Not since the days of whaling had so many North Atlantic right whales died in one year.

In 2017, 17 of the animals died or were entangled live in fishing gear in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, a large region of ocean that borders all five Canadian Atlantic provinces. At the same time, new research showed the population of 458 individuals was in decline — with the females dwindling faster than males.

Scientists became concerned that the North Atlantic right whale might become functionally extinct — unable to produce new calves — in less than two decades.

But these devastating events produced an unexpected silver lining. Researchers, conservationists, industries, managers, policy-makers and public citizens from Canada and the United States rallied in an unprecedented collaborative response to help reduce risk to the remaining animals.

A North Atlantic right whale and her calf, seen in this Feb. 13, 2005 photo. Photo: NOAA

This effort culminated in April 2018 with the Canadian government unveiling a number of new management measures for the snow crab and lobster fisheries in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence.

Some of these measures — including one large closed area, a shorter fishing season in other areas and closures of certain areas if whales are spotted there — are designed to reduce the number of right whale entanglements this year while allowing fishermen to continue to harvest when the whales are less likely to be present.

Additional measures will also help collect improved data on gear deployments so scientists and managers can understand when and where the animals become entangled.

Crustacean cutback

But why did this happen now?

Typically right whales can be found foraging in the Bay of Fundy and southwest Nova Scotia during summer. But since 2010, right whale sightings in traditional foraging grounds have been low. At the same time, reproduction began to decline, culminating in a record low of zero calves born in 2018.

Scientists have shown that variation in both right whale calving rates and their presence in specific areas are related to changes in their primary food source, the infamous copepod Calanus finmarchicus. Armed with the hypothesis that right whales were hungry and searching elsewhere for food, the community of researchers and conservationists began searching other regions where C. finmarchicus is abundant.

One of those areas in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence proved fruitful, but since right whales had not been observed there often in the past, there were no protections yet in place for them. This exacerbated the events of 2017.

Eating is risky business

Although we almost never witness the death of a right whale, the ones that have been documented and diagnosed tell us that adult right whales die almost exclusively from ship strikes and fishing gear entanglements. Of the conclusively diagnosed mortalities in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, all were attributed to blunt force trauma from being hit by ships or to entanglement.

When right whales forage in the same area as intensive fishing and commercial shipping activities, the risk to the animals can be exceedingly high. The whales spend up to three quarters of their time at or near the surface looking for food or socializing, putting them at risk of ship strikes and entanglement in slack fishing line floating on the ocean surface.

What’s less well-recognized is how much time right whales spend beneath the waves foraging. Their food undergoes vertical migration in the water column and often collects just above the sea floor. This means right whales may also become entangled underwater in the vertical and ground lines that connect several traps along the sea floor to surface buoys.

Mitigation in right whale hot-spots

The best way to prevent entanglement and ship strikes is to reduce the interaction between right whales and fishing gear or vessels. There are a variety of strategies that have been used in Canada and the U.S. to reduce the risk. However, at this time, there is no indication that total mortality in the population is decreasing.

Within a feeding habitat, right whales tend to use similar areas from year to year because these areas have special environmental conditions that result in a plentiful food supply. The government’s decision to close the area where right whales gathered in 2017 to lobster and snow crab fishing means there will be no interaction where right whale densities are likely to be highest.

It’s also possible that the animals may occupy other regions of the southern Gulf, which is a concern because ships and fishing gear may be more concentrated than usual in other areas.

Because of this, fishing will be permitted in other areas unless a right whale is detected, at which time a mandatory dynamic management zone will be enforced for 15 days.

In the Gulf to stay

Historical sightings of right whales in the Gulf of St. Lawrence suggest that the animals have always been present in the area, albeit perhaps in not such noticeably high numbers.

Similarly, historical analyses suggest their food has been present there since at least 1999. But virtually no targeted search effort had been conducted in most areas prior to 2015.

The implication is that the presence of the animals should not be treated as an anomaly. Rather, it is more likely the animals have been using the area unnoticed for some time, and will continue to use the area.

It all means that the fisheries and shipping activities in the region will need to adapt in the long term if we are to have any hope at saving the North Atlantic right whale.

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When a Canadian federal-provincial environmental review panel ruled in 2007 that a proposed quarry would go against community core values and would threaten right whales and other marine life in the Bay of Fundy, groups that had fought against the project believed that was the end of the story.

But, that is not how the system works under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which has dispute settlement provisions allowing corporations to sue governments for compensation when they feel the local environmental approvals process has interfered with expected profits.

Instead of abandoning efforts to build a quarry and marine terminal on Digby Neck, Delaware-based Bilcon headed for the NAFTA Investor-State Dispute Settlement tribunal and, in 2015, the three-person panel ruled two-to-one that the environmental assessment panel had violated Canadian law by using the criterion of core community values.

Bilcon has claimed $300-$500 million in damages.

Bilcon project included shipping path in endangered whale nursery

The Bilcon NAFTA ruling was inexplicable to Nova Scotia residents as the company planned to blast within 50 metres of the Bay of Fundy and build a 600 foot pier with nearly 50 45,000 tonne vessels a year carrying quarried basalt to the U.S. through waters that serves as a nursery for severely endangered right whales.

ICYMI: 3% of the World’s Endangered Right Whales Died This Summer, Mostly in Canada’s Unprotected Waters

This week, the federal government and environmental organizations are in federal court arguing the NAFTA arbitration panel overstepped its bounds and, with NAFTA renegotiations underway, the case is being watched closely.

Ecojustice, working with Sierra Club Canada Foundation and East Coast Environmental Law, is arguing that Bilcon had the opportunity to ask a Canadian court to rule on the alleged breach of federal law, but, instead, went through NAFTA, which is supposed to decide only on questions of NAFTA law, meaning the tribunal stepped outside its legal expertise.

“If this decision stands it will send a chilling message that even when the Canadian government makes good decisions to protect our environment, there’s a chance that a NAFTA tribunal could swoop in, decide our environmental laws are unfair and force Canada to cough up hundreds of millions of dollars — leaving Canadian taxpayers on the hook,” Ecojustice said in a news release.

“We can’t let that happen.”

A local battle to protect a community and its environment “has turned into a broader fight to ensure international trade agreements do not supersede Canada’s environmental laws,” the release said.

The Bilcon case is under the legal microscope, but it is not the only case where Canada has been financially dinged after losing a NAFTA investor-state dispute.

The company is seeking $300 to $500 million in damages. https://t.co/8O8bRjNi4s

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) January 30, 2018

Canada dinged $220 million in NAFTA losses, faces half a billion more

A report by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives found that, as of January 1, 2018, Canada has paid out nearly $220 million in NAFTA losses and settlements — all to U.S. investors.

Those claims often targeted legitimate, non-discriminatory environmental protection, public health and resource management decisions made by Canadian governments, according to the report.

Canada currently faces eight claims with investors demanding about half a billion dollars, including Omnitrax’s claim relating to its broken rail line to Churchill, Manitoba and Lone Pine’s challenge to Quebec’s fracking moratorium, the report found.

In addition, the federal government has spent more than $95 million in legal fees defending the ballooning number of investor-state lawsuits.

The information was compiled by CCPA senior research fellow Scott Sinclair, through access to information requests, and Sinclair would like to see the federal government grasping the opportunity to remove the process from NAFTA — something suggested by the U.S.  

But, instead, Canada’s position is to retain the dispute process as it helps Canadian resource companies investing in developing countries.

Canada is the most-sued country under NAFTA’s Chapter 11 which gives companies the right to sue governments.

Since 2010, Canada has been sued twice as many times as Mexico and the U.S. combined, which is a worrying trend, Sinclair said.

“The Trudeau government has more than enough reasons to remove the undemocratic investor-state dispute settlement process from NAFTA during the current renegotiations, as proposed recently by the U.S. administration,” he said in a news release.

Canada could gain leverage by withdrawing its opposition to allowing countries to opt out of the process, Sinclair said.

“This could help negotiators advance other key Canadian interests, such as safeguarding affordable access to medicines or securing meaningful continental labour standards.”

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

The summer of 2017 was an extraordinarily deadly one for North Atlantic right whales, a species already hovering on the brink of extinction.

Investigations are ongoing into the cause of death of 15 right whales off the Atlantic Coast of Canada and the U.S., although it’s not too soon to point the finger at human activity, Megan Leslie, vice president of oceans for WWF-Canada, told DeSmog Canada.

“I’ve been frustrated by reports that we don’t know what’s killing these whales,” Leslie said.

“We do. We know it’s human activity. There haven’t been necropsies on all of the whales, but the ones where there have been it’s clearly been blunt force trauma from ship strikes and entanglement in fishing gear.”

As widely reported, a bizarre spat of ten whales were found dead in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in June and July. Since then another five whales have been found floating dead or washed ashore in Canada and the U.S.

There are an estimated 500 right whales, which can grow to be 50 feet long, left in the entire world.

That means the deaths represent three per cent of the global population killed in only one summer.

It’s completely unprecedented.

‘Immediate Measures’ Needed to Save Species

“It is hard to overstate how serious this problem is,” Leslie, who was the former federal NDP environment critic and MP for Halifax, said.

“People have been looking at how to rebuild this population and now with these deaths I’m quite worried that it’s no longer a discussion about how to rebuild the population, but even how to just save it.”

The federal government has introduced some new rules in response, including closing a snow crab fishery, continuing surveillance flights and implementing a temporary mandatory slow-down in the area by about one-third of average speeds.

On Aug. 30, Minister of Fisheries and Oceans Dominic LeBlanc announced the government is developing a new set of rules for commercial fishing gear and practices to help prevent deadly entanglements.

But conservationists fear it might not be enough.

ICYMI: Industry Sways Feds to Allow Offshore Drilling in Laurentian Channel Marine Protected Area

“These immediate measures are desperately needed,” said Alexandra Barron, an ocean conservation manager for the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, in an interview with DeSmog Canada.

“However, our position is we need to start managing these waters much more proactively and considering the needs of endangered whales.”

North Atlantic right whale entangled in fishing ropes. Photo: NOAA News Archive 123110 via Flickr

Over 70 Per Cent of Right Whales Bear Scars from Fishing Entanglements

Right whales have been killed before in Canadian waters, but the average number of deaths was only 3.8 per year prior to 2017.

That means there’s been a potential tripling of whale casualties in a single year, a huge blow for a population that only recently rebounded from a dangerous low of under 300 whales in the 1990s.

A spokesperson for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) wrote in an e-mail that it takes scientists between six and eight weeks to receive complete results on cause of death for the whales following the necropsies and samples.

Leslie said one of the whales had been caught in fishing gear for two weeks before it died.

More than 70 per cent of North Atlantic right whales actually bear scars from such encounters.

However, due to the tragic death of a member of the Campobello Whale Rescue Team in July 2017 during a disentanglement, the DFO has temporarily suspended all disentanglement operations.

The WWF notes that between 1970 and 2006, humans were responsible of 48 per cent of the deaths of right whales, mostly due to ship strikes or entanglements.

Many Critical Habitats Still Unexplored

However, it’s less known why the whales have moved from the Bay of Fundy or off the coast of Nova Scotia to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, where there’s considerably higher shipping traffic and more fishing gear.

There are some hypotheses around impacts of climate change and water temperatures, with the whales potentially following food sources. However, Barron said that right whales have been in the area and used the Gulf of St. Lawrence prior to this season. It’s difficult to draw any real conclusions without comprehensive coast-wide surveying, she said, in order to find out exactly where the whales might go.

Currently, Canada only has two designated areas of critical right whale habitat: the Grand Manan Basin and Roseway Basin. Barron said that by contrast, the U.S. has effectively designated their entire shelf waters throughout Maine and other northern states as critical habitat.

“We’re likely to see shifts in their movements in future years,” she said. “And we need to start mapping these areas of use and planning for that in the future.”

Between August 23 and 30, an expedition led by Oceana Canada used advanced exploration technology to survey much of the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

Robert Rangeley, director of science at Oceana Canada and key planner of the expedition, said in an interview with DeSmog Canada that much of the region is still fairly uncharted, pointing to the American Bank (located just off the Gaspé Peninsula in the Quebec portion of the Gulf of St. Lawrence).

“It’s got this official designation as an area of interest for a Marine Protected Area,” he said. “But it’s never been explored. None of these areas have been explored with cameras. We don’t really know what’s down there.”

Such a current lack of knowledge obviously impedes the ability for the federal government to craft appropriate regulations to ensure the survival of right whales and other marine mammals.

3% of World’s #Endangered #RightWhales Died This Summer, Mostly in Canada’s Unprotected Waters https://t.co/duH3p5vLHv #cdnpoli @DLeblancNB

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) September 1, 2017

Network of Marine Protected Areas Could Help Save Right Whales

And that’s where marine protected areas (MPAs) are supposed to come in.

As previously reported by DeSmog Canada, the federal government is aiming to protect 10 per cent of marine areas by 2020. However, proposed regulations for the Laurentian Channel MPA in the Gulf of St. Lawrence are under serious fire as they currently allow for potential offshore oil and gas exploration and drilling.

Conservationists suggest that a critical way to protect right whales is via the MPA network.

ICYMI: Canada Has Three Years to Increase Protected Areas by 60% And, Um, It’s Not Going to Be Easy

“These processes have been to this point very, very slow,” Barron said. “We need to start moving more quickly on these processes and identifying those potential areas where we may see whales: even if we’re not seeing them this year, that might be where they go next year, and we need to start making sure those sites are properly protected for the whales long into the future.”

Allowing oil and gas activities in the region would result in a series of catastrophic impacts, including increased marine traffic and chances of ship strikes, destruction of zooplankton and other food sources, contamination of food webs with toxic waste and a much higher chance of oil spills.

Unless the federal government protects such areas with strict regulations, there’s no real guarantee that this year’s death toll will be anomalous in the future.

“The deck is stacked against these whales,” Leslie concluded. “There’s so much coming at them, we’ve just got to figure out a way to help them survive.”

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.