Marine Mammals

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A new paper on responses of harbour porpoises to a seismic survey is available via Open Access here.

 The abstract of this paper states:

The National Marine Fisheries Service has published Federal Register notice of NMFS’ intent to prepare a recovery plan for the Main Hawaiian Islands insular false killer whale distinct population segment. NMFS is required by the Endangered Species Act to develop and implement recovery plans for the conservation and survival of federally listed species unless the Secretary of the Department of Commerce finds that such a plan will not promote the conservation of the species.  All information on in response to this Federal Register notice must be by NMFS received no later than November 1, 2013.

Click here to read NMFS’ Federal Register notice.

The new rules revise the Plan by eliminating the consequence closure strategy enacted in 2010, based on deliberations by the Harbor Porpoise Take Reduction Team.  NMFS explains that this action is necessary to prevent the improper triggering of consequence closure areas based on target harbor porpoise bycatch rates that no longer accurately reflect actual bycatch in New England sink gillnets due to fishery- wide changes in fishing practices.  The new rules have an effective of September 30, 2013. Click here to read Federal Register notice of new rules.

The October 7 Edition of the Washington Post has an article which states:” Scientists link sonar mapping to ’08 whale stranding”.

The Post article  is based upon the report of a panel (ISRP) established by the International Whaling Commission which  fails to incorporate the views of all  the experts who advised the panel. In fact, when the totality of the record is examined the “Panel Report” is in violation of the Data[ aka Information] Quality Act.

CRE compliments the Washington Post for presenting the views of all parties which unfortunately was not the case with either the  ISRP or the foreign press.

The National Marine Fisheries Service has published notice of its intent to prepare a recovery plan for Main Hawaiian Islands Insular False Killer Whale Distinct Population Segment. NMFS requests information from the public on this plan. All information must be received by NMFS no later than November 1, 2013. Under the Endangered Species Act, recovery means improvement in the status of ESA-listed species to the point at which the protections of the ESA are no longer necessary. The ESA specifies that recovery plans must include: (1) A description of management actions necessary to achieve the plan’s goals for the conservation and survival of the species; (2) objective, measurable criteria which, when met, would result in the species being removed from the list; and (3) estimates of the time and costs required to achieve the plan’s goal and the intermediate steps towards that goal.