an Ethics of Conservation
13.8 What Are Whalers Under Natural Goodness Judgments?
13.9 “Thin” and “Thick” concepts
13.10 Post Factual Analysis of Save the Whales
13.11 Form of Life Conservation
13.12 Conclusions
References
14 Helping Marine Mammals Cope with Humans
14.1 Conserving Nature
14.2 What is Special About Marine Mammals?
14.3 Does Conservation Work?
14.4 What Do We Need to Conserve?
14.5 What Can Be Done?
14.6 Will Conservation Succeed?
References
Index

Citation preview

Ethology and Behavioral Ecology of Marine Mammals Series Editor: Bernd Würsig

Giuseppe Notarbartolo di Sciara Bernd Würsig Editors

Marine Mammals: the Evolving Human Factor

Ethology and Behavioral Ecology of Marine Mammals Series Editor Bernd Würsig , Department of Marine Biology, Texas A&M University at Galveston, Galveston, TX, USA

The aim of this series is to provide the latest ethological information on the major groupings of marine mammals, in six separate books roughly organized in similar manner. These groupings are the 1) toothed whales and dolphins, 2) baleen whales, 3) eared seals and walrus, 4) true seals, 5) sea otter, marine otter and polar bear, and 6) manatees and dugong, the sirens. The scope shall present 1) general patterns of ethological ways of animals in their natural environments, with a strong bent towards modern behavioral ecology; and 2) examples of particularly well-studied species and species groups for which we have enough data. The scope shall be in the form of general and specific reviews for concepts and species, with an emphasis especially on data gathered in the past 15 years or so. A final 7th book was added since the beginning of this series, on “The Evolving Human Factor” to explore the effects that humans had, are having and will have (unless we change our ways) on these magnificent mammals of the seas. The editors and authors are all established scientists in their fields, even though some of them are quite young.

More information about this series at https://link.springer.com/bookseries/15983

Giuseppe Notarbartolo di Sciara · Bernd Würsig Editors

Marine Mammals: the Evolving Human Factor

Editors Giuseppe Notarbartolo di Sciara Tethys Research Institute Milan, Italy

Bernd Würsig Texas A&M University at Galveston Galveston, TX, USA

ISSN 2523-7500 ISSN 2523-7519 (electronic) Ethology and Behavioral Ecology of Marine Mammals ISBN 978-3-030-98099-3 ISBN 978-3-030-98100-6 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98100-6 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: A young Indus dolphin (Platanista minor) that strayed into the Khairpur Feeder West canal, Pakistan, 10 January 2007. Dolphins trapped in irrigation canals are doomed to die there. This one was captured by a team of villagers organized by Sindh Wildlife Department (SWD) and WWF-Pakistan, placed gently on a foam mat by Nasir (a ‘watcher’ for SWD), and transported back to the Indus mainstem where it was released to swim free, back in its natural environment. Such efforts by local people are impressive and inspiring, see also Chap. 1. Photo by Uzma Khan This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

May we dance, 30 August 2020 May we dance May we dance to live with depth and humility love nature with fullness of heart listen to her song and enter into conversation with her inhabitants regardless of who is watching as we help to renew passion for Earth. May we dance to find callings in life together in community and grow into them over time until this world is a place where it is safe for everyone to be black or white or brown or yellow-skinned young or old straight or gay or trans or other and where you non-humans are safe from whales to mites corals to sharks and mosses to snakes that have venom and do not.

May we dance with fears of the future until those fears gently loosen the deep forest humus slowly reforms underground springs flow clearly we feel and see the healings of oceans and value whales and dolphins and seals intellectually, sure but also with spirits and souls so that we know what must be done to protect and nurture us all. May we dance with each other and with Earth in community. May we dance. Robin Vaughn-Hirshorn Mt. Airy, MD USA

Introduction to the Series

We—multiple topic editors and authors—are pleased to provide a series on the ethology and behavioral ecology of marine mammals. We define ethology as “the science of animal behavior” and behavioral ecology as “the science of the evolutionary basis for animal behavior because of ecological pressures.” Those ecological pressures include us, the humans. We determine, somewhat arbitrarily but with some background, that “marine mammals” habitually feed in the sea, but also include several mammals that went from saltwater oceans back into rivers, as seen in the chapter by Sutaria et al., in the first book on odontocetes. Polar bears represent a somewhat outlier “marine mammal,” as they are quite at home in the sea but can also feed on terrestrial mammals, birds, berries, lichens, and mosses. In six books, we include toothed whales (the odontocetes); baleen whales (the mysticetes); sea lions and fur seals (the otariids) as well as the walrus; true seals (the phocids); the special cases of the sea otter and polar bear; and manatees and the dugong (the sirens). Each of our chosen editors and their chapter authors has their own schedules, so the series is not arriving in the order given above, but within the 4 years of 2019 through 2022, all six marine mammal books on Ethology and Behavioral Ecology of Marine Mammals are seeing light of day, and you the readers will ascertain their worth and promise as to current knowledge and to accumulating data while our fields of science advance. Since the first book on odontocetes came out in 2019, we added a seventh final book, on The Evolving Human Factor, with chapters on present knowledge of behavioral capabilities and societal ways of marine mammals, past assaults on marine mammals, continuing assaults on the marine and other environments, dawning of awareness of assaults, and perhaps ways that we humans can and must do better. Several of us simply felt that to detail modern science of marine mammal ethology and behavioral ecology was not enough—we need to be aware of the amazingly destructive Anthropocene epoch in which we live, and try to improve for all of nature, and therefore also for us. While topics of human influence run throughout each of the first six books, a concentration on human actions and potential solutions is supplied in Book #7. vii

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Not all mammals that occur in marine waters are represented, nor all that have gone back to freshwater. Thus, there is nary a mention of marine-feeding bats, marinefeeding river otters, those aspects of beluga whales that foray way up into major rivers, seals living in landlocked lakes at times thousands of kilometers from the ocean, and other species that occasionally make the marine environment or—as generally accepted marine mammals—adjacent freshwater systems their home. Such are the ways of a summary, and we apologize that we do not fully encompass all. As the series editor, I have been a science partner to all major taxonomic entities of this series, but to this only because have been in the marine mammal field for 50 years now, with over 65 graduate students who—in aggregate—have conducted research on all seven continents. In no manner do I pretend to have kept up with all aspects of diverse fields of modern inquiry. It is a special privilege (and delight) to have multiple up-to-date editors and their fine authors involved in this modern compilation and am extremely grateful (and humbled) for this. Still learning, and ever so. Each chapter is reviewed by the book editors, peer reviewed by other scientists as chosen by the editors, and perused and commented on by me. If you learned something new and imparted that to your colleagues, students, or your own mentors, then the series and sections of it shall have been worthwhile. Tortolita Desert, Arizona, USA November 2021

Bernd Würsig

Preface

In 2017, Dr. Éva Lörinczi of Springer Nature and Bernd Würsig of Texas A&M University agreed to publish a series of books on “Ethology and Behavioral Ecology of Marine Mammals,” with separate books on (1) odontocetes (the toothed whales and dolphins, all of whom echolocate), (2) mysticetes (the baleen or batch-feeding whales), (3) otariids and the odobenid (eared seals and walrus), (4) phocids (true or “earless” seals), (5) sirenians (three species of manatees and the dugong and extinct Steller’s sea cow), and (6) the special case of sea otters and the polar bear. These have not been published in that sequence, as each set of editors and authors had their own timelines in these fraught times. While synopses of ethology and behavioral ecology of these marine mammals are now covered with modern data, we also acknowledge that much more went before, and that the present series merely tends to “fill in” previous gaps in information, hopefully now engendering a newer synthesis. However, closer to the inception of the idea of species groups represented for ethology and behavioral ecology, we worried that something was missing. What was missing in the general taxonomic descriptions was an overview of ideas about the amazing social complexity of many species, the obvious potential use of upper-level social mammals to be used as keystone or sentinel species for conservation, and the very idea that we might engender ocean science and riverine conservation by describing the lives of marine mammals. We therefore argued for—and this was rapidly accepted by Springer Nature—a final (seventh) book that attempts to delve into how our concepts of ethology and behavioral ecology may be used to advance strongly needed discussions and actions of management and—more preferably—conservation of species and their habitats. Thus was born this volume, “Ethology and behavioral ecology of marine mammals: The evolving human factor,” edited by Giuseppe Notarbartolo di Sciara and Bernd Würsig. The volume describes aspects of the often complex relationship between humans and marine mammals. From a primeval condition of occasional predators, during the past century, humans have become a major factor negatively affecting the status of most marine mammals through over-hunting, habitat encroachment, and environmental degradation. This has led to the extirpation of many marine mammal populations and even to the extinction of species. However, in parallel ix

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to this destructive drive, since antiquity humanity has been influenced by a strong fascination for marine mammals, which contributes today to an increased human appreciation of the natural world admixed with widespread concern for its degrading condition. The special status occupied by marine mammals in human imagination and affection stands in stark contrast to the current predicament of many populations still threatened by the doings of Homo sapiens: a condition emblematic of the relationship of humanity with nature and key to understanding where humanity is heading. We are thankful to the editors of books 1–6 of this series and the fine authors and co-authors who led us—are leading us—to a better knowledge of behavioral ways of marine mammals. For this special volume on conservation, we are deeply indebted to the authors of chapters who took on the daunting tasks of taking a wealth of behavioral and ecological information on marine mammals to think about and discuss with us and you the possibilities of using modern knowledge for better protection/conservation of populations, species, and ecosystems. Several chapters are admittedly cetacean biased, as this is where most information on behavioral ways in nature resides, but much of conservation issues pointed out by this bias can also be applied to non-cetacean marine mammals and—writ large—ecosystems as wholes. The following paragraphs give a shorthand narrative of chapter contents, largely condensed from their abstracts: Chapter 1 by Randall R. Reeves on “Cetacean Conservation and Management Strategies” provides ways to manage human activities to lessen impacts on cetaceans. Killing by humans has been the main driver of cetacean population declines, and measures to limit killing have achieved some conservation and recovery. Northern hemisphere right whales are few due to whaling mortality, and other human activities have kept them few. The Yangtze River dolphin (baiji) is extinct and efforts to save Gulf of California harbor porpoises, vaquita, are falling short. Some progress has been made for Yangtze finless porpoises through a combination of ex situ management and fishery closures and for several large whales, through disentanglement programs and controls of ship traffic. The long-term dedication of exceptional people who function as “champions” of the animals is an essential ingredient for successful conservation. Conserving cetaceans is not at any time completed, but needed actions must be overseen and monitored and likely repeated again and again. Chapter 2 by Erich Hoyt on “Conserving marine mammal spaces and habitats” reminds us that protecting habitats for mobile marine mammal species that traverse ocean basins presents one of the greatest challenges in marine conservation. He describes tools such as identification of Important Marine Mammal Areas (IMMAs) and intergovernmental agencies and organizations that can form strategies toward successful marine mammal conservation through the establishment of Marine Mammal Protected Areas (MMPAs), with substantial benefits to biodiversity conservation as well. Spatial management tools can only be successful if they focus on shaping human behavior. The public, energy companies, manufacturers, builders, and governments must recognize that ocean conservation is an integral part of the drive to reduce global warming and to address the species extinction crisis. Those of

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us alive today can help determine the fundamental nature of the world that species including humans will inhabit in the future. Chapter 3 by Philippa Brakes and Luke Rendell on “Conservation Relevance of Individuals and Societies” explores how individual animals respond to risk and uncertainty and how their social interactions and the social systems that they construct can support resilience, but may also generate vulnerability. Disruption of social learning and culture by human removal of some individuals can influence range recovery, responses to anthropogenic threats such as climate change, and exacerbate human influences. But social learning can also provide opportunities for increased ecological resilience, by providing a behavioral buffer to ecological change. By exploring different behavioral processes, from the individual up to the group and the population level, the authors provide insights for conservation policy and practice, including distinguishing distinct population segments. They highlight some key areas for future research and note the immense value of longitudinal data sets for tracking some of these processes. Chapter 4 by Lori Marino on “Cetacean Brains, Cognition, and Social Complexity” describes how whale and dolphin brains are a combination of highly conserved mammalian characteristics along with a unique neocortical organization that suggests that it processes information through alternative neural strategies to those of the primate brain. Their sensorium and perceptual capacities, especially in the realm of communication, are unusual even for a fully aquatic mammal. Their cognitive and social capacities make it clear that there are striking convergences in psychology between cetaceans and many terrestrial carnivores as well as primates such as we are, including the reliance on strong social bonds and, in many cases, cultural traditions. The latter aspects of societies and cultures are further explored in Chaps. 12–14. Chapter 5 by Ryan Reisinger, Chris Johnson, and Ari Friedlaender is on “Marine Mammal Movement Ecology in a Conservation and Management Context.” Movements of marine mammals link places and processes across space and time, are key to understanding ecology, and expose marine mammals to natural and anthropogenic threats across and beyond human national and international jurisdictions. “Movescapes”—the functional value of land and seascapes to animals over space and time—are essential conservation features, as recognized by Important Marine Mammal Areas. Preservation of connectivity among areas is emerging as a key challenge and opportunity for conservation and management of marine mammals. To achieve effective conservation outcomes to mitigate threats, marine mammal movescape information needs to be open, accessible, and actionable for conservation measures that connect critical habitats and migration corridors. Chapter 6 by Peter Corkeron on “Marine mammal captivity, an evolving issue” explores the past and present issues of holding marine mammals—largely focused on cetaceans—in captivity. As humanity’s understanding of the complexity of lives of cetaceans has improved, our ethical stance on some aspects of maintaining them in captivity has shifted. At the same time, our need to engage the public with conservation messaging, and to manage the welfare of free-ranging cetaceans injured by human actions, has also grown. The chapter includes box inserts authored by Lori Marino (against captivity) and Sam Ridgway (arguments for some captivity mainly

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for education and science). Some countries have banned keeping cetaceans captive for entertainment, but the industry is growing in others, particularly China. Veterinary and husbandry skills developed for captive cetaceans may help play a role in integrated conservation programs for some beleaguered cetacean populations. Development of oceanic sanctuaries to house cetaceans formerly held in entertainment facilities may allow options for integrated conservation. Chapter 7 by Chris Parsons and Naomi Rose on “The History of Cetacean Hunting and Changing Attitudes to Whales and Dolphins” reminds us of the rather recent shift in attitudes by much of the “western world” against hunting marine mammals, particularly whales and dolphins. While many whales, dolphins, seals, sea lions, and sea otters were relentlessly killed until recently, this has largely stopped due to decimation of many stocks and shifting human attitudes stemming from adverse public attention of killing. Whale watching has become a substantial international industry and globally is now the most economically important activity involving cetaceans. Despite a history extending thousands of years, public attitudes to hunting cetaceans—especially for commercial purposes—have changed. This is a human societal evolution that may be essential to the efforts to restore marine mammal numbers and ecosystem functions, especially in the face of other human-caused threats. Chapter 8 by Lars Bejder, James Higham, and David Lusseau on “Tourism and Research Impacts on Marine Mammals: A Bold Future Informed by Research and Technology” moves us into that world of watching instead of killing marine mammals and explores that while this is overall better than killing, there are problems. Tourism and recreational activities now threaten the conservation status of 21% of the marine mammal species recognized by the IUCN, and efforts are ongoing to better understand the biological relevance of behavioral responses of marine mammals to whale watching disturbance that can affect critical life functions of reproduction, feeding, and even survival. The fields of metabolomics and endocrinology are providing tools to integrate personal health with disturbance-related ecological health; and new modeling techniques are available that link changes in behavior to changes in health, vital rates, and population dynamics. In 2020, the promising concept of maximum sustainable tourism yield (MSTY) was stated as a management value to track while regulating and managing whale watching. It is necessary for marine mammal tourism to embrace a paradigmatic shift from exhaustive (volume growth) to regenerative tourism which, rather than depleting the nature upon which businesses depend, is geared toward building natural capital over time. Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) are powerful tools that allow people to achieve immersive experiences of nature without the need for travel and with less impact on the animals in nature and the ecosystem itself. There are clear pathways to move forward with a less biologically impactive whale watch industry in light of the more-informed science basis available coupled with new low-impact marine mammal tourism opportunities, but to what extent these new ways will be followed is unknown.

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Chapter 9 by Melissa Collier, Janet Mann, Sania Ali, and Shweta Bansal on “Impacts of Human Disturbance in Marine Mammals: Do Behavioral Changes Translate to Disease Consequences?” follows logically from the previous chapter on disturbance by humans. It is well understood how human-induced behavioral changes affect infectious disease risk in terrestrial wildlife, but less is known in marine life. Human disturbances can influence marine mammal behavior in ways that increase the animals’ exposure and susceptibility to pathogens, as well as their infectivity, or ability to effectively shed pathogens and infect conspecifics. When these changes to exposure, susceptibility, and infectivity are applied in four marine mammal case studies, epidemics are predicted to be larger and more likely to occur. Considering the rate at which human disturbance is increasing in the marine environment and the large number of marine mammal species and populations that are endangered or on the verge of extinction, the authors advocate for the careful consideration of the direct and indirect impacts of human disturbance on marine mammal health. Chapter 10 by Mark Simmonds and Laetitia Nunny on “Marine Mammals Seeking Human Company” explores those interactions between marine mammals and people in which the animals seem to choose to connect with us, by examining welldocumented examples. The phenomenon of “solitary-sociable dolphins” is a particular category, with more than three dozen such animals recorded since 2008. The history of these “friendly” animals reveals that they are often exposed to harmful and even lethal interactions, underlining the need to manage these circumstances better. This includes trying to prevent them from becoming habituated to human company in the first place. Three other categories of interactions are cooperative fishing (where dolphins and fishermen act in collaboration with the advantage of both), solicitation of human assistance (instances where animals have approached swimmers or divers to assist in removing something from their bodies), and food sharing (where animals pass food to people). Solicitation of human assistance supports the notion of a very high level of cognitive ability in order to discern the potential of our species to help theirs. Chapter 11 is written by Helene Marsh but with insights by co-contributors Luis Ahuanari, Valentina del Aguil, Bradford Haami, Mauricio Laureano, Frank Loban, Quitsaq Tarriasuk, Ivan Ivanovich Vozhikov, Olga Andreevna Belonovich, Sarita Kendall, Alicie Nalukturuk, and Mikhaela Neelin. It is “Elders’ Voices: Examples of Contemporary Indigenous Knowledge of Marine Mammals,” and in it, Indigenous elders from five very different parts of the world briefly explain their knowledge of local marine mammals including: ika-moana (large whales) of Aotearoa (New Zealand); dhangal (dugongs) of Torres Strait between northern Australia and Papua New Guinea; river dolphins and manatees of Amazonia; beluga whales, Atlantic walrus, bearded seals, and harp seals of the Nunavik region of north Quebec in the Canadian Arctic; and sea otters, spotted (also called largha) seals, northern fur seals, and Steller sea lions of the Commander Islands, Russia. These accounts, while vignettes of the many other examples that could have been chosen, illustrate the complexity and temporal dynamism of Indigenous Knowledge. The authors hope that this chapter will help marine mammal scientists who work in research partnerships with Indigenous peoples to build trust, respect, and mutual understanding of each

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other’s knowledge systems. There is a theme of reverence for animals and other aspects of nature in much Indigenous Knowledge, a reverence often lost or submerged in much of our modern Anthropocene world. The next two chapters are in some manners similar, as they are more philosophical in style, yet bring potential real-time solutions to helping cetaceans specifically, marine mammals more generally, and (in Chap. 13) all of nature with increasing human understanding and respect. Chapter 12 by Lori Marino and Thomas White on “Cetacean Personhood, Rights, and Flourishing” leads the reader to important modern concepts of especially respecting animals that form long-term bonds, have social associations at multiple levels of hierarchies, and show strong elements of inter-generational culture. The authors argue that human treatment of cetaceans, both those in captivity and in the oceans, causes them harm and violates their inherent rights as non-human persons and is therefore unacceptable. They propose ways in which humans can and should respond by recognizing the rights of cetaceans in the law through legal personhood, and that legal rights would go far to eliminate many of the harms such as captivity and slaughter currently still perpetrated by humans on cetaceans. Chapter 13 by Claudio Campagna and Daniel Guevara is titled “‘Save the Whales’ for Their Natural Goodness.” It describes the “Save the Whales” movement of the 1970s–1980s, largely based on perceived intelligence and humpback whale capabilities to produce song, and then argues that while that was an excellent basis for stopping commercial whaling, a generalized concept of Natural Goodness (NG) is a modern proper step to take. NG is the good of a creature satisfying the necessities of its life-form, as the primary value of life consisting in the relation between life-form and a particular bearer of the form. Thus, slaughtering whales is wrong primarily because it violates that relation. The theory of NG provides a general naturalistic standard for normative judgments about any and all living things. The authors’ contribution to the theory is to show how NG serves as the primary standard for evaluating human treatment of other life-forms such as marine mammals and as an ethical grounding for conservation practice. Chapter 14 is by Giuseppe Notarbartolo di Sciara and Bernd Würsig, the co-editors of this book, who are fortunate to have become close friends during the gestation of it these past two years. It is “Helping Marine Mammals Cope with Humans,” with background material relying largely on what is presented in previous chapters (especially harking back to Chap. 1 by Randy Reeves), but also a compilation of our thoughts about how best to move forward as humans interact, often negatively, with marine mammals. The major theme is one of “does marine mammal conservation work?”. Some notable gains have been made, but that need to be viewed from the perspective of a somber background of losses and precipitous declines. As we assess successes against failures, we realize that there is no “one size fits all marine mammal conservation” in a world so deeply affected by the intricacies of human relationships with the natural world. We also argue that simply conserving species or populations and their habitats is not enough, as the cultures of such species and populations also have high conservation relevance. Furthermore, it is not only the animals’ physical well-being that deserves attention, but also the maintenance of their psychological

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health: There seems to be little point in maintaining stable populations if survival for individuals requires a constant struggle to avoid fishing gear, prey depletion, ship strikes, intolerable noise levels, and chemical intoxication. We present a seven-point system for effective solutions: (1) on the ground knowledge and diligence; (2) spatial management tools to help shape human behavior; (3) large-scale marine protected areas and connectivities between them; (4) awareness by the public, through media and other educational tools; (5) use marine mammals and perceived intelligence and cultures as further tools for engendering public awareness and need to help; (6) strive to not only stop declines but to argue for recovery of lost ranges, health, and well-being; and (7) as scientists become more directly involved with conservation, management, and even advocacy agencies and entities. We fear that future marine mammal conservation efforts may be insufficient to prevent the disappearance of some populations and even species, while some others will have managed to flourish in a changed environment. Without falling into the trap of losing hope, the marine mammal conservation community should at least help steer the dynamics toward such “new normal” which is as similar as possible to the “old normal,” without forgetting baselines of the past, and while refusing to constantly accept new baselines of an ever-diminished natural Earth. Milan, Italy/Patmos, Greece Tortolita Desert, USA/Kaikoura, New Zealand October 2021

Giuseppe Notarbartolo di Sciara Bernd Würsig

A humpback whale spyhops during an approach to tourist boats in Cierva Cove off the Antarctic Peninsula, on March 23, 2016. The whale was one of four who spent an hour with the boats, indulging the curiosity which is often a hallmark of this species. Photo by Phil Clapham

Acknowledgements

It is a privilege to thank the authors, from 14 countries and all but one continent. You have provided the gift of fine science and thoughts, and we are grateful. We strongly believe in the adage that “A picture is worth a thousand words” and have encouraged the authors of this volume to include figures and beautiful images throughout. They did not disappoint and, thanks to Springer’s generous policy of printing color on any page, these images highlight and extend mere words. We thank the numerous photographers who kindly supplied their images at no or nominal cost. We thank the several dozen anonymous reviewers and several who kindly consented to display your names. We are grateful for your unstinting support of this project and your advice for improvements throughout. The editors and advisors at Springer Nature and Springer International were helpful throughout, with special commendations to Éva Lörinczi and Monica Janet Michael. Thank you.

Milan, Italy/Patmos, Greece Tortolita Desert, USA/Kaikoura, New Zealand

Giuseppe Notarbartolo di Sciara Bernd Würsig

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Contents

1

Cetacean Conservation and Management Strategies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Randall R. Reeves

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Conserving Marine Mammal Spaces and Habitats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Erich Hoyt

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Conservation Relevance of Individuals and Societies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Philippa Brakes and Luke Rendell

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Cetacean Brain, Cognition, and Social Complexity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 Lori Marino

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Marine Mammal Movement Ecology in a Conservation and Management Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 Ryan R. Reisinger, Chris Johnson, and Ari S. Friedlaender

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Marine Mammal Captivity, an Evolving Issue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193 Peter Corkeron

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The History of Cetacean Hunting and Changing Attitudes to Whales and Dolphins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 E. C. M. Parsons and N. A. Rose

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Tourism and Research Impacts on Marine Mammals: A Bold Future Informed by Research and Technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255 Lars Bejder, James E. S. Higham, and David Lusseau

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Impacts of Human Disturbance in Marine Mammals: Do Behavioral Changes Translate to Disease Consequences? . . . . . . . . . . 277 Melissa Collier, Janet Mann, Sania Ali, and Shweta Bansal

10 Marine Mammals Seeking Human Company . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307 Mark P. Simmonds and Laetitia Nunny

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11 Elders’ Voices: Examples of Contemporary Indigenous Knowledge of Marine Mammals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337 Helene Marsh, Luis Ahuanari, Valentina del Aguila, Bradford Haami, Mauricio Laureano, Frank Loban, Quitsaq Tarriasuk, Ivan Ivanovich Vozhikov, Olga Andreevna Belonovich, Sarita Kendall, Alicie Nalukturuk, and Mikhaela Neelin 12 Cetacean Personhood, Rights, and Flourishing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375 Lori Marino and Thomas I. White 13 “Save the Whales” for Their Natural Goodness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397 Claudio Campagna and Daniel Guevara 14 Helping Marine Mammals Cope with Humans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 425 Giuseppe Notarbartolo di Sciara and Bernd Würsig Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451

Chapter 1

Cetacean Conservation and Management Strategies Randall R. Reeves

Abstract This chapter offers some personal thoughts and reflections on strategies taken to manage human activities and limit or lessen their impacts on whales, dolphins, and porpoises. Overkill in one form or another, whether by targeted hunting or by accidental mortality from entanglement in fishing gear or vessel strikes, has been the main driver of cetacean population declines, and measures taken to prevent or strictly limit the killing have proven to be the best ways to achieve conservation and recovery. The cessation of commercial whaling, for example, occurred in the nick of time for some of the large whales. However, the numbers of North Atlantic and North Pacific right whales had been driven so low by whaling that ongoing mortality caused by other human activities has been enough to keep those species on the brink. Although the Yangtze River dolphin (baiji) has gone extinct and efforts to save the vaquita have fallen short, some progress has been made at buying time for Yangtze finless porpoises through a combination of ex situ management and fishery closures; and for large whales, through disentanglement programs and initial attempts to control ship traffic. The long-term dedication of exceptional people who function as ‘champions’ of the animals is often an essential ingredient for successful conservation. It should never be assumed that the task of conserving cetaceans is one that can be completed, with needed actions taken only once. Rather, the actions must be at least overseen and monitored and, if and when necessary, repeated again and again. Keywords Cetacean · Conservation · Mitigation · Whaling · Fisheries · Bycatch · Vessel strike · Extinction · Captivity · Vaquita · Baiji · Right whale

R. R. Reeves (B) IUCN SSC Cetacean Specialist Group, Okapi Wildlife Associates, Hudson, QC, Canada e-mail: [email protected] Committee of Scientific Advisers, Marine Mammal Commission, 4340 East-West Highway, Bethesda, MD, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 G. Notarbartolo di Sciara and B. Würsig (eds.), Marine Mammals: the Evolving Human Factor, Ethology and Behavioral Ecology of Marine Mammals, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98100-6_1

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1.1 Introduction Well over a year ago, when two of my most treasured friends and colleagues, Giuseppe Notarbartolo di Sciara and Bernd Würsig, invited me to contribute a chapter to their marine mammal conservation volume, it was easy to say yes. It’s always easy to commit to something like this when the horizon for completion is so distant. But more often than not, as time passes, I begin to wonder whether agreeing to such a commitment was a good idea. In this instance, the interval between commitment and delivery of the goods was marked by a true sea change not just in my own life but everyone else’s as well. The coronavirus pandemic has marked the lives of virtually all 7.8 billion of our cerebrally over-endowed species currently occupying, dominating, and transforming the planet. And it has made me even more reluctant than usual to claim that I have exceptional insights to offer on the subject of conservation. Although the original request was for me to opine on the challenges of conserving all marine mammals, and not only cetaceans, I’ve ended up limiting my reflections to cetaceans, the marine (and freshwater) mammals I know best. As I struggled to figure out a way to begin this essay, my mind kept going back to the words of two wise men who have been role models, and at times mentors, to me over the past four and a half decades. One is Steve Katona, longtime professor and later president of College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine. In the IUCN Species Survival Commission’s 1994–1998 Action Plan for the Conservation of Cetaceans: Dolphins, Porpoises, and Whales (Reeves and Leatherwood 1994), we quoted Katona regarding the conservation and recovery of humpback whale populations (Katona 1991), as follows: … management of the humpback whale or of any endangered species cannot be regarded as a task to complete. While there may be some actions that need to be accomplished only once, for example designating certain locations as sanctuaries for the species, other actions may need to be overseen or repeated forever, or until a decision is taken that the species should not be protected.

Anyone who has sought to contribute, even in a small way, to the battle against biotic impoverishment of the planet must be able to relate to that desideratum. Writing in the early 1990s, we could still insist that humans had not caused the extinction of any cetacean species, although we had to concede that this was ‘a tentative and somewhat hollow claim’ (Reeves and Leatherwood 1994), given certain knowledge that the Yangtze river dolphin or baiji (Lipotes vexillifer) and the vaquita (Phocoena sinus) were nearly gone and still in rapid decline. Bill Perrin, my other role model and sometime mentor, is an icon in the small but fast-growing field of cetacean science and conservation, probably best known for being a whistleblower who called world attention to the eastern tropical Pacific tuna–dolphin problem in the 1970s (Gosliner 1999). When a group of colleagues and I revised and updated the 1994 IUCN SSC global cetacean action plan, we asked Perrin (who had authored the first such plan during his tenure as chair of the IUCN SSC Cetacean Specialist Group; Perrin 1988) to provide a foreword. His wise words still resonate, among them the following (from Reeves et al. 2003):

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Some progress has been made, but as the present plan testifies, grave threats to the continued existence of many cetaceans still exist, and some threats are worsening. The baiji, vaquita, and North Atlantic right whale are near extinction. It seems unlikely that the baiji will still be around when the next new action plan is formulated …. Local populations of other species have disappeared or are seriously threatened. Cetacean diversity, like all biodiversity worldwide, is crumbling; we are losing it at a rapid and increasing rate. So we must redouble our efforts.

A similarly gloomy prognosis could be rendered today, but perhaps we should acknowledge that the mere redoubling of current efforts would fall far short of what’s really needed. The elation experienced by 1970s save-the-whales campaigners when the global whaling holocaust finally came to an end in the 1980s has worn off, replaced by the realization that there is no basis for complacency. In the first couple decades of the twenty-first century we experienced a sobering sequence of setbacks: the utter disappearance of the baiji in China, the imminent loss of Mexico’s tiny desert porpoise (vaquita), and the specter of losing both Northern Hemisphere right whales (the North Atlantic species, Eubalaena glacialis, and the North Pacific species, E. japonica), the Atlantic humpback dolphin (Sousa teuszii), and numerous subspecies and geographical populations of other cetaceans in the near future. Unlike commercial whaling, which conveniently provided clear and unambiguous targets for conservationist outrage, the sources of concern today are much less easily characterized, quantified, and neutralized. The culprits now are not just a few hundred ‘heartless’ Japanese, Soviet, and Norwegian whalers. Rather, to some degree all those of us who consume seafood, depend on products imported and exported in ships, travel near and far in the comfort of cars and airplanes, and rely on modern technology to communicate are complicit (Bearzi 2020). Our numbers, appetites, and ecological footprints as individuals, and as a human horde, are simply massive and can often seem intractable. In this chapter, I use my own experience of observing and participating in efforts directed at saving baijis, vaquitas, North Atlantic right whales, and a few other imperiled species and populations as a basis for attempting to explain some of what has and hasn’t worked, and why. The reasons for failure usually boil down to a fairly simple combination of overkill and habitat degradation or destruction although the ultimate drivers are always complex, nuanced, and uncertain. Successes have been few and far between, and as Katona cautioned, they’re always provisional and require constant monitoring, re-evaluation, and adjustment. Also, and this is important to acknowledge, they often tell us at least as much about the versatility and adaptability and sheer tenacity of the animals themselves as they do about our human determination, ingenuity, and dedication to the cause. In the course of the chapter, I mention a few ongoing or planned conservation initiatives that appear promising, or at least hopeful, for helping to slow the extinction juggernaut.

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1.2 Baiji Baijis (Fig. 1.1) and narrow-ridged finless porpoises (Neophocaena asiaeorientalis) (Fig. 1.2) were familiar sights to the people who lived along the mighty Yangtze River and its two large appended lakes, Dongting and Poyang, during China’s Han Dynasty some two millennia ago (Zhou and Zhang 1991). As recently as the mid-twentieth

Fig. 1.1 QiQi, the only Yangtze River dolphin (baiji) to have survived in captivity. She died in 2002 after more than 22 years in a research facility in Wuhan, China. Also shown are four key figures in the final efforts to conserve the species, from left, Chen Peixun, Liu Renjun, Wang Ding and Xianfeng Zhang. Photo by Xiaoqiang Wang, Institute of Hydrobiology, Chinese Academy of Science. Courtesy of Wang Ding

Fig. 1.2 A Yangtze finless porpoise feeding on a fish school in Poyang Lake, one of the two large lakes connected to the Yangtze River. Photo by Huigong Yu. Courtesy of Wang Ding

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century, both species were still probably common in the river and lakes. We can infer that the much smaller and less conspicuous porpoise was more abundant and widespread than the baiji. There is no history of large-scale deliberate exploitation as there is for many other extinct or endangered species, perhaps at least partly due to the lack of record keeping. However, as Sam Turvey surmised in his 2009 chronicle of the baiji’s extinction, during Chairman Mao Zedong’s Second Five-year Plan (or Great Leap Forward, 1958–1962), ‘Starving families were driven to eat anything they could find, including baiji[s], which could now no longer be venerated’ by the local people as they supposedly had been historically. By the time non-Chinese scientists with interest in conservation came onto the scene, baijis were already well along the road to extinction. In 1986 Bill Perrin and Bob Brownell, in collaboration with Zhou Kaiya and Liu Jiankang, convened the Workshop on Biology and Conservation of the Platanistoid Dolphins1 at the Institute of Hydrobiology in Wuhan, China (Perrin et al. 1989). At that time, the best guess of Chinese researchers was that only around 300 baijis survived, and both the dolphins themselves and their habitat were under siege. Nearly half of documented baiji deaths were being caused by ‘rolling hooks’ set to snag large bottom fish. Others were caused by explosions associated with construction and by vessel strikes. The river’s morphology had been transformed by dams and floodgates, fragmenting the dolphin population. Fish resources had been ‘reduced markedly’ and the baiji’s ecological niche had been ‘destroyed’ (Chen and Hua 1989). All of those hazards represented unintended consequences of activities meant to sustain and improve the living conditions of the Chinese people (as well as to line the pockets of a privileged few, of course). The 1986 Wuhan workshop laid out numerous recommendations for addressing known threats, including establishment of ‘natural reserve areas’ where protective regulations were to be applied with special force. In addition, it recommended that two ‘seminatural’ reserves be developed in side channels or oxbows to hold, provision, and protect captured baijis. Although such ex situ reserves were eventually developed, efforts to live capture and move baijis into them were a dismal failure, and the envisioned protection in natural (in situ) reserves never materialized. Today though, the network of seminatural reserves is populated by finless porpoises, and this made-in-China approach has come to be viewed by some as a model for integrated conservation planning and action, i.e., combining in situ and ex situ elements to achieve conservation goals (Taylor et al. 2020). A fundamental premise behind the integrated approach is that the ex situ options will contribute, at least eventually, to supplementing or if necessary re-establishing and rebuilding a wild population in the natural environment (see 1.8, below). In a paper with Nick Gales (Reeves and Gales 2006), we struggled to reconcile the ever-present tension between in situ and ex situ approaches to baiji conservation. On the one hand, we concluded, ‘Both present circumstances and all prognoses we have 1

At that time, the superfamily Platanistoidea was considered to include the baiji, two other ‘river’ dolphin genera (Inia in South America and Platanista in South Asia) as well as the coastal marine franciscana (Pontoporia blainvillei) in the western South Atlantic.

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heard point in the same direction. Expecting the few individuals and small groups of baijis in the river to simply hang on until the myriad assaults on their environment are ameliorated is a pipe dream.’ In other words, ex situ seemed the only remaining option by the early 2000s. On the other hand, the evidence also led us to concede: …one should not jump to the conclusion that the few baijis in the Yangtze River would fare better in a dolphinarium pool or the existing small ‘seminatural’ reserve than they would if allowed to take their chances in the wild. Indeed, the record is dismal of finding and capturing these animals and then keeping them alive and healthy under human management.

Although Gales and I castigated ourselves, the Chinese government, and international NGOs for doing too much hand wringing and giving only lip service to needed actions rather than insisting that the baiji be seen and treated as a genuine international conservation cause célèbre, I’m convinced in retrospect that literally nothing done by those of us outside China could have saved the species. Its fate had been sealed by its geographical situation and by the demographic upheaval and development frenzy that prevailed in late twentieth-century China.

1.3 Vaquita A spin-off of the baiji’s demise was that many of us in the West resolved not to let the same thing happen to the vaquita (Fig. 1.3). The vaquita is, as the baiji was, endemic to a small patch of habitat (only around 4000 km2 in water surface area)

Fig. 1.3 A vaquita mother and calf in the Gulf of California, October 2008. Photo by Thomas A. Jefferson/Viva Vaquita

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within roughly the northern quarter of Mexico’s Gulf of California, often referred to as the Upper Gulf (Würsig et al. 2021). The species’ fate has always been entirely in the hands of the Mexican people. Such endemism can be a curse or a blessing—it all depends on the cultural, political, demographic, and economic milieu of the range country, and the extent to which that country is willing and able to manage its own resources with a serious commitment to the preservation of natural processes and native life forms. A series of dams and diversions constructed on the Colorado River in the United States during the twentieth century essentially shut off the flow of fresh water into the Upper Gulf, with catastrophic impacts on the delta ecosystem. In other words, Mexico, like most countries, is not quite ‘sovereign’ when it comes to managing all of the natural resources within its borders. There is nevertheless no evidence to suggest that vaquitas suffered directly or even indirectly as a result of the changes that transformed the delta ecosystem—necropsies of dead vaquitas consistently showed them to have been healthy and nutritionally robust. As Rojas-Bracho et al. (2019a) concluded after carefully reviewing the evidence, ‘There are failures at many levels that have positioned the vaquita for extinction (e.g., poor fisheries management, demand for illegal products such as totoaba [swim] bladders, a culture of corruption), but a reduction of Colorado River flow is not one of them.’ Nor is there reason to believe, as some might have suspected, that the vaquita’s extremely limited distribution and small population size had led to deleterious effects of a population bottleneck or inbreeding depression (Morin et al. 2020). Rather, the sole factor responsible for driving the vaquita rapidly toward extinction was, and continues to be, incidental mortality in fishing gear (Rojas-Bracho et al. 2006). Although vaquitas die in many different types of gear, mortality in large-mesh gillnets set illegally to catch totoaba (Totoaba macdonaldi), a large croaker, was the decisive driver of the vaquita’s decline during the past decade (Taylor et al. 2017). Totoaba swim bladders are smuggled into China (including Hong Kong) directly from Mexico or via the United States. The largest, thickest ‘maws,’ as swim bladders are called in China, sell for thousands and even tens of thousands, of US dollars per kilogram according to some media reports. Demand is said to be driven by the belief that maws have medicinal or restorative properties; some are purchased simply for their investment value (EIA 2016). As would be expected in a case with a single well-defined and undeniable cause of endangerment, namely fishery bycatch, all of the conservation efforts to protect vaquitas since the 1970s when the species was first listed among Mexico’s ‘endangered and rare’ wildlife (Villa-Ramírez 1978) were centered on reducing bycatch (Rojas-Bracho and Reeves 2013). Although focused on a single threat, the efforts were diverse, ranging from designating areas closed to fishing, banning gillnets, convening a special presidential advisory panel, implementing community support and fisherman buyout programs, to developing and testing alternative ‘vaquitasafe’ fishing gear, launching letter-writing campaigns, cracking down on the illegal trade in totoaba swim bladders by customs and law enforcement agencies in both the exporting and importing countries, and eventually, boycotts and embargos on Mexican seafood. The measures taken became increasingly draconian as awareness

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of the illicit trade in totoaba maws and its connection to organized crime networks generated a global public outcry, which in turn put more and more pressure on Mexican, American, and Chinese governments to ‘act.’ Along the way, the International Convention on Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and the International Whaling Commission (IWC) passed resolutions, and in July 2019 the UNESCO World Heritage Committee placed the Islands and Protected Areas of the Gulf of California on the list of World Heritage in Danger explicitly ‘due to concerns about the imminent extinction of the vaquita.’2 In recent years, the Mexican Navy was deployed in the Upper Gulf specifically to combat illegal fishing, and ships from the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society joined forces with local NGOs and government agencies to locate, remove, and destroy or recycle totoaba fishing gear in and near the Vaquita Refuge. Since 2017 when the net-removal operations began, monthly summaries of the results have been posted during the totoaba fishing season (December–January to April–May) on the IUCN SSC Cetacean Specialist Group website.3 For nearly 25 years, a group called Comité Internacional para la Recuperación de la Vaquita (CIRVA), informally known as the international vaquita recovery team, has played an especially influential role in vaquita conservation. CIRVA was convened for the first time in January 1997 by then-neophyte cetacean biologist Lorenzo RojasBracho, and it soon became the authoritative source of data and advice on vaquitas. This was despite its unofficial status and its informal ad hoc structure and composition and its irregular meeting schedule. Rojas-Bracho is now universally recognized as the person who leads and inspires and informs the world about what is at stake as the clock winds down on the vaquita’s time on Earth. Barbara Taylor, an accomplished conservation biologist based in California who was also heavily involved in the 2006 expedition on the Yangtze River that had failed to find a single baiji (Turvey et al. 2007), and Armando Jaramillo-Legorreta, a clever Mexican bioacoustician who pioneered (collaboratively with an international team of experts) a way to monitor the vaquita population acoustically, have complemented and supported Rojas-Bracho at every stage—all three of them staying the course despite the punishing odds. I mention these individuals because they symbolize what I consider an essential ingredient for successful conservation work: the long-term dedication of exceptional people who function as ‘champions’ of the creatures to be conserved. The story of vaquita conservation would not be complete without mention of Vaquita CPR (CPR: conservation, protection, recovery) (Rojas-Bracho et al. 2019b). Although CIRVA members had discussed the prospect of capturing and bringing vaquitas into captivity repeatedly over several years, a consensus on taking such action wasn’t reached until very late, probably too late. At its meeting in December 2016, CIRVA recommended that ‘steps be taken urgently to move some individuals into a temporary sanctuary, to prevent extinction of the species’ (CIRVA 2017a). The committee reasoned that although the risks of capture and captive management were high, those risks were ‘greatly outweighed by the risk of entanglement in 2 3

https://whc.unesco.org/en/news/1999/. https://iucn-csg.org/.

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illegal gillnets in the wild.’ With the green light finally given to launch a desperate, last-ditch rescue effort, Frances Gulland, an extraordinary wildlife veterinarian who had recently been heavily involved in the rehabilitation and release of endangered Hawaiian monk seals (Neomonachus schauinslandi) (Johnson et al. 2016; Norris et al. 2017), wasted no time in assembling an expert international team of field biologists, veterinarians, and animal care specialists to organize and carry out a vaquita rescue mission known as Vaquita CPR (Rojas-Bracho et al. 2019b). At its next meeting in April 2017 CIRVA reviewed and endorsed a detailed capture and care plan developed by Gulland in close collaboration with fellow veterinarian Cynthia Smith of the National Marine Mammal Foundation. CIRVA urged that ‘as many individuals [vaquitas] as possible’ be kept under human care ‘until the Upper Gulf is safe for their return’ (CIRVA 2017b). Sadly, despite a truly herculean and multifaceted effort by Gulland, Smith and their highly capable team, only two vaquitas were caught, one a juvenile female and the other an adult female. The juvenile was released soon after capture but was in distress when last seen; the adult died in the hands of her wellintentioned captors. Both animals had shown signs of capture myopathy, leading the team to abandon the project. Ex situ options for conserving vaquitas are no longer being seriously considered. We are left, then, with little more in the ‘conservation toolkit’ than a sisyphean effort to remove gillnets in the vain hope that hard-working teams on the water can keep up with, or get ahead of, the totoaba poachers, who continue to operate with impunity. A January 2021 update on the Cetacean Specialist Group website indicated that the Sea Shepherd net-removal crew had logged two separate sightings of vaquitas during a brief visual survey in November 2020, despite ‘unfavorable weather conditions and a vast number of pangas [illegal fishing vessels] present’ in the refuge. So we know that as recently as late 2020 the species was still extant. At its last meeting in February 2019, CIRVA (2019) summed up the situation this way: ‘The lack of enforcement of fishery regulations and other laws intended to protect wildlife is systemic, long-standing, and deeply entrenched in Mexico.’ If the last vaquita dies within the next few years, this will not be because we failed to make the vaquita an international conservation cause célèbre, which it clearly has become. However, although there is bound to be second guessing, as there was when we lost the baiji, I again find it difficult to see how conservation action of any kind could have overcome the political, legal, economic, and demographic forces at work in the Upper Gulf, and in doing so, save the smallest living cetacean species and the world’s currently most endangered marine mammal.

1.4 Right Whales More than 40 years ago, I co-authored a short review paper on North Atlantic right whales where we concluded that fewer than a handful of documented fishing gear entanglements had been reported and that no ship strikes of right whales had been documented off North America (Reeves et al. 1978). At that time, although the

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accidental capture of small cetaceans in nets, lines, and traps deployed to catch fish was known to be common in much of the world (Mitchell 1975a, b), the incidental death or serious injury of a right whale in fishing gear was considered a rare event. We found ‘no evidence to indicate that such entanglement happens often or that it invariably leads to death or debilitation.’ It would be hard to imagine a more bone-headed conclusion today given what has been learned about right whales and entanglement since then (Kraus 1990). To our credit though, we at least had the good sense to comment that entanglement or entrapment ‘should not be overlooked as a potential hazard to individual [right] whales and, therefore, as an obstacle to the recovery of this small stock.’ We were similarly mistaken (naïve) in our conclusion regarding ship strikes—‘It is very hard to know how often, if at all, right whales are injured or killed as a direct result of collisions with boats and ships.’ Again, however, we cautioned that other whale species were known to be at risk from this threat and concluded that there was ‘… reason to fear that the slow-swimming, surface-feeding, coastal right whale could also be susceptible.’ It is sad irony that today, just a few decades later and after many of us had become convinced that North Atlantic right whales were on a slow but steady road to recovery from having been nearly annihilated by commercial whaling in the nineteenth century and earlier (Reeves et al. 2007; Josephson et al. 2008), both Northern Hemisphere species languish on the IUCN Red List. The North Atlantic right whale is red-listed as Critically Endangered (Cooke 2020) and the North Pacific right whale as Endangered (Cooke and Clapham 2018). Although fully protected from whaling, commercial or otherwise, since the 1930s, both species have failed to mount a sustained recovery in the past half-century. The legacy of overkill by the whaling industry, which apparently reduced total abundance of right whales in the North Atlantic to only tens of individuals (Reeves 1998), has meant that there is almost no room for trial and error and no time for long gestation when it comes to developing solutions to the severe problems faced by the whales. A masterful monograph edited by Scott Kraus and Roz Rolland describes in great detail the challenges of studying, monitoring, and protecting North Atlantic right whales or, as they call them, ‘urban whales’—whales that live in the noisy, ship- and net-infested conditions along the east coast of North America (Kraus and Rolland 2007). Unlike China and Mexico, both the United States and Canada have large top-down fishery and conservation management bureaucracies that are at least perceived as being effective and non-corrupt. The legal framework for marine mammal protection in the United States (under the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972) is the most elaborate, thoroughly adjudicated, and, at least in theory, most rigorous of its kind in the world. Government-endorsed right whale recovery plans and strategies have been available in the United States and Canada since the 1990s, but the main threats – ship strikes and entanglement in fishing gear – remain largely unaddressed, or only provisionally or partially addressed. There were times over the last 40 years when some of us were feeling optimistic because numbers appeared to be increasing, albeit slowly (Knowlton et al. 1994), and measures such as redesign of shipping lanes and seasonal and dynamic management areas to limit ship speeds seemed to be working (e.g., Laist et al. 2014; van der Hoop et al. 2015). However, the seasonal area

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closures and mandatory (or at least strongly recommended) changes to fishing gear and practices have never been as effective as expected in reducing entanglement rate or severity. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, crustacean fishermen began using traps constructed of wire rather than wood, which allowed them to deploy heavier gear (e.g., more traps on a single line, stronger ropes connecting traps to surface buoys) and to fish in deeper, offshore waters. As a result, severe entanglements leading to death or serious injury have become more, not less, frequent (Knowlton et al. 2016). By 2010 or so, the whales’ population trajectory had flattened and started going down (Pace et al. 2017), and it continues to do so. A sobering recent finding is that adult females not only die in fishing gear more often than males, but also that the energy drain from towing entangled gear or recovering from entanglement wounds is seriously affecting their reproductive success (van der Hoop et al. 2016; Corkeron et al. 2018). Add the fact that the whales’ movements and distribution have shifted and become much less predictable, doubtless as a result of climate-driven changes in prey availability, and I’m again reminded of Steve Katona’s words of caution: the conservation of North Atlantic right whales is not a ‘task to complete.’ The task is dynamic and never-ending; our plane of understanding is in constant flux, as is the smorgasboard of threats to the animals. The harder we look, the more problems we uncover. We need to keep acting on many fronts and never become complacent if there’s to be any hope of keeping these magnificent animals with us in the long term (Fig. 1.4). A promising recent development in large whale conservation is the push being led by Michael Moore and Mark Baumgartner of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts to make commercial pot-fishing for crabs and lobsters

Fig. 1.4 A North Atlantic right whale calf, probably around half-a-year old, with its mouth wide open, giving a clear view of its still relatively short baleen along either side of the palate, as well as the characteristic callosities on the upper surface of the rostrum and the front part of the lower jaw. Grand Manan Basin, lower Bay of Fundy, August 29, 2006. Photo by Moira Brown

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off eastern North America ‘ropeless’ (Myers et al. 2019). Buoy lines used to mark the locations of baited traps that rest on the sea bottom are hazardous to large whales, just as gillnets are to porpoises and dolphins. Removing these vertical lines from the water column would eliminate, or at least greatly reduce, one of the major threats to right whales (and other whales). Ropeless technology already exists, but molding it into a form that could be applied affordably and at scale to the very high-value lobster and crab fisheries in New England and the Canadian Maritimes is, unfortunately, still a long way off. This means that political turmoil driven by powerful cultural and economic interests will continue to plague efforts to save the right whales.

1.5 Buying Time Conservation nowadays is often aimed not so much at solving problems once and for all, but rather at simply buying time until hoped-for solutions come along. This was what we were doing with both baijis and vaquitas when it was decided that conditions in the wild could not possibly be improved fast enough and therefore the only option was to bring the animals into captivity, or at least ‘semi-captivity,’ where they could be protected until their natural habitat could be made safe for return to the wild. This principle continues to be applied in the case of Yangtze finless porpoises, and there is reason to believe that the approach might be working for them. By 2020 more than 130 porpoises were living in the four ex situ reserves (Mei et al. 2021; Fig. 1.5), and at the same time conditions appeared to be getting better in the river and lakes judging by the results of a 2017 survey (Huang et al. 2020). At least in this instance, the reasonable argument that ex situ efforts inevitably detract attention and divert funds away from actions to enhance the natural environment doesn’t seem to hold. In fact, according to Wang Ding (pers. comm., February 2021) of the Institute

Fig. 1.5 Three Yangtze finless porpoises captured in a net pen for transfer to a seminatural reserve. Poyang Lake, Duchang County, China, ca. 2011. Photo by Grant Abel

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Fig. 1.6 The Campobello Whale Rescue Team, based in New Brunswick, Canada, attempting to rescue a seriously entangled right whale. From left, the late Jerry Conway, Mackie Greene, Moira Brown, and the late Joe Howlett (who died the next year while trying to free another entangled right whale). Grand Manan Basin, lower Bay of Fundy, August 13, 2016. Photo courtesy of Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life, New England Aquarium

of Hydrobiology in Wuhan, who has spearheaded China’s drive to conserve the world’s only freshwater porpoise population, commercial fishing in the Yangtze is now banned, and the ban is accompanied by a massive fishermen’s compensation program. We mustn’t jump to the conclusion that buying time for Yangtze finless porpoises was a completely successful conservation strategy, but at least there is reason for hope that it will prove to be one. Another example of buying time is whale disentanglement. In the 1970s Jon Lien, a professor at Memorial University in Newfoundland, began working with fishermen to release humpback whales from cod traps. The motivation for such interventions came from multiple directions, among them the desire to (i) conserve an endangered whale population,4 (ii) reduce the pain and stress experienced by the animals, and (iii) contribute to both the physical safety and the economic welfare of the fishermen. In time, Lien’s efforts inspired others to follow suit. Charles Mayo and David Mattila at the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown on Cape Cod picked up where Lien had left off, and they continue to refine disentanglement techniques and train cadres of highly skilled specialists. Disentanglement has become an integral element of right whale conservation programs in both the United States and Canada (Fig. 1.6). However, everyone involved acknowledges that disentanglement is only a stopgap measure, or ‘Band-Aid,’ a way to buy time until a way is found to prevent entanglement, or at least reduce its incidence and severity to an acceptably low level.

4

The humpback whale was considered an endangered species at the time but most populations have been growing rapidly over the past few decades and are now regarded as secure, thanks to legal protection from commercial whaling which has been in place for the species worldwide since the 1960s (Cooke 2018a, b).

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1.6 Why Preventing Extinction is so Important One of the most vexing challenges faced by conservation biologists and conservation activists is to come up with a convincing case for why preventing extinctions is so important. As we all know, the death of people we love is shattering, and the grief triggered by such events can linger for years. We frequently describe the deceased person as unique and irreplaceable. Yet as devastating as such a loss may feel, there is never any doubt that more people are going to be conceived and born, and the potential for replacement, at least in demographic terms, remains. The genetic inheritance we all share as human beings, shaped as it has been by millions of years of evolution, is not put at risk of disappearing completely as a result of the death of one individual. But every time the last individual of a wild species dies, the loss is profound. In the words of Quammen (1996, p. 607), ‘As we extinguish a large portion of the planet’s biodiversity, we … lose … a large portion of our world’s beauty, complexity, intellectual interest, spiritual depth, and ecological health.’ Macdonald (2020, p. 193) remarks in another of her profoundly insightful ‘vesper flights,’ this one about the disappearance of elm, ash, and chestnut trees from the landscape, that ‘trees are not ever just about us. They support complex and interdependent communities of life; and as forests slowly become less diverse, the world loses more than simply trees.’ I’ve come to believe that the root inspiration for the passion that many of us feel about trying to prevent extinctions is the realization that the loss of species (or even entire families of large mammals as was the case with the baiji, the only living representative of the family Lipotidae; see Pyenson 2009), to say nothing of landscapes, seascapes, and remarkable phenomena like long-distance migrations, is far more profound, deeper-cutting, and final. Species are literally unique and irreplaceable. Unlike individuals, including us, species don’t have a ‘lifespan’ or an actuarily defined longevity. Yes, over long timescales they disappear, just as new species emerge thanks to natural selection. But human action has greatly accelerated and distorted natural ecological processes. We operate outside the ‘normal’ bounds of feedback loops and adaptive responsiveness. Our unmatched ability to innovate, manipulate, and subjugate other species puts them—most of them anyway, and certainly all marine mammals—literally at our mercy. The responsibility to preserve the millions of other life forms that make our planet interesting and wonderful should be felt and taken to heart by every human being, and each of us should strive to instill a belief in this imperative in the next and future generations.

1.7 Managing for Robustness In a discussion of the impacts of climate change on marine mammals, Würsig, Reeves and Ortega-Ortiz (2001) proposed a slight but important shift in the usual conservation paradigm. We were troubled by the fact that conservationists seem to be ‘in a permanent crisis mode while seeking to reverse the loss of biodiversity,

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and our (generally meagre) energies are devoted almost exclusively to the most degraded environments and species.’ At the time of that earlier work, we considered the two South American river dolphins, the boto (Inia geoffrensis; Fig. 1.7) and tucuxi (Sotalia fluviatilis; Fig. 1.8), to be in good shape—‘relatively numerous and widespread’ and likely to remain so. But we at least had the good sense to stress the importance of avoiding complacency and maintaining ‘large populations [like those of these two species] occupying large and diverse spaces.’ We were completely

Fig. 1.7 An adult boto that has captured a biara (Rhaphiodon vulpinus) in the confluence of the rivers Orinoco and Meta (Colombia/Venezuela), early February 2019. Photo by Fernando Trujillo

Fig. 1.8 A leaping tucuxi in a feeding area at the confluence of the rivers Amazon and Loreto Yacu, in the border area between Colombia and Peru, October 18, 2018. Photo by Fernando Trujillo

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unaware that just as our paper was going to press, a decades-long decline in abundance of both of those species was being documented in the Mamirauá Sustainable Management Reserve in the central Amazon of Brazil (da Silva et al. 2018a, b). That decline, which continued through at least the second decade of the twentyfirst century, was driven by a combination of (i) an exploding regional market for piracatinga (Calophysus macropterus), a scavenging catfish caught in anchored traps baited with, among other things, the flesh and blubber of botos and (ii) a rapid increase in the use of monofilament gillnets to capture many kinds of organisms for human consumption throughout the ranges of botos and tucuxis. With publication of the results from their long-term study in Mamirauá, Vera da Silva and Tony Martin made it possible to carry out a more rigorous assessment of the rangewide, species-level conservation status of botos and tucuxis. The Red List classification of both species was quickly changed from Data Deficient to Endangered, with a notation in each case that the species came close to qualifying for Critically Endangered (da Silva et al. 2018a, b, 2020). There is no more fitting example of the importance of managing for robustness (or resilience), which can be interpreted to mean a mixture of large numbers, a wide, diverse, and unfragmented distribution, and ample genetic and behavioral variability. It is important to bear in mind, however, that even large, wide-ranging populations may fall into the ‘data-gap trap’ (Ashe et al. 2021) if, as is the case more often than not, monitoring effort is insufficient to detect a slowly declining trend until it’s too late to reverse (Taylor et al. 2007).

1.8 Why Cetacean Conservationists Should Stop Bickering and Start Cooperating Three deep and long-standing fissures in what we like to call the ‘marine mammal community’ can stand in the way of successful conservation. Instead of presenting a united front when advocating for nature, we spend (or did spend in recent decades) precious time and energy on internecine squabbling over pro- versus anti-sustainable use, pro- versus anti-captivity, and pro- versus anti-invasive research. I’m painfully aware of how difficult it is for strong-minded individuals, which most of us are, to simply agree to disagree and then proceed to work together toward a common goal. In fact, this often seems downright impossible. Thinking that such coalescence of purpose can happen may be just a pipe dream on my part, but when it comes to conserving animals that we all find ‘special’ in some way, surely it can be done. Sustainable Use Few coinages were more fraught and controversial in late twentieth-century conservation discourse than ‘sustainable use’ (Lavigne 2006). In fact, it was, and often still is, used in place of the term conservation. On the one hand, sustainable use can be seen as consistent with conservation as long as it doesn’t compromise the ability of wild populations to regenerate. On the other hand, sufficient scientific certainty to

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ensure that such compromise can be avoided, and the mechanisms needed to prevent overuse, are rarely both in place (Reeves 2018). In his thoughtful and thought-provoking book on whaling in the Faroe Islands and St. Vincent, Fielding (2018, p. 286) concluded: One may love whales and work toward their complete protection from whaling, pollution, and everything else that may threaten their populations. Or one may love the food resources that can be derived from whales and work toward their conservation – their sustainable use as a resource. Crucially, one need not choose a single way in which to love whales or any other part of our natural environment. As postdomestic5 people, we may find it difficult to reconcile these seemingly contradictory feelings. You can love whales and still love – or at least tolerate – whaling.

While the era of large-scale industrial whaling seems well and truly over, a great deal of use of cetaceans is bound to continue—as objects of tourism, subjects of research, and yes, ‘food resources’ (Fielding 2018). Killing for ‘subsistence’ is widely accepted, even by most anti-whaling campaigners, and there’s no reason to think this type of use will end any time soon. However, subsistence can be a slippery and ambiguous term, laden with cross-cultural dissonance. Quite a few Japanese people continue to regard whales, dolphins, and porpoises as fair game for hunting and consuming, as do many Norwegians and Icelanders. They fail to see why their own deeply rooted traditions and worldviews, which include the marketing (but not necessarily the export) of whale products, should be regarded as any less legitimate than those of people who claim a right to ‘harvest for subsistence’ based on indigenous ancestry and ancient tenure in a particular patch of territory. To the Japanese, Norwegians, and Icelanders, the us-versus-them distinction is arbitrary and unfair. At the same time though, the abiding uncertainty in our state of knowledge, as well as the near-impossibility of preventing cheating, make the consumptive use of cetaceans a questionable proposition. Further, as Perrin et al. (1996, p. 60) summarized in their report of a workshop on conservation of small cetaceans and dugongs in Southeast Asia: The characteristics and difficult-to-study habits of marine mammals do not suit them well for sustainable exploitation. [They are] long-lived animals with very low rates of natural increase. Absolute population estimates are technically difficult to obtain, and it is very difficult to monitor trends in population size at spatial and temporal scales which are useful to management. Thus it is very difficult to determine whether a take is sustainable. History suggests that non-subsistence takes will be unsustainable.

Captivity One of the most challenging writing experiences in my career as a marine mammologist was a book chapter co-authored with Jim Mead, longtime Curator of Marine Mammals at the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of Natural History, in which we attempted to clarify and, to the extent possible reconcile, the arguments for and 5

Postdomestic is an anthropological term referring to societies (like ours) where hunting and gathering have been replaced by outsourcing of food procurement, meaning that we have essentially no direct contact with the animals that serve as food sources. See Bulliet (2005).

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against keeping marine mammals in captivity (Reeves and Mead 1999). Since that time, the public display of cetaceans has been either banned altogether or scaled back considerably in North America, western Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. At the same time, however, the demand for small and medium-sized cetaceans to stock oceanariums and amusement parks or support ‘swim-with’ and therapy programs has swollen in Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America (including the Caribbean) (Fisher and Reeves 2005). Although it may be true that in many less overdeveloped countries ‘a few well-cared-for animals in tanks could save thousands or millions in the sea’ (Perrin 1999, p. 307), it is also true that in some instances the live capture trade has added one more pressure on populations of small cetaceans that are ‘already at risk from hunting, fishery bycatch, habitat degradation, and other factors’ (Fisher and Reeves 2005, p. 315). Common ground can be hard to find between people who adamantly oppose the idea of holding any cetacean in captivity under any circumstances and those who regard some ex situ actions in some circumstances as potentially beneficial to conservation. The baiji, finless porpoise, and vaquita examples make clear that we are running out of time and also out of options. A purely hands-off approach to cetacean conservation may already be a luxury that we, and most importantly the animals, can ill afford. A strong case has been made for having biologists, social scientists, veterinarians, and conservation activists collaborate to integrate both ex situ and in situ options into conservation planning for small cetaceans (Taylor et al. 2020). And here again, ‘managing for robustness’ comes into play: ex situ management ‘becomes less and less likely to succeed once the wild population has been reduced to tiny numbers’ (Ibid., p. 3). Non-lethal but ‘Invasive’ Research Biotelemetry and genetic sampling have revolutionized marine mammal research (Read 2018; Morin and Dizon 2018), but despite their awesome power to inform, both fields are characterized as invasive, or intrusive, and as such are regarded with a certain degree of suspicion and, at times, even outright opposition. Tagging, in particular, has been contentious because for long-duration attachment of the transmitting device, a barbed cylinder must be implanted through the animal’s skin and blubber and anchor in underlying fascia and muscle, creating the potential for serious physiological damage and making the cost–benefit calculation challenging (Weller 2008). In 2010 a controversial but painstakingly precautionary satellite-tracking program to study the movements of ‘western’ gray whales (Eschrichtius robustus) (International Whaling Commission 2010), which were thought at the time to constitute an isolated, critically endangered population, upended our firm belief that the whales seen feeding in summer and autumn off Sakhalin Island (eastern Russia) stayed in Asia for the winter. Instead, thanks to the satellite-tracking program, we now know that many of them migrate across the Pacific Ocean to winter in Mexico before returning to Sakhalin in late spring (Mate et al. 2015). Few would disagree that in this instance, the payoff (in terms of improved understanding) was worth the risk to the few tagged individuals. Yet in the case of North Atlantic right whales, no recent attempt has been made to apply implantable tags because of firm opposition from leading researchers

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who feel such tagging would pose too high a risk to the health of individuals. As a result, we know much less about the population’s movements and whereabouts than is needed to protect these critically endangered whales effectively throughout the year. The non-lethal sampling of whales using biopsy darts, delivered using a gun, crossbow, or pole to obtain small pieces of skin and adhering blubber, had become almost routine by the 1980s. Since then, most cetacean field biologists have come to regard biopsy darting as an indispensable tool for studying demography, stock differentiation, genetic fitness, pollutant burdens, diet, individual health, reproductive state, stress levels, and other characteristics of their subjects. However, there is still hesitancy when it comes to sampling individuals that are part of a small and declining population. For example, an expert workshop was convened in 2014 to evaluate the risks and benefits of collecting biopsies from the critically endangered stock of belugas (Delphinapterus leucas) in Cook Inlet, Alaska (McGuire and Stephens 2014). Participants concluded that although the benefits of a ‘carefully designed and implemented’ biopsy study far outweighed the risks to the animals, they also acknowledged the importance of ‘outreach’ to reassure the public and emphasized that management agencies should make sure that ‘the questions being addressed are clearly linked to recovery.’ This seems to me like a reasonable approach to a thorny problem.

1.9 Final Thoughts Whenever and wherever the removal of cetaceans from their natural populations, whether deliberate or incidental, can be stopped or even just slowed down, it is worth doing. In fact, sometimes it may be all that is needed to stop and reverse a decline, at least in the immediate or short term. Proof is provided by the many populations of large whales that rebounded once the killing for commerce was brought under strict control in the late twentieth century. Bowhead whales (Balaena mysticetus) were believed by many scientists and conservationists to be headed for extinction in the early 1970s (McVay 1973), when my own interest in cetaceans was sparked. Now, there is encouraging evidence that in most of their range (the Okhotsk Sea being a lone exception; Shpak and Paramonov 2018; Cooke et al. 2018), these extremely long-lived, slowly reproducing animals are increasing steadily, even in those parts of Russia, the USA, Canada, and Greenland where managed hunting for subsistence continues (George and Thewissen 2021). Most of the world’s populations of humpback whales and southern right whales (Eubalaena australis) have been literally roaring back after nearly a century of being hammered by modern shore-based and factory-ship whaling (Cooke 2018a; Cooke and Zerbini 2018). The gray whale disappeared from the North Atlantic several centuries ago, possibly due at least partly to whaling, but in the North Pacific the species has shown itself to be remarkably resilient, so far (Cooke 2018b). There are encouraging signs that most of the other

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large whales that were heavily exploited are also managing to either hold their own or increase slowly (Thomas et al. 2016). There are also a few examples of successful conservation of small and mediumsized cetaceans. The gregarious, highly social spinner and pantropical spotted dolphins (Stenella longirostris and S. attenuata) in the eastern tropical Pacific died by the hundreds of thousands in tuna purse-seine nets year after year during the 1960s and early 1970s (Wade et al. 2007). Resolution of this issue took many years and ‘involved dozens of lawsuits, countersuits, injunctions, appeals, resolutions, and protracted negotiations among government, environmental organizations, and the industry … as well as 25 years of intensive and large-scale research costing more than $100 million, not including legal fees’ (Perrin 1999, pp. 300–301). It also hinged on creative and collaborative problem-solving by tuna fishermen and scientists that eventually led to changes in fishing practice (Gosliner 1999). In Pakistan in the early 1970s, the range of Indus River dolphins (Platanista minor) had shrunk by more than 80% over the previous century due primarily to water-control and water-use policies (Braulik et al. 2015). Deliberate hunting had helped drive the remnant population down to what was thought to be only a few hundred individuals (Khan and Niazi 1989). A 1974 ban on dolphin hunting, along with recent efforts not only to ensure compliance with the ban but also to rescue dolphins that stray into irrigation canals, have allowed numbers to build steadily to nearly 2000 in the downstream fragments of habitat that remain in Pakistan (Aisha et al. 2018; Fig. 1.9). Many threats still face Indus dolphins, but no one can deny that efforts made by the Pakistan government and NGOs like WWF-Pakistan to enable the species to persist have paid off (Braulik et al. 2015). Hector’s dolphin (Cephalorhynchus hectori), which is endemic to New Zealand, has been threatened for decades by gillnet and trawl-net entanglement (Fig. 1.10). Welcome evidence was published in 2012 indicating, for the first time, that a designated protected area with explicit restrictions on fishing, namely the Banks Peninsula Marine Mammal Sanctuary, could improve the conservation prospects of this endangered cetacean (Gormley et al. 2012). Slooten and Dawson (2021) recently reflected on the ‘lessons’ they learned over 36 years of dogged effort to improve protection of both the nominate subspecies (H. h. hectori) and the North Island subspecies (H. h. maui) of Hector’s dolphin. They acknowledged that New Zealand, unlike many of the problem areas in other parts of the world, ‘has good conservation legislation, a comprehensive social welfare system (providing support to anyone put out of work by conservation action), a small, well-educated and relatively affluent population that is generally supportive of conservation, and an enviable history of progressive action in marine conservation.’ Even in New Zealand though, the path toward effective conservation has been ‘tortuous’ and progress has been ‘incremental’ (Slooten and Dawson 2021). There may still be around 15,000 Hector’s dolphins throughout the species’ range (IWC 2017), but the maui subspecies (known as the m¯aui dolphin) now numbers only a few tens of individuals (Hamner et al. 2014). A previously unrecognized threat to Hector’s dolphins has emerged in the form of a deadly cat-borne parasite, Toxoplasma gondii, with 7 of 28 necropsied Hector’s dolphins, including 2 of 3 assigned to the maui subspecies, having died due to disseminated toxoplasmosis

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Fig. 1.9 a An Indus dolphin following a ferry near the village of Karmowala in the Beas River Conservation Reserve, upstream of Harike Barrage, Punjab, India, 2018. The Beas, about 500 km from the Indus mainstem, is the only Indus tributary that still has dolphins (Khan 2016). The Beas subpopulation of fewer than 20 individuals is isolated from the other Indus dolphin subpopulations (all in Pakistan) by five irrigation barrages (two in India, three in Pakistan). The Beas downstream of Harike Barrage is virtually dry, connected with the rest of the river for only a few days each year during the monsoon floods. Photo by Gitanjali Kanwar. b A young Indus dolphin that strayed into the Khairpur Feeder West Canal, Pakistan, January 10, 2007. Dolphins trapped in irrigation canals are doomed to die there. This one was captured by a team of villagers organized by Sindh Wildlife Department (SWD) and WWF-Pakistan, placed gently on a foam mat by Nasir (a ‘watcher’ for SWD), and transported back to the Indus mainstem where it was released to swim free, back in its natural environment. Such efforts by local people are impressive and inspiring, as are those of the disentanglement teams like the one pictured in action in Fig. 1.6. Photos by Uzma Khan

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Fig. 1.10 a a trio of Hector’s dolphins (C. hectori hectori) on aerial display in Cloudy Bay, northeastern South Island, New Zealand, 2012. Photo by Anjanette Baker, courtesy of University of Auckland and Oregon State University collaboration. b Part of a group of nine m¯aui dolphins (C. hectori maui) near Hamilton’s Gap, northwestern North Island, New Zealand, February 20, 2019. Courtesy of University of Auckland and Department of Conservation.

according to one recent study (Roe et al. 2013). It appears as though valuable time has been bought for both subspecies of Hector’s dolphins thanks to the unrelenting efforts of people like Slooten and Dawson, but the road ahead will doubtless be as tortuous as ever and pocked with potholes. Various conclusions and cautions offered as ‘lessons learned’ by both Perrin (1999) and Slooten and Dawson (2021) are worth

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bearing in mind for anyone wishing to contribute to the conservation of small (and other) cetaceans (Table 1.1). ‘Lessons learned’ and ‘best practices’ are themes that recur in discussions of strategies for cetacean conservation, but I find both concepts problematic. They imply that if only we were to look hard enough, we would find solutions in one or a few contexts that can be transferred and applied in any broadly similar situation. However, given how diverse and riven with nuance cetacean populations themselves are (in terms of anatomy and physiology, population size and structure, behavior, biology, and ecology), and the endless variability of circumstances in which they exist (in terms of human culture, language, history, politics, economics, and worldview), expecting to come up with a one-size-fits-all recipe reflecting lessons learned, or a best-practices handbook, seems too facile. Final solutions can only come from onthe-ground, case-by-case diligence—probing to understand (and measure) cause and effect in nature, negotiating with stakeholders to navigate a path in human relations that leads to conflict resolution, and above all, ensuring buy-in (= comprehension and acceptance) from one human generation to the next. I say all of this not to dismiss the good-faith efforts we all make to generalize and learn from our mistakes and occasional so-called achievements, but rather simply to caution that it will take much more than a mere redoubling of effort to get us where we need to be if further cetacean extinctions are to be avoided. Table 1.1 Annotated compilation of ‘lessons learned’ from Perrin’s (1999) 35 years spent studying small cetaceans and the problems of their conservation, and from Slooten and Dawson’s (2021) 36 years of involvement in research on, and conservation of, Hector’s dolphins Perrin

Annotations, paraphrasings, and quotations

Laws without the will and resources to enforce Unenforced or unenforceable laws tend to be threats are worse than no laws at all counterproductive. For example, a top-down ban on incidental catch of cetaceans can lead to concealment by the fishermen, in effect ‘closing’ the fishery to scientific investigation and government scrutiny Incidental mortality cannot always be totally eliminated

In other words, the perfect must not be allowed to be the enemy of the good

‘Sustainable development’ probably will not work for small cetaceans

See text for quotation from Southeast Asia workshop

The environmental organizations are indispensable

They ‘help keep us scientists accountable and focused in the right direction,’ educate the public and politicians, and ‘often help counterbalance the obduracy and vested interests found at the other end of the spectrum’ (continued)

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Table 1.1 (continued) Perrin

Annotations, paraphrasings, and quotations

Oceanariums and whale watching offer Controversial (see text) but Perrin’s experience important educational opportunities and should in the Philippines led him to conclude that ‘a be encouraged close encounter with live dolphins or whales can change an individual’s perceptions … and evoke active concern about marine mammal conservation.’ Similarly, especially in less-developed countries, ‘a few well-cared-for animals in tanks could save thousands or millions in the sea’ Slooten and Dawson

Annotations, paraphrasings, and quotations

Act early

‘The longer protection measures are delayed, the more expensive and extreme they must become to meet the same objective, and the less likely they are to be effective’

Clearly define the management goals

These should include not only ‘sustainability’ (keeping a population at its currently depleted level) but also recovery at an acceptable rate and to an agreed level of abundance and range

Recognize that protected areas need to be large, and biologically relevant

Boundaries should incorporate the population’s ‘ecological support system, including prey, shelter, and refuge from natural and anthropogenic risks’ as well as ‘areas from which the target species has been extirpated’ in order to facilitate recovery

‘Stakeholder’ working groups are often biased toward industry

Not surprising, since ‘extractive’ industries tend to be well organized and better funded than environmental advocacy groups

Do not expect government officials to be neutral or well-informed

They are often constrained by legislation and bureaucratic process as well as being heavily influenced by particular constituencies (notably the fishing sector)

Offer the full range of management options

From ‘do nothing’ to ‘total protection.’ Important because compromise is likely, which usually means that decisions end up being somewhere in the ‘middle ground’

Outcomes may depend on the balance of political power within government

Fishery management agencies tend to be closely aligned with the fishing industry and typically have more political clout than environmental agencies, tilting the balance of power in favor of exploitation over protection

Robust studies of the effectiveness of management measures are vital

‘Without studies of effectiveness, management is based on acts of faith….’

Commitment to long-term research is needed

Especially for long-lived animals, for answering questions concerning impacts of processes such as climate change

1 Cetacean Conservation and Management Strategies

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References Aisha H, Braulik G, Khan U, Leslie A, Nawaz R (2018) Indus River dolphin (Platanista gangetica minor)—an update on the current population assessment and conservation challenges. Document SC/67A/SM/18, International Whaling Commission Scientific Committee Ashe E, Williams R, Clark C, Erbe C, Gerber LR, Hall AJ, Hammond PS, Lacy RC, Reeves R, Vollmer NL (2021) Minding the data-gap trap: exploring dynamics of abundant dolphin populations under uncertainty. Front Mar Sci 8:606932. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2021. 606932 Bearzi G (2020) Marine biology on a violated planet: from science to conscience. Ethics Sci Environ Polit 20:1–13 Braulik GT, Noureen U, Arshad M, Reeves RR (2015) Review of status, threats, and conservation management options for the endangered Indus River dolphin. Biol Conserv 192:30–41 Bulliet RW (2005) Hunters, herders, and hamburgers: the past and future of human-animal relationships. Columbia University Press, New York Chen P, Hua Y (1989) Distribution, population size and protection of Lipotes vexillifer. In: Perrin WF, Brownell RL Jr, Zhou K, Liu R (eds) Biology and conservation of the river dolphins. Occasional paper of the IUCN Species Survival Commission 3, IUCN, Gland, Switzerland, pp 81–85 CIRVA (2017a) Eighth meeting of the Comité Internacional para la Recuperación de la Vaquita (CIRVA-8). Available https://iucn-csg.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/CIRVA-8-Report-Final. pdf CIRVA (2017b) Ninth meeting of the Comité Internacional para la Recuperación de la Vaquita (CIRVA-9). Available https://iucn-csg.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/CIRVA-9-FINAL-MAY2017.pdf CIRVA (2019) Report of the eleventh meeting of the Comité Internacional para la Recuperación de la Vaquita (CIRVA). Available https://iucn-csg.org/11th-meeting-of-the-vaquita-recovery-team/ Cooke JG (2018a) Megaptera novaeangliae. The IUCN red list of threatened species 2018: e.T13006A50362794. https://doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2018-2.RLTS.T13006A50362794.en. Downloaded on 23 Mar 2021 Cooke JG (2018b) Eschrichtius robustus. The IUCN red list of threatened species 2018: e.T8097A50353881. https://doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2018-2.RLTS.T8097A503538 81.en. Downloaded on 25 Mar 2021 Cooke JG (2020) Eubalaena glacialis. The IUCN red list of threatened species 2020: e.T41712A162001243.https://doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2020-2.RLTS.T41712A16200124 3.en. Downloaded on 02 Sept 2020 Cooke JG, Brownell Jr, RL, Shpak OV (2018) Balaena mysticetus (Okhotsk Sea subpopulation). The IUCN red list of threatened species 2018: e.T2469A50345920. https://doi.org/10.2305/IUCN. UK.2018-1.RLTS.T2469A50345920.en. Downloaded on 30 Mar 2021 Cooke JG, Clapham PJ (2018) Eubalaena japonica. The IUCN red list of threatened species 2018: e.T41711A50380694. https://doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2018-1.RLTS.T41711 A50380694.en. Downloaded on 02 Sept 2020 Cooke JG, Zerbini AN (2018) Eubalaena australis. The IUCN red list of threatened species 2018: e.T8153A50354147. https://doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2018-1.RLTS.T8153A503 54147.en. Downloaded on 02 Sept 2020 Corkeron P, Hamilton P, Bannister J, Best P, Charlton C and others (2018) The recovery of North Atlantic right whales, Eubalaena glacialis, has been constrained by human-caused mortality. R Soc open sci 5:180892 da Silva VMF, Freitas CEC, Dias RL, Martin AR (2018a) Both cetaceans in the Brazilian Amazon show sustained, profound population declines over two decades. PLoS One 13(5):e0191304. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0191304 da Silva V, Trujillo F, Martin A, Zerbini AN, Crespo E., Aliaga-Rossel E, Reeves R (2018b) Inia geoffrensis. The IUCN red list of threatened species 2018: e.T10831A50358152. https://doi.org/ 10.2305/IUCN.UK.2018-2.RLTS.T10831A50358152.en. Downloaded on 04 Mar 2021

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Reeves RR (2018) Conservation. In: Würsig B, Thewissen JGM, Kovacs KM (eds) Encyclopedia of marine mammals, 3rd edn. Academic Press, London, pp 215–229 Reeves RR, Gales N (2006) Realities of baiji conservation. Conserv Biol 20:626–628 Reeves RR, Leatherwood S (1994) Dolphins, porpoises, and whales. 1994–1998 action plan for the conservation of cetaceans. IUCN, Gland, Switzerland Reeves RR, Mead JG (1999) Marine mammals in captivity. In: Twiss JR Jr, Reeves RR (eds) Conservation and management of marine mammals. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington DC, pp 412–436 Reeves RR, Mead JG, Katona S (1978) The right whale in the western North Atlantic. Rep Int Whal Commn 28:303–312 Reeves RR, Smith BD, Crespo EA, Notarbartolo di Sciara G (2003) 2002–2010 Conservation action plan for the world’s cetaceans. IUCN, Gland, Switzerland Reeves RR, Smith TD, Josephson EA (2007) Near-annihilation of a species: right whaling in the North Atlantic. In: Kraus SD, Rolland RM (eds) The urban whale: North Atlantic right whales at the crossroads. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, pp 39–74 Roe WD, Howe L, Baker EJ, Burrows L, Hunter SA (2013) An atypical genotype of Toxoplasma gondii as a cause of mortality in Hector’s dolphins (Cephalorynchus hectori). Vet Pathol 192:67– 74 Rojas-Bracho L, Brusca RC, Álvarez-Borrego S, Brownell RL Jr, Camacho-Ibar V, Ceballos G, de la Cueva H, García-Hernández J et al (2019a) Unsubstantiated claims can lead to tragic conservation outcomes. BioSci 69:12–14 Rojas-Bracho L, Gulland FMD, Smith CR, Taylor B, Wells RS et al (2019b) A field effort to capture critically endangered vaquitas Phocoena sinus for protection from entanglement in illegal gillnets. Endang Species Res 38:11–17 Rojas-Bracho L, Reeves RR (2013) Vaquitas and gillnets: Mexico’s ultimate cetacean conservation challenge. Endang Species Res 21:77–87 Rojas-Bracho L, Reeves RR, Jaramillo-Legorreta A (2006) Conservation of the vaquita Phocoena sinus. Mammal Rev 36:179–216 Shpak OV, Paramonov AY (2018) The bowhead whale, Balaena mysticetus Linnaeus, 1758, in the western Sea of Okhotsk (2009–2016): distribution pattern, behavior, and threats. Russ J Mar Biol 44:210–218 Slooten E, Dawson SM (2021) Delays in protecting a small endangered cetacean: lessons learned for science and management. Frontiers Mar Sci 8:606547 Taylor B, Abel G, Miller P, Gomez F, von Fersen L et al (eds) (2020) Ex situ options for cetacean conservation. Occasional paper of the IUCN Species Survival Commission 66, IUCN, Gland, Switzerland Taylor BL, Martinez M, Gerrodette T, Barlow J, Hrovat YN (2007) Lessons from monitoring trends in abundance of marine mammals. Mar Mammal Sci 23:157–175 Taylor B, Rojas-Bracho L, Moore J, Jaramillo-Legorreta A, Ver Hoef JM et al (2017) Extinction is imminent for Mexico’s endemic porpoise unless bycatch is eliminated. Conserv Lett 10:588–595 Thomas PO, Reeves RR, Brownell RL Jr (2016) Status of the world’s baleen whales. Mar Mammal Sci 32:682–734 Turvey S (2009) Witness to extinction: how we failed to save the Yangtze River dolphin. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK Turvey ST, Pitman RL, Taylor BL, Barlow J, Akamatsu T and others (2007) First humancaused extinction of a cetacean species? Biol Lett 3:537–540 van der Hoop J, Corkeron P, Moore M (2016) Entanglement is a costly life-history stage in large whales. Ecol Evol 7:92–106 van der Hoop JM, Vanderlaan ASN, Cole TVN, Henry AG, Hall L, Mase-Guthrie B, Wimmer T, Moore MJ (2015) Vessel strikes to large whales before and after the 2008 ship strike rule. Conserv Lett 8:24–32 Villa-Ramírez B (1978) Especies mexicanas de vertebrados silvestres raras o en peligro de extinción. Anales del Instituto de Biología, Univ Nacional Autónoma de México, Ser Zool 47:303–320

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Weller DW (2008) Report of the large whale tagging workshop. Contract report to US Marine Mammal Commission, Bethesda, MD, USA Würsig B, Jefferson TA, Silber GK, Wells RS (2021) Vaquita: beleaguered porpoise of the Gulf of California, Mexico. THERYA 12:187–206 Würsig B, Reeves RR, Ortega-Ortiz JG (2001) Global climate change and marine mammals. In: Evans PGH, Raga JA (eds) Marine mammals: biology and conservation. Kluwer Academic, New York, pp 589–608 Zhou K, Zhang X (1991) Baiji: the Yangtze River dolphin and other endangered animals of China. Stone Wall Press, USA

Chapter 2

Conserving Marine Mammal Spaces and Habitats Erich Hoyt

Abstract Protecting habitat, or pieces of open ocean, for highly mobile marine mammal species that traverse ocean basins presents one of the greatest challenges in marine conservation. Among the tools available for identifying, monitoring, and maintaining defined spaces are a wide variety of marine protected areas (MPAs), IUCN important marine mammal areas (IMMAs), IUCN key biodiversity areas (KBAs), Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) ecologically or biologically significant areas (EBSAs), Ramsar Convention on Wetlands sites, the migratory connectivity in the ocean (MiCO) system, and marine spatial planning (MSP) including through comprehensive ocean zoning. There are also spatial and regulatory strategies available such as through the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) to re-route shipping and to declare particularly sensitive sea areas (PSSAs) or areas to be avoided (ATBAs). Using these spatial tools singly in some cases or in combination, often with clever modifications or incorporating directives such as initiatives to modify fishing gear, can form a strategy toward implementing successful marine mammal conservation with substantial benefit to associated biodiversity conservation. MPAs, for example, can be zoned for various uses with high levels of core habitat protection as needed. MPAs designed according to biosphere reserve principles can have large buffer zones and dynamic core protection. Also, MPAs—sometimes referred to as marine mammal protected areas, or MMPAs, when their remit is partly focused on marine mammal populations—can function as part of networks to protect wide-ranging species or migrators at both ends of their migratory path. The effectiveness of MPAs, MSP, and other initiatives depends on the political will to translate conservation science into action by supplying budgets, legislation, and enforcement to address threats to marine mammals, as well as stimulating education and engagement of the public and all stakeholders—everyone who uses, enjoys, cares about the sea. The evolving human factor is the biggest unknown, yet potentially the most important, for determining the success or failure of efforts to conserve marine E. Hoyt (B) Whale and Dolphin Conservation, Park House, Allington Park, Bridport, Dorset DT6 5DD, England, UK e-mail: [email protected] IUCN SSC-WCPA Marine Mammal Protected Areas Task Force, Gland, Switzerland © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 G. Notarbartolo di Sciara and B. Würsig (eds.), Marine Mammals: the Evolving Human Factor, Ethology and Behavioral Ecology of Marine Mammals, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98100-6_2

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mammal habitats. It is fundamental to realize that spatial management tools, to be successful, must focus primarily on shaping and managing human behavior. Will the public, energy companies, manufacturers, builders and government recognize that ocean conservation is an integral part of the drive to reduce global warming and address the species extinction crisis? It is up to those of us alive today to determine the fundamental nature of the world that species, including our own species, will inhabit in future. Keywords Habitat · Marine mammal · Marine conservation · Protected area · Marine spatial planning · Important marine mammal area · Spatial management · Ecologically or biologically significant area

2.1 Introduction: The Challenge of Marine Protection for Highly Mobile Species Protecting habitat, or pieces of open ocean, used by highly mobile marine mammal species that travel many miles per day, some of them even traversing ocean basins in one season and back again in another, presents one of the greatest challenges in marine conservation. Parks, reserves, and other protected areas have a long tradition on land, but how can setting aside defined spaces at sea make a difference in conservation outcomes in view of the constant movements of these predator social mammals and their largely fish, squid, and zooplankton prey? Should core habitat protection be the focus? What about buffer zones and consideration of species’ ecosystems? Most marine mammals, except those living in coastal waters, spend their lives in the epipelagic, or surface, layer of the ocean; is it necessary to extend protection to the seabed? How much and what kind of data are needed to define marine mammal habitat? What about the idea of mobile protection? To what extent could networks of protected areas (PAs) solve the problem of safeguarding wide-ranging movements and seasonal migrations across the length and breadth of the oceans? And how can we make spatial adjustments in view of the longer-term impact on habitats from climate change? Underlying all of this must be the recognition that marine mammals, their habitats, and their ecosystems cannot be managed per se—what is managed, or attempted to be managed, is human activity, interference with or influence on species, habitats, and ecosystems. Humans may be actively managed by making them aware of their behavior, sensitizing them to marine mammal lives and habitat needs, and by incentivizing positive behaviors. This can be achieved partly through volunteer efforts and by regulation and enforcement provisions to shape human behavior in or restricting access to marine mammal habitat. The idea of marine protected areas for marine mammals—or marine mammal protected areas (MMPAs)—was first implemented in 1972 when Mexico set aside Laguna Ojo de Liebre, or Scammon’s Lagoon, to protect a prime gray whale (Eschrichtius robustus) mating and calving lagoon in Baja California (Fig. 2.1).

2 Conserving Marine Mammal Spaces and Habitats

Isla Natividad

To Tijuana

Bah ía Sebasti án Vizcaí no

Laguna Ojo de Liebre

33

Canada

Baja California ( M é x ic o )

Gulf of California

(Scammon’s Lagoon)

United States

Guerrero Negro

Vizcaíno

Isla San Roque

Isla Asunción

North Pacific Ocean

Santa Rosalía Laguna San Ignacio

PACIFIC

(San Ignacio Lagoon)

z

OCEAN

Pa To La

NORTH

El Vizcaino Biosphere Vizcaino Reserve Desert

Punta Abreojos 50 kilometres 50 miles 50 nautical miles

México Caribbean Sea

Outside boundary of the biosphere reserve, including private land, farms, towns, some mining claims Core protected area of the biosphere reserve Lagoon habitat of gray whales Highway

Fig. 2.1 El Vizcaíno Biosphere Reserve. In 1972, Laguna Ojo de Liebre was made a gray whale (Eschrichtius robustus) refuge by Presidential decree in Mexico; protection of Laguna San Ignacio and Laguna Guerrero Negro followed in 1979 and 1980; in 1988, the entire lagoon complex was officially designated a MAB biosphere reserve and UNESCO world heritage site status followed in 1993. Map Lesley Frampton, used by permission from Hoyt (2011) Marine Protected Areas for Whales, Dolphins and Porpoises: A World Handbook for Cetacean Habitat Conservation and Planning, Earthscan/Routledge, London, 477 pp

In 1988, the surrounding area of desert and coast was brought together with the San Ignacio and Guerrero Negro lagoons to form El Vizcaíno Biosphere Reserve. Among marine mammals, gray whales have easy-to-define breeding habitat requirements because they bring their calves every winter to semi-enclosed saltwater lagoons in the waters of a single country, Mexico (Dedina and Young 1995; Hoyt 2018). Before gray whale protection, there was an example of a temporary sanctuary from whaling to give hunted whale populations some relief. When the International Whaling Commission (IWC) was formed in 1946, it inherited a whale sanctuary in the Antarctic dating from 1938. This sanctuary consisted of one-quarter of the Antarctic covering the South Pacific sector and applied to pelagic whaling of baleen whales (suborder Mysticeti). Holt (2000) called it a symbolic sanctuary; in 1955, it was abolished when the whaling countries said they needed more whales. More recently, the IWC gave a nod to spatial protection agreeing to name two ocean basins as sanctuaries—the Indian Ocean Sanctuary (1979) and Southern Ocean Sanctuary (1994) (Fig. 2.2). Both of these efforts, led by conservation-minded nations in the IWC, supported by scientists and conservation groups, have resulted in protection only in the sense of an unenforceable provision banning whaling plus a mandate for research (Holt 1984; Hoyt 2011). In fact, the Indian Ocean has been the scene of large-scale bycatch with an estimated 3.9 million individual cetaceans killed in tuna gillnet fisheries alone between 1950 and 2016, with annual peaks of 100,000 per year (Anderson et al. 2020). Most of these were dolphins (family Delphinidae), but the

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Fig. 2.2 Killer whale (Orcinus orca) and crabeater seals (Lobodon carcinophaga) face off in the Southern Ocean Sanctuary. Photo Robert L. Pitman

death toll from bycatch includes whales, seabirds, sharks, marine turtles, noncommercial fish, and other marine species. Most of the cetaceans have been killed since the Indian Ocean became a sanctuary in 1979. In the Southern Ocean Sanctuary, the Japanese government pursued its idea of research with so-called scientific whaling until 2018. Another kind of cetacean sanctuary is the “national sanctuary” that some countries and territories have designated within their waters, usually to the 200 nm (370 km) limit of the exclusive economic zone (EEZ). Since the late 1970s, more than 30 countries have declared their national waters as whale sanctuaries, sometimes including all marine mammals and occasionally turtles and sharks, too (Hoyt 2011). These are political designations stemming from the whaling debates within the IWC and in particular a multinational effort to close South Pacific waters to whaling after the IWC turned down a proposed South Pacific Whale Sanctuary. Neither the national sanctuaries nor the IWC sanctuaries, however, are considered marine protected areas by MPA practitioners. At best, the national sanctuaries are statements of intention to establish whale conservation initiatives (Hoyt 2011). Some national EEZ sanctuaries, however, have proved to be a starting point for improved conservation with subsequent management initiatives that have turned them into MPAs, such as the Agoa Sanctuary in the French Caribbean and the Cook Islands in the South Pacific (Hoyt 2018). Besides international and national sanctuaries and MPAs, there is an array of other spatial tools for protecting marine mammals as shown in Table 2.1. Although the focus in this chapter is on various types of MPAs, the other spatial tools and options will also be discussed. The array of tools is partly the result of the different approaches from governments and international agencies and agreements to address the diverse habitat needs of the 132 marine mammal species in the world as well as

Acronym

IMMA

AoI

EBSA

Important marine mammal area

Area of interest

Ecologically or biologically significant area

Identification of habitat—not legal entities

Spatial tool

Convention on Biological Diversity

IUCN Marine Mammal Protected Areas Task Force

IUCN Marine Mammal Protected Areas Task Force

Agency

Table 2.1 Available spatial tools for marine mammals

Identification of large biodiverse areas in EEZ or ABNJ, some of which include marine mammals

Identification of an area potentially to meet IMMA criteria in future

Identification of an area of importance for a marine mammal population, as selected by expert group to meet criteria; can be nearshore and offshore waters of ocean and seas; also haulouts, rookeries, beaches, rivers, lakes, ice floes (for pinnipeds, river dolphins, manatees, polar bear)

Function

https://www.marinemam malhabitat.org/immas/ imma-eatlas/

Database location and more information

MPA or HS MPA, PSSA, MSP; monitoring and research

(continued)

https://www.cbd.int/ebsa/

Monitoring and research to https://www.marinemam create candidate IMMA malhabitat.org/immas/ imma-eatlas/

MPA, MMPA or HSMPA, PSSA, MSP; monitoring and research

Follow-up

2 Conserving Marine Mammal Spaces and Habitats 35

Acronym

KBA

MiCO

Spatial tool

Key biodiversity area

Migratory connectivity in the ocean

Table 2.1 (continued)

University of Queensland, Marine Geospatial Ecology Lab (MGEL) of Duke University, partners

IUCN

Agency

Follow-up

Global open-access online Provisions for protecting system providing knowledge migratory paths by various tool about migratory methods connectivity in the ocean for marine mammals and other species. The MiCO consortium designed the system as a bridge between individuals/organizations generating data or products describing migratory connectivity and policy fora or management organizations engaged in marine management, conservation, spatial planning, and environmental assessment processes

Identification of nearshore Monitoring and research, and offshore waters of ocean potentially MPA or and seas; also haulouts, HSMPA, PSSA, MSP rookeries, beaches, rivers, lakes, ice floes (for pinnipeds, river dolphins, manatees, polar bear)

Function

(continued)

https://mico.eco/system Dunn et al. 2019

http://www.keybiodiversity areas.org/site/search

Database location and more information

36 E. Hoyt

BIA

Biologically important area

MPA

PA

HSMPA

MMPA

Marine protected area

Protected area—land-based

High seas marine protected area

Marine mammal protected area

Legal entities for protecting habitat

Acronym

Spatial tool

Table 2.1 (continued)

National and state governments; UN high seas regime

UN high seas regime

National and state governments

National and state governments; UN high seas regime

US government and Australian government

Agency Monitoring and research, potentially MPA or HSMPA, PSSA, MSP

Follow-up

Management plan with budget and staff, regular review and enforcement

Designation of nearshore Management plan with and offshore waters of ocean budget and staff, regular and seas, an MPA review and enforcement specifically for marine mammals

Designation of waters outside of national EEZ waters

Designation of coasts, Management plan with haulouts, rookeries, beaches, budget and staff, regular rivers, lakes, ice floes (for review and enforcement pinnipeds, river dolphins, manatees, polar bear)

Designation of nearshore Management plan with and offshore waters of ocean budget and staff, regular and seas review and enforcement

Identification of an area of importance for cetaceans in the national waters of the US and marine mammals (separate program) in Australia

Function

(continued)

http://www.cetaceanhabi tat.org; Hoyt (2011)

https://www.protectedpla net.net; http://www.mpatla s.org; Day et al. (2019)

https://www.protectedpla net.net; Day et al. (2019)

https://www.protectedpla net.net; http://www.mpatla s.org; Day et al. (2019)

https://cetsound.noaa.gov/ important; Ferguson et al. 2015; https://www.enviro nment.gov.au/marine/mar ine-species/bias.; Department of the Environment and Heritage 2005

Database location and more information

2 Conserving Marine Mammal Spaces and Habitats 37

National and state governments; UN high seas regime

IWC; national and state governments; UN high seas regime

International Whaling Commission (IWC) sanctuary

IWC sanctuary

National and state governments

National EEZ sanctuary EEZ sanctuary

COZ

Comprehensive ocean zoning

International Maritime Organisation

National and state governments; UN high seas regime

PSSA

Particularly sensitive sea area

Agency

Marine spatial planning MSP

Acronym

Spatial tool

Table 2.1 (continued)

IWC country (member majority) agreement to ban whaling in an ocean basin (e.g., Southern Ocean Sanctuary, Indian Ocean Sanctuary)

National designation to ban whaling (and sometimes more) in a country’s national waters (EEZ)

Process of planning and allocating zones through MSP for marine wildlife considerations

Process of planning and allocating zones in an area for specific uses, including marine wildlife considerations if marine mammal layers such as IMMAs are “on the table”

Designation of zone to regulate shipping in a “sensitive area” through reduction of speed and routing

Function

Database location and more information

Agardy (2010)

Could lead to research and local initiatives

http://www.cetaceanhabi tat.org; Hoyt (2011)

Could lead to MSP or MPA http://www.cetaceanhabi provisions tat.org; Hoyt (2011)

Could lead to MPA, monitoring; management plan and provisions to follow

Could lead to MPAs, ocean Ehler and Douvere (2007, zoning or monitoring; 2009, 2010), Agardy management plan and (2010), Ardron et al. (2008) provisions to follow

Coordination with IMO http://www.imo.org/en/Our and national governments Work/Environment/PSSAs/ and port authorities to avert Pages/Default.aspx shipstrikes, oil spills, and noise-affecting marine life

Follow-up

38 E. Hoyt

2 Conserving Marine Mammal Spaces and Habitats

39

attempts to reduce the threats to marine mammals due to fishing (bycatch, entanglement, overfishing), industry exploitation (oil and gas, seismic exploration, drilling, oil spills, chemical pollution), direct killing (whaling, hunting), transportation (shipstrike, noise, oil spills), and other land-based impacts (agricultural runoff, chemical pollution) (Table 2.2). As we’ve learned more about whale populations in recent decades, MPAs featuring marine mammal habitat, or MMPAs, have increased in number (Table 2.3). Field research on whale populations, with the identification of individual whales and dolphins through photo-ID, beginning in the early 1970s, led to the recognition Table 2.2 Diversity of marine mammal habitat use and potential threats Marine mammal families

Species (n = )

Diversity of habitat use

Baleen whales (suborder Mysticeti; families Balaenidae, Neobalaenidae, Eschrichtiidae, Balaenopteridae)

15

Various open ocean for b, e, h, n, p, sh, so, w feeding, breeding, migrating, resting areas; some populations coastal

Toothed whales (Odontoceti): sperm whales (Physeteridae and Kogiidae) and beaked whales (Ziphiidae)

26

Mainly open ocean above b, e, h, n, p, sh, so and including deep canyons; occasionally coastal waters if deep

Toothed whales: pelagic and inshore dolphins (Delphinidae), porpoises (Phocoenidae), beluga and narwhal (Monodontidae)

41

Some populations open ocean; other populations coastal waters, estuaries, bays, inlets, rivers; some use both ocean and fresh waters

Toothed whales: riverine dolphins (Iniidae, Lipotidae, Platanistidae, Pontoporiidae, some, Delphinidae)

10

Rivers with surrounding b, e, h, n, p land and sometimes flood plain

Potential threats

b, e, h, n, p

Pinnipeds: seals, sea lions, 33 walrus Pinnipedia; families Otariidae, Odobenidae, Phocidae

Coastal waters, ice edge and ice floes plus land, haulouts, rookeries, beaches

b, e, h, p

Sirenians: manatees and dugong Trichechidae and Dugongidae

4

Coastal waters, rivers

b, e, h, n, p, sh

Otters (Mustelidae)

2

Coastal waters, estuaries, b, e, n, p haulout on rocks or beach

Polar bear (Ursidae, Ursus maritimus)

1

Arctic islands and mainland (dens), Arctic ocean and adjacent seas

h, n, p

Threats: b bycatch; e entanglement; h artisanal and local hunting, including poaching; n noise; p pollution; sh shipstrike; so sonar (Navy); w whaling

40

E. Hoyt

Table 2.3 Marine protected areas featuring or including cetacean and other marine mammal habitat Date

MPAs with marine mammals (MMPAs)

Proposed MPAs with marine mammals

Source

2004

358

176

Hoyt (2011)

2011

570

138

Hoyt (2011)

2018

650

200

Hoyt (2018); http://www.cet aceanhabitat.org

that there is remarkable site fidelity in many areas, with the same individuals often returning to the same feeding and breeding grounds year after year. These increasingly well-defined home ranges led to the first efforts to protect habitat at places like Robson Bight, British Columbia, for killer whales (Orcinus orca) (Fig. 2.3); Silver Bank in the waters north of Dominican Republic and Stellwagen Bank off Massachusetts for humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) and other cetaceans; the California national marine sanctuaries for blue (Balaenoptera musculus), humpback and other whales; and the California state MPAs and parks for pinnipeds (families Otariidae and Phocidae) and sea otters (Enhydra lutris) (Hoyt 2011). Site fidelity has also been noted in offshore beaked whale (family Ziphiidae) species, such as Cuvier’s beaked whales (Ziphius cavirostris) and Blainville’s beaked whales (Mesoplodon densirostris) off Hawai‘i island (Baird 2019; McSweeney et al. 2007); northern bottlenose whales (Hyperoodon ampullatus) off Nova Scotia, Canada (Faucher and Whitehead 1995; Gowans et al. 2001); and Baird’s beaked whales (Berardius bairdii) off Bering Island, Russia (Fedutin et al. 2015) (Fig. 2.4). The latter two also offer examples of beaked whale habitat protection in MPAs.

Fig. 2.3 Male killer whale (Orcinus orca) in the Robson Bight (Michael Bigg) Ecological Reserve, northern Vancouver Island, Canada. This was one of the first MPAs for whales created in the 1980s. Photo Erich Hoyt

2 Conserving Marine Mammal Spaces and Habitats

41

Fig. 2.4 Baird’s beaked whales (Berardius bairdii) in the Commander Islands Biosphere Reserve, Russia. Photo Olga Filatova (Far East Russia Orca Project, FEROP/WDC)

Most protection efforts are located in nearshore feeding or breeding grounds or in coastal waters, even for the larger whale species, as well as for the 25 less wide-ranging inshore dolphin and porpoise species (Odontoceti: Delphinidae, Phocoenidae, Iniidae, Lipotidae, Platanistidae, Pontoporiidae, the 33 pinniped species (Pinnipedia: Otariidae, Odobenidae, Phocidae), the sea and river otter (Mustelidae) and the four manatee and dugong (Trichechidae and Dugongidae) species. There remains some way to go. There is almost no protection for marine mammal habitats on the high seas, or areas beyond national jurisdiction (ABNJ). Only a little more than 1% of the high seas is protected in high seas MPAs (HSMPAs), despite the high seas comprising 61% of the ocean’s surface (IUCN-UNEP-WCMC 2021; MPAtlas 2021). This is being addressed through a UN process to devise an international legally binding instrument to protect biodiversity in the high seas, i.e., biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction (BBNJ). The ongoing negotiations for this BBNJ Agreement on the conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity provide a unique opportunity to safeguard ocean health by improving coherence, developing capacity, and complementing and supporting existing bodies (Gjerde et al. 2021). The Aichi Target 11 of the CBD Strategic Plan on Biodiversity (Convention on Biological Diversity 2011) stated that “by 2020, at least 17% of terrestrial and inland waters, and 10% of coastal and marine areas, especially areas of particular importance for biodiversity and ecosystem services, [should be] conserved through effectively and equitably managed, ecologically representative and well-connected systems of protected areas, and other effective area-based conservation measures, and integrated into the wider landscape and seascape.” Yet only about 7.4–7.7% of the ocean had been protected by law as of April 2021, and no more than 2.7% is considered highly protected (IUCN-UNEP-WCMC 2021; MPAtlas 2021); efforts to

42

E. Hoyt

define “other effective area-based conservation measures” have added only a little to the total (Laffoley et al. 2017; IUCN-UNEP-WCMC 2021). The next steps toward solutions include innovative measures for expanding spatial protection through identifying and protecting large portions of the high seas using initiatives proposed by IUCN, Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), and the UN BBNJ process. These initiatives aim to use a variety of tools including not just individual MPAs, but also networks, shipping directives, dynamic protection measures, marine spatial planning and ocean zoning, a coordinated approach to environmental assessments, and combining spatial initiatives with threat reduction as well as engaging stakeholders. As we move toward 2030, the wider adoption of 30% protection targets (“30 by 30”) will also help. These and other strategies for conserving marine mammal habitats, along with assessments of the current status and prospects for the future, are explored in this chapter.

2.2 What Are Marine Protected Areas? Are They Effective? The generic term marine protected area, or MPA, has many alternate names, depending on the country or region of the world, and the legislation under which it exists. Sometimes the same name signals different levels of protection in different parts of the world. Hoyt (2011) cites 80 different labels, noting there are many more. “Marine reserve” often refers to a highly protected area where no commercial fishing or other habitat-altering activities are allowed to take place. The IUCN defines a protected area (PA) as “a clearly defined geographical space, recognized, dedicated, and managed, through legal or other effective means, to achieve the long-term conservation of nature with associated ecosystem services and cultural values” (Day et al. 2019; Dudley 2008). A marine protected area simply refers to a PA in the marine realm which extends from the intertidal zone to the deep ocean. To overcome the confusion about the many names for MPAs, the IUCN (Dudley 2008) set out categories which help to define the level of protection and the intended management objectives: Category Ia—Strict nature reserve (managed mainly for science); Category Ib—Wilderness area (managed to preserve wilderness or natural condition); Category II—National park (managed for ecosystem protection and recreation); Category III—Natural monument or feature (managed for conservation of specific natural or cultural features and recreation); Category IV—Habitat/species management area (managed for conservation of particular species or habitats, often through management intervention);

2 Conserving Marine Mammal Spaces and Habitats

43

Category V—Protected landscape/seascape (managed to protect and sustain landscapes/seascapes and associated nature conservation and other values created by interactions with humans through traditional management practices); Category VI—Protected area with sustainable use of natural resources (managed for sustainable use of ecosystems). Many MPAs worldwide use these categories as a guideline when describing protection levels. Day et al. (2019) provide an expanded discussion of each category as it applies to MPAs with multiple examples. In practice, many MPAs are zoned with several categories in use within a single MPA (Dudley 2008; Day et al. 2019); this means that an MPA has multiple zones, each with one or more uses ranging from the high level of protection provided by IUCN Category I to the sustainable natural resource management of Category VI. Many MPAs have adopted biosphere reservetype architecture with highly protected core areas, buffer zones, and transition zones (Fig. 2.5). The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park includes preservation and scientific research zones (Ia), marine national park zones (II), conservation park and buffer zones (IV), habitat protection and general use zones (VI) (Day et al. 2019). The IUCN protected area management categories are used for MPAs as well as PAs. The management objectives of the various categories are detailed in Table 2.4. Each IUCN protection category embraces multiple management objectives. Yet, even areas classified as Category VI are expected to have nature or biodiversity conservation as a main goal, with guideline recommendations of as much as twothirds of these typically large areas to be zoned as highly protected. IUCN clearly states that “only those areas where the main objective is conserving nature can be considered protected areas; this can include many areas with other goals as well, at the same level, but in the case of conflict, nature conservation will be the priority” (Dudley 2008). The management categories are applied with a typology of governance types—a description of who holds authority and responsibility for the protected area. IUCN (Borrini-Feyerabend et al. 2013) defines four governance types: (1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

Governance by government: Federal, national, or sub-national ministry/agency in charge; government-delegated management (e.g., a non-governmental organization or NGO); Shared governance: collaborative or joint management (pluralist management board; transboundary management with various levels across international borders); Private governance: by individual owner; by nonprofit organizations (NGOs, universities, cooperatives); by for-profit organizations (individuals or corporate); Governance by indigenous peoples and local communities: Indigenous peoples’ conserved areas and territories; conserved areas declared and run by local communities.

Governance by government is the most common, and this includes governmentdelegated management in many countries. Among more than 110 MPAs in 19

44

E. Hoyt

river basin

B2

D A

estuary T

D

R

C

B1

land

S Land

sea

Marine Core Area (IUCN Category I)

A

IUCN Category I Core Area to protect bottlenose dolphin habitat - feeding

B

IUCN Category I Core Area (seasonal) to protect humpback whales mating and nursery areas B1 and male singing areas B2 (closed only Jan 1 - Apr 1)

Buffer Zone (IUCN Category II-V) Transition Area (IUCN Category VI)

R

Research station

T

Community offering whale and dolphin watch tours

S

Shipping freight route

C D

Juvenile fish habitat Buffer Zone (IUCN Category II-V)

Fig. 2.5 Architecture of a biosphere reserve. This map shows the various zones of a hypothetical marine- and land-based biosphere reserve area to protect marine mammal habitat. Core areas (IUCN Category I) are devoted to strict nature reserve protection; these are surrounded by buffer zones (Category II–V) where activities compatible with the conservation objectives occur, and the buffer zones are in turn surrounded by a more or less defined transition zone (Category VI) which integrates the local people with sustainable resource management into the fabric of the overall reserve. To be effective, the biosphere reserve model must include zoned highly protected areas that are declared and enforced through legislation with management plans formulated by the community, including all stakeholders. Map Lesley Frampton, from Hoyt (2018)

2 Conserving Marine Mammal Spaces and Habitats

45

Table 2.4 Management objectives of the IUCN MPA/PA categories IUCN MPA/PA category Management objective

Ia

Ib

II

III

IV

V

VI

Pristine/wilderness protection

A

A

B

C

C

Na

B

Scientific research

A

C

B

B

na

B

C

Species or genetic diversity

A

B

A

A

A

B

A

Environmental services

B

A

A

na

A

B

A

Natural or cultural features

na

na

B

A

C

A

C

Tourism, recreation, whale watching

na

B

A

A

C

A

C

Education

na

na

B

B

B

B

C

Sustainable use

na

C

C

na

B

B

A

Cultural attributes

na

na

na

na

na

A

B

Notes A primary objective; B secondary objective; C may be applicable; na not applicable Source Adapted from Green and Paine (1997)

Mediterranean countries, for example, MedPAN, the network of MPA managers, records 124 NGOs and institutions that either have direct responsibility for managing an MPA or are involved in the development of MPAs (Gallon et al. 2019). In Mozambique, Bazaruto Archipelago National Park is run under contract with African Parks, an NGO, which operates land-based PAs in South Africa. In Canada, a number of MPAs and PAs such as “Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve, National Marine Conservation Area Reserve, and Haida Heritage Site,” referred to as “Gwaii Haanas” have shared governance between government and indigenous people and the local community (Agardy 2010). MPAs worldwide are often criticized for being “on paper.” All protected areas start off on paper; it can take years to implement an MPA including drafting a management plan with the consultation of stakeholders and then setting up a management body with a budget, powers of enforcement and education, and a good monitoring program. MPAs, as a conservation tool, are a few decades old, and most MPAs for marine mammals are even more recent. Designing an MMPA starts with defining the goals and rationale in view of the marine mammals found and threats to their existence (Notarbartolo di Sciara 2007; Hoyt 2011, 2018). An MPA must have a monitoring program to assess management effectiveness and check performance to recommend changes (Kelleher 1999) and periodic reviews (Pomeroy et al. 2004, 2005). The process can be summarized as follows, as also in Hoyt 2018: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Engaging stakeholder involvement from the beginning and throughout the process; Formulating clear management objectives for the proposed MPA; Creating a management body; Developing a management plan, subject to periodic re-examination and revision; Offering management training;

46

E. Hoyt

6.

Conducting research for baseline numbers, inventory, status, and monitoring purposes; Promoting and offering educational programs for the local community and visitors; Developing effective enforcement regimes with a good record of compliance; and Conducting periodic management reviews and other evaluations to assess whether objectives are being met.

7. 8. 9.

The last provision is essential to the long-term success of an MPA. Without such evaluations, even MPAs that start out with considerable success may decline in value and fail. The process of creating a functioning MPA takes time—several years or more. Even after an MPA is fully functioning, it remains a work in progress— subject to changing conditions (environmental including climate change and other anthropogenic factors) and periodic review and renewal. Learning as you go along, in a process called adaptive management, gives an MPA manager flexibility and permission to make changes to determine best practices (Pomeroy et al. 2005) (Fig. 2.6). Yet it is important to note that MMPA managers cannot manage whales and other marine mammals. The best a manager can work toward is to have influence over humans and the threats that they present to marine mammals and the overall ecosystem that in itself is a challenge. Thus, a manager may help reduce threats and protect the conditions deemed to be favorable for marine mammals, i.e., maintaining healthy seas.

Fig. 2.6 Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops aduncus) in the Adelaide Dolphin Sanctuary. The long and tangled process of cleaning up this urban dolphin habitat, gaining public buy-in and formally protecting the dolphin habitat illustrates the many sides to creating an MPA. Photo Mike Bossley

2 Conserving Marine Mammal Spaces and Habitats

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The goal of ecosystem health means that MMPAs must usually extend to the seafloor even if the marine mammal species are not deep diving. The vertical migration of prey, including the prey of marine mammal prey species, can occupy a substantial extent of the water column. Moreover, human activities to dredge, drill, or mine the seafloor invariably include disturbance at or near the surface. The starting point for an effective MMPA, thus, is an area that includes consideration of the larger ecosystem including prey species and that is attentive to the threats to marine mammals and the human challenges to conservation (Hoyt 2011). However, all MPAs need to focus on what is manageable and on their specific objectives. An MMPA protecting critical habitat for reproduction, for example, cannot be responsible for prey populations. The evidence for MPA effectiveness in terms of ecosystems can be viewed from a meta-analysis of a wide range of global research into MPAs showing that “no-take” MPAs—which usually in effect mean no commercial fishing and are equivalent to IUCN Category I—have been shown to achieve a fish biomass 670% greater than in adjacent unprotected areas, and 343% greater than in partially protected MPAs (Sala and Giakoumi 2018). Even partially protected MPAs have shown some benefits to ecosystems, but the benefits from no-take were much greater. Successful MPAs were characterized by Edgar et al. (2014) who identified those that had achieved statistically significant outcomes of increased large fish biomass and species richness. MPAs exhibiting this successful metric had the following features: they were (1) no-take, (2) well enforced, (3) old (>10 years), (4) large (>100km2 ), and (5) isolated by deep water or sand. Edgar et al. (2014) found that only 4 MPAs of 87 examined had all five features. These were not specifically marine mammal MPAs, and to extrapolate more widely to include marine mammals, the metric of size might need to be more like 10,000 km2 than 100 km2 , two orders of magnitude higher (Agardy et al. 2007). Some well-known MPAs or zones within MPAs qualified under Edgar et al.’s scenario, yet their metrics do not include the human contribution to success. Over the long-term, the most successful MPAs also have solid, enduring stakeholder support (Hoyt 2018). Looking through the MMPAs on < cetaceanhabitat.org >, a sample of which are included in Table 2.5, stakeholder engagement contributed to the success of most MMPAs and continues to drive those still in process. A more difficult aspect to assess is whether MPAs are truly successful from the marine mammals’ point of view. The rationale for protecting marine mammal habitats comes from what we’ve learned about site fidelity, the particular marine mammal population’s strong sense of place. Do MPAs confer upon whales, dolphins, and other marine mammals a benefit they notice by safeguarding this sense of sanctuary? When these preferred habitats are protected, can the whales themselves detect a difference? Can spinner dolphins (Stenella longirostris) relax more and hunt better at night when their resting areas close to shore are free from boat traffic and swimmers? Do gray whales appreciate the gentle human approaches in their protected lagoons in contrast to the shipping traffic along the North American west coast and the hunting harpoons in the Russian Arctic?

P N N

Papah¯anaumoku¯akea Marine National Monument

El Vizcaíno Biosphere Reserve

Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary

Moray Firth Special Area of Conservation

P

P

P

Y

P

Well enforced

*Isolated by deep water or sand; **actively engaged stakeholders Y yes (1 point); P partially, or in process (0.5 point); N no (0 points)

P Y

Robson Bight Michael Bigg Ecological Reserve

No-take

Name

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Old > 10 years

Table 2.5 Marine protected areas scored against Edgar et al. (2014) and Hoyt (2018) N − 17

Y

Y

Y

Y

km2

Large > 100 km2

N

N

Y

Y

N

Isolated*

Y

Y

Y

P

P

Stakeholders**

3.5

3.5

5

5.5

2.5

Score

48 E. Hoyt

2 Conserving Marine Mammal Spaces and Habitats

49

2.3 Status of Marine Protected Areas in General and Specifically for Marine Mammals In 2000, the area covered by MPAs was approximately 2 million km2 (or 0.7% of the ocean). By 2010, the figure was 16 million km2 (or 5.6% of the ocean). By 2021, MPA coverage had reached at least 27,841,368 km2 (or 7.7%) of the ocean—a tenfold increase over 2 decades (IUCN-UNEP-WCMC 2021). The growth of MPA coverage in the ocean has been charted by the World Conservation Monitoring Centre (WCMC) with the UN Environment Program (UNEP) and IUCN as part of the World Database of Protected Areas. MPAtlas, a project of the Marine Conservation Institute in California, operates a separate site for evaluating the implementation of MPAs, mainly by using the WCMC data with some follow-up (MPAtlas 2021). Thus, worldwide, as of 2021, more than 18,500 MPAs have been designated, covering 7.4–7.7% of the ocean’s surface (Table 2.6). WCMC counts MPAs without management plans or enforcement. The number of implemented and managed MPAs, as charted by MPAtlas, amounts to only 6.4% of the ocean. Also worth noting is that while MPAs cover more than 17% of national EEZ waters, they include only a little more than 1% of the areas beyond national jurisdiction (ABNJ), the high seas (MPAtlas 2021). As the UN mechanism for creating HSMPAs becomes available, revisions of the CBD Aichi Target 11 for effective protection of the ocean may expand from 10% in 2020 to a higher percentage goal in future. In 2014, at the World Parks Congress in Sydney, Australia, IUCN and many conservation NGOs recommended the expansion of the goal to 30% by 2030. By 2021, more than 100 governments had also adopted the “30 by 30” ambition. The growth in large protected areas was partly a response to Aichi Target 11. Yet the size, as well as the number and representativity, of MPAs and HSMPAs will need to be increased substantially to fulfill the 30 by 30 goal. There is a big discrepancy in the sizes of MPAs. Initially, the benchmark for MPAs was terrestrial PAs which tended to be small. Many of the first MPAs set up to protect benthic intertidal species were no more than a few square kilometers. For decades, the only large MPA in the world was the 344,400 km2 Great Barrier Reef Marine Park which, besides the large coral reef, has substantial populations of dugong (Dugong dugon), humpback whales, and dwarf minke whales (Balaenoptera acutorostrata subsp. unnamed) (Fig. 2.6). Since 2010, the USA, UK and France, and a few Pacific Island territories and countries including the Cook Islands, have declared large MPAs such that the 20 largest MPAs now occupy more than half of the total area protected in all 18,500 MPAs (https://protectedplanet.net). The largest of these areas are the Ross Sea Region Marine Protected Area in Antarctica (2,060,058 km2 ), Marae Moana in the Cook Islands (1,981,965 km2 ), Réserve Naturelle Nationale des Terres australes françaises which includes the Southern Ocean French islands and archipelagoes of Kerguelen, Crozet and îles Saint-Paul and Nouvelle-Amsterdam (1,654,999 km2 ), and the Papah¯anaumoku¯akea Marine National Monument occupying the northwest

50

E. Hoyt

Table 2.6 MPA ocean coverage assessments (for all MPAs, not just MPAs with marine mammals) World Database of Protected Areas protectedplanet.org

MPAtlas mpatlas.org

notes

Number of MPAs

18,533

16,727

Includes MPAs without management in place

Percentage of Ocean in all MPAs

7.7%

7.4%

Includes not implemented

Percentage of implemented MPAs

–

6.4%

Percentage of global ocean

Percentage of effectively 1% managed MPAs (fully protected)

2.7%

Percentage of global ocean; MPAtlas includes fully and highly protected together

Percentage of designated – and unimplemented MPAs