WDC Blog - From the Front Line

As an Arsenal supporter, and therefore one that can appreciate quality football (my colleague Andy Bool tried to convince me that Nottingham Forest are still a quality team today - a misguided man) I thought this film was fascinating.

A marine survey team off the north Wales coast discovered dolphins, playing 'football' with jellyfish lying on the water's surface.

The bottlenose dolphins were spotted tossing the jellyfish off Tremadog
Bay. Jonathan Easter, one of the team said the "incredible images...present more questions than answers!" Smart mammals I say, maybe one could play for Nottingham Forest one day.

Radio Five also covered the story and one of the many public contributors texted in to say 'you cannot trust dolphin footballers, they are always diving' I am sorry but that made me laugh out loud.

A massive pod of up to 50 killer whales has been filmed for the first time off the coast of Scotland by a BBC crew.

The BBC reports that Gordon Buchanan, presenter of BBC Autumnwatch, filmed the group from a fishing boat in the North Sea.

As the largest member of the dolphin family, killer whales are known for their intelligence and range of hunting behaviours.

The pod of killer whales caught on camera belong to a family group that has developed a particular hunting strategy; following mackerel fishermen and feeding on fish that escape their nets.

The killer whales pick of any escaping mackerel and also feed off scraps as the nets are later lowered back into the water to be washed clean.

The BBC notes that 'Scientists first documented this behaviour in the 1980s and fishermen in Scotland have seen the behaviour develop since.

"They are pretty quick to cotton on, and it's something they are doing all
around the world where there is a big fishery," says Mr Andy Foote of
the University of Aberdeen, a marine scientist advising the BBC
Autumnwatch team.

"But what's great about this one, is they aren't viewed as a pest, they are just going after mackerel that are stuck in the nets or escaping and they don't take any of the fishermen's catch," he says.

"They don't damage the nets or get stuck in the nets, there is a benefit for both parties and the fishermen are really fond of the killer whales."'

I first saw this behaviour in the mid 1990's when I travelled to Iceland for WDCS. I had the luck to travel with the Icelandic fishing fleet to observe orcas south of Iceland. Having convinced them I was not there to cause them problems, the fishermen opened up and explained that they regarded the orca as 'colleagues'. This was at a time, like now, when politicians and whalers back in Iceland were agitating to kill whales, and orcas were portrayed as 'evil fish-eating vermin'

The truth was that the fishermen would use their sonar to identify where the orca were at sea and the fishermen would then target that bit of ocean. Setting their nets (purse seine) where the orca were feeding, the fishermen stated that they would get a higher catch if they relied on the orca.

What was fascinating was that the orca would sit back and wait for the net to be partly pulled in. In what appeared to be a well planned process that the orca were fully cognizant of, the fishermen would pause to allow 'stunned' fish to fall out of the top of the net and then the orca would come into feed. The most wonderful sight was seeing a female bringing in a calf and nudging the cal towards the net to catch its first (or nearly first fish). Repeated passes were observed until the calf had successfully taken a fish, to which I could swear the mother was 'smiling'.

The rest of the pod would then come into feed. All the while, the fishermen would watch and wait until they felt the whales had had enough and then pulled their nets in. The whales would then, as one, head off to the next Icelandic fishing vessel on the horizon - a bit like finishing at one feeding station and now onto the next.

The boat I was on collected their fish and then moved on again towards where the whales were to be found to set their nets again and the whole process was repeated.

On the return trip I asked the fishermen what they felt about the political arguments that 'whales were eating all the fish', an argument that the Icelandic Government still makes. I remember one fisherman dismissing it as 'Reykjavik politics' and that the whales were 'their friends'.

I remember the evening ending with me watching the stunning sight of a male orca, with a six foot fin, swimming slowly past the boat, its fin so tall that it appeared to cut out the light from the moon as it passed.

Most probably one of the best nights of my career in cetacean protection.

Sylvia Earle is one of those special people that have made a real impact for ocean conservation.

'In an interview with Yale Environment 360, Earle discusses how humanity needs to begin looking at fish in the same way we view wild creatures on land, how the current system of aquaculture... is folly, and how the massive influx of carbon dioxide into the world’s oceans is altering a precious balance that has existed for millions of years.'

In the interview Earle advocates 'we should have learned with whales. We should have learned with wildlife on the land that we have the power — through both our numbers and our technologies — to be able to find, kill, extract and market, to decimate, anything that swims in the ocean.'

She goes on to say 'Amazingly, we haven’t come to the realization that, like the whales, if you want them to recover from severe depletion, stop killing them. Just stop!'

Can't argue with that. Told you she was a hero.

If you are in the UK, or have access to the BBC output online, you can see our colleague Sarah Dolman on the BBC One Show (9th October) talking about dolphins and the threats from oil and gas exploration. Have a look at about 9minutes 30 seconds into the program.

Back in January I wrote about the fact that after being defeated in the US presidential elections, the then Governor of Alaska , Sarah Palin had declared war on belugas. Well, you cannot let that pesky wildlife get in the way of a little oil and gas exploitation now can you.       

So now that the US Federal authorities have pointed out that the Cook Inlet belugas are in fact STILL declining, maybe the Alaskan authorities will now join with the US Government and deliver the protection these creatures desperately deserve.

It seems another bottlenose whale seems to have become 'lost' in the UK. WDCS along with colleagues from other organizations have beenworking in Loch Eil, near Fort William to try and help the poor beastie back out to sea. You can follow some of these efforts on WDCS's adopt-a-dolphin blog.

I wrote a few days ago about previous incidents, so now can we ask, what is causing all these whales to get so lost?

The blog allows me some freedom to talk about issues that are related to the issue of cetacean conservation, but could be seen to be tangental at first sight. At the end of September it appears some EU countries have sought to block the EU taking a string position on the protection of Blue Fin tuna.

As reported in the UK’s Guardian newspaper on the 22nd of September, ‘The "Club Med" of southern European Union countries came under attack from environmentalists today for defying the campaign to ban trade in Bluefin Tuna, Japan's highly prized sushi fish, whose stocks are dwindling dangerously low.’

Monaco has proposed a CITES Appendix I listing for Atlantic Bluefin Tuna, but Malta, Cyprus, Spain, Italy, France, and Greece have sought to block the move. This is not surprising from some of these countries such as Malta who make a lot of money out of the Bluefin Tuna industry exports, but it was surprising to see France take such a position after President Sarkozy had already made public statements in favour of listing.

Leading the pressure on the EU to change their position is the conservation group Oceana, whose European Executive Director, Xavier Pastor, condemned the minority of EU countries’ actions as ‘deplorable’.

And why is tuna so important to cetaceans?

Well one, tuna is as worthy of conservation as any creature, but we should also note that some may point out that the hypocrisy of some nations when it comes to protecting such long lived migratory species as tuna makes a mockery of their arguments against Japan when it comes to whaling.  Apart from the fact that Japan is the black hole that consumes much of the world’s Bluefin Tuna (Japan's Mitsubishi conglomerate has cornered a 40 per cent share of the world market in bluefin tuna), it is one of the leading whaling countries and it is willing to use it experiences in that fora in its fisheries debates.  Japan has used ‘scientific fishing’ on tuna as an argument to get round conservation efforts just as it has used ‘scientific whaling’ to get round the ban on commercial whaling.

To Japan it just shows that it needs to appeal to some countries in the EU economic interests and conservation principles are put aside. Japan has not hesitated in the past to link one conservation issue in a trade off against another affecting its interests. Japan’s support for the ivory trade not only benefited its own domestic demand for ivory but meant it ‘secured’ the support of several African countries for its CITES down-listing proposals for elephants.

The UK, Germany, Belgium and others are still fighting for the Bluefin Tuna; I only hope France and the other so-called ‘Club Med states’ don’t buckle so easily when it comes to whales.

Please excuse this posting if you are already following this story on the our Fieldwork Blog, but I thought the most recent posting on NATO's biggest European exercise, 'Joint Warrior' needs to be read by everyone interested in noise and the oceans.

WDCS's Sarah Dolman and Nicola Hodgins  are in Scotland and monitoring the exercise. In fact the exercise kicks off on Monday and lasts for several weeks. It may be
operation as normal on the west coast of Scotland (we understand that
exercising of this sort has been going on for many decades) but part of
the exercise – including active sonar - will also occur in the Moray
Firth. WDCS is there to make sure our military friends, whilst doing their necessary jobs, don't impact on the the cetaceans of the Moray Firth. You can follow this campaign and our interactions wth the various stakeholders at the Fieldwork Blog

So some twenty six countries have sent a démarche to Iceland, complaining about its whaling. But what will this achieve?       

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              Well in this case actually a lot. Iceland’s accession discussions with the European Union are entering the initial phase where the ‘ground work’ is set out. By indicating their position on whaling so early, the EU countries are stating that Iceland will have to give up whaling if it wants to join.

As Iceland benefits from a lot of EU support anyway, its about time that it took on board some of the responsibilities as well as the rights and privileges it already gets in terms of access to the EU markets.

Now when we talk about the International Whaling Commission (IWC) and Convention in Trades in Endangered Species (CITES) where are the teeth? Norway, Iceland and Japan all get to ignore the agreements restrictions, yet get to abuse its freedoms. Article VIII of the ICRW allows nations to set their own so-called ‘scientific whaling’ quotas.

The original drafters included this clause to ensure that some science was done in the industrial level whaling of the 1950’s; there is no evidence they intended it to be a device to circumvent the Convention and allow unbridled quotas to be allocated by one nation. Indeed, the Convention was created to allow nations to work co-operatively and to avoid such independent abuses of ‘grab all you can, as fast as you can’.

What nations have not been able to do, apart through mechanisms such as the European Union’s Directives and Regulations, is agree the enforcement measures needed to ensure compliance to such major agreements. But such compliance is essential.

At a time when the nations of the world are about to meet in Copenhagen for what may be one of the most important climate meetings ever, where agreement and compliance are essential, the whalers continued abuse of their ‘sovereignty’ within the IWC and CITES sets the very worst of examples. Lets hope the EU has the mettle to see through its commitments to protect whales, and set the best of examples.

Actually I don't know. Our colleague Dr. Margi Prideaux in Australia is coordinating with other Australian groups, but we need to get the Australian Government to take action - now.

The leaking oil well in the Timor Sea is now a major environmental disaster, spanning at least 15,000km2 and threatening marine wildlife, including whales and dolphins.

Opportunistic observational research of wild animals has shown that the bottlenose dolphins observed during a fresh spill could detect slick and mousse oils but did not react to lighter sheen oil. Groups hesitated and milled when the encountered slick oil, eventually diving under small patches but continuing through extensive areas.

A recent whale survey, supported by the Wilderness Society and Horizontal Falls Seaplane Adventures recorded 162 humpback whales in 102 separate pods south west of the spill area. A local whale researcher said this was just a snapshot of the number of whales that aggregate in this area to feed and give birth.

More on this at the website