Recent History
For many Canadians, it was the summer of 2017 when they first became aware of the terrible damage done to whales when they are hit by ships. News videos from the Gulf of St. Lawrence aired repeatedly, almost weekly, informing Canadians directly of the toll. Twelve individual Right Whales had been found dead in only three months, an extraordinary number, considering a total global population of only 425 individuals (at the time – the number now is smaller still). Seven others had been observed entangled in fishing gear; two subsequently died and the other five faced the prospect of a long, painful death if they were not somehow extricated.
Following extensive necropsies on seven of the dead whales, specialist veterinarians concluded that four had died as a result of blunt force trauma – that is, being struck by a vessel – and two had been killed as a result of entanglement. It is important to note that, unlike most whale species, Right Whale carcasses float due to higher buoyancy; this means they are able to be recovered and studied. Most whales immediately sink to the ocean bottom at death, meaning there is no way to meaningfully study the effect of collisions, nor even be able to register that a death has occurred.
This was nothing new to the specialists on the water; at least 14 Right Whale carcasses and as many as 20 injured Right Whales were sighted in Canadian waters (including some in the Gulf of St. Lawrence) between 1988 and 2014. This despite some efforts on the part of the Federal governments of the time to protect Right Whales: shipping routes were changed around two well-documented habitats, one in the Bay of Fundy (2003) and the other in Roseway Basin, located on the Scotian Shelf (2008). These had proven somewhat effective in protecting the local populations. However, by 2010, Right Whales population numbers began to decline in these locations. This is presumed to be the result of diminishing food availability (due to human activity and global warming) in the Gulf of Maine and the Scotian Shelf regions. Within five years, Right Whales in significant numbers were being sighted in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence.
An official Government of Canada SARA recovery strategy had been published in 2009. There was no other significant federal action to protect Right Whales until the 2017 crisis. This lack of action was reported in a 2018 audit by the Office of the Auditor General of Canada, which concluded that the Canadian government, and its four responsible departments, had “failed to use existing policies and tools to proactively manage threats to marine mammals from commercial fisheries and marine vessels,” and that until the catastrophic summer of 2017, efforts to meet this responsibility had been “inadequate.”
To the agencies’ credit, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, and Transport Canada acted quickly and decisively in 2017 to try to address the problem. Within weeks of the first discoveries of dead whales, they introduced unprecedented monitoring and new risk-reduction regulations. Based on consultations with various experts from non-governmental groups and other stakeholders, speed restrictions were developed for vessels more than 20m in length across a large area of the Gulf of St Lawrence. While the response had been prompt, the majority of the mortalities and injuries had already occurred. By the time a mandatory slow speed was being enforced in key areas 63 days later, the carcasses of three more whales had been retrieved.
In the months following the crisis, the Canadian government worked with NGOs, researchers and other scientists to devise ways to minimize the possibility of future devastating collisions. A new regulation regimen came into effect at the end of April 2018, in preparation for the spring arrival to Canadian waters of the Right Whale population. Large ships could travel no faster than 10 knots in certain areas, well below the former speed limit, and policies were put in place for dynamic management of speeds in other zones. A large area of the Gulf of St. Lawrence was closed to fishing and further closures were possible if whales were sighted. Enhanced surveillance and reporting were also undertaken. In other words, federal officials were empowered, based on data from the active monitoring of whales’ locations, to severely limit or even close areas to shipping and other industrial activities hazardous to whales, such as the burgeoning Snow Crab and Lobster fisheries.
In 2018, the news had been encouraging and there were signs that the drastic measures borne of the 2017 crisis had a positive effect. There were no documented Right Whales’ deaths in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and environs and commercial shipping was able to continue largely unaffected while the Snow Crab fishery was able to meet its full quota. (There were however, 3 entangled whales, but these seem to have occurred following the closure of the crab fishery.) However, 2019 brought the issue back into high relief, with alarming fatality numbers.
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