“The Exploration of the Pacific”
Marine Mammal Science and Conservation
Archive for Monument
December 7, 2007 at 9:22 am · Filed under Science, Conservation, Monument
It was definitely a good week. This morning I got word from the editorial staff at the IWC office that our manuscript about odontocetes in American Samoa is accepted for publication in the Journal of Cetacean Research and Management. This is great news as it will provide a good baseline for future studies as well as a tool for NMFS to move forward with listing "stocks" of cetaceans in the waters of American Samoa. Currently there are no stocks recognized for this region. It will start with spinner dolphins, as the genetics are clear enough from this paper. Next up might be Rough-toothed dolphins - Steno bredanensis.
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September 22, 2007 at 10:45 am · Filed under Science, Conservation, Monument
I think that one of the most rewarding things about science is the inherent continuity of the process - where one project's results (whether expected or not) - lead to yet another set of questions and hypotheses and so on…
For example, our recent study of humpbacks wintering in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands was based on the investigative work by Kristin Rasmussen and her colleagues studying humpbacks in other ocean basins (recently published in Biology Letters). The habitat envelope they described was the real primer for our simple predictive model of humpback wintering habitat in the NWHI published recently in ESR. One thing leads to another.
And it continues. The idea of predicting the distribution and density of marine mammals using environmental correlates is a hot topic right now in marine mammal science. This technique lends itself well to the practical needs of planning and ecological assessment processes, where spatially-explicit information on the potential effects of exposing marine mammals to some risk (e.g. anthropogenic noise or vessel strikes) is required. It's also really useful for setting spatial limits for marine protected areas and defining critical habitat for a species. In our case, it is becoming clear that predicting the core breeding habitats for humpback whales, at basin or global scales, may be a useful and important exercise for conservation purposes. And it might be a relatively easy things to pull off, using existing data that are available for most, if not all, of the worlds oceans.
So we are putting our heads together to tackle this idea. Right now a core group of researchers, including Daniel Palacios, Kristin Rasmussen, Joe Mobely, David Mattila, Ari Friedlaender and myself are embarking on a project aiming to build predictive models of humpback habitat at large scales. This core group of researchers represent a large amount of expertise when it comes to humpbacks, oceanography, statistical modeling of habitat parameters and I'm excited to be taking part in it.
We're still getting going with the project. A draft prospectus has been circulated amongst the researchers and we've set up a website to represent the project and communicate our ideas and initial results. You can check it out here: http://marineresearch.ca/habitat/
September 13, 2007 at 2:47 pm · Filed under Science, Conservation, Monument
Today, our paper describing humpbacks wintering in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands was published online in the Inter-Research journal Endangered Species Research. It's open access, so you can go and download the whole scientific article. We made these observations during our winter/spring cruise last this year (March 2007) and worked hard to get the details out to folks as soon as possible. Despite the fact we lost almost half of our sea days to ship delays (e.g. the starboard propulsion journal bearing burnt out during sea trials the day before we were supposed to leave), the cruise turned out to be a massive success. Basically, everywhere we surveyed in warm (>21.1C) and shallow (< 200m) water, we found humpbacks. These were both visual detections and observations made acoustically through the use of a towed hydrophone array. To boot, the humpbacks we did see and hear were engaged in behaviours often seen in wintering areas, and associated with breeding.
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September 4, 2007 at 8:27 pm · Filed under Conservation, Monument
So, what kind of protection does the Monument designation provide for cetaceans?
I had the great fortune to meet Erich Hoyt recently, and immensely enjoyed interacting with him in a workshop on an upcoming marine mammal protected areas conference (more on that later). He made a really interesting observation about the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument: it is now the largest marine mammal protected area in the world! After checking his book, I imagine that the monument is likely an IUCN category II marine protected area (although the IUCN categories, and the monument proclamation itself are vague enough to argue this). This category is described as a "National Park" with these criteria:
- a protected area managed mainly for ecosystem protection and recreation.
- an area of land and/or sea designated to (a) protect the ecological integrity of one or more ecosystems for present and future generations, (b) exclude exploitation or occupation that is inimical to the purposes of designation of the area and (c) provide a foundation for spiritual, scientific, educational, recreational and visitor opportunities, all of which must be environmentally and culturally compatible.
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