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This dead minke whale was discovered in western P.E.I. in September. (Submitted by Bethe Cameron)
U.S. fisheries officials are raising the alarm about fatalities among another whale species after 28 confirmed minke whale deaths along the East coast in the past year, more than double the annual average.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has declared the deaths an “unusual mortality event” and launched an investigation, covering Maine to Florida.
It is the first time the U.S. agency has simultaneously investigated the deaths of three different large whale species in the same geographic area, NOAA Fisheries officials confirmed during a teleconference on Wednesday.
Investigations into an alarming number of deaths of North Atlantic right whales and humpback whales are ongoing in a bid to determine the causes and identify ways to prevent future deaths, they said.
One issue being explored is whether “environmental changes” might be leading the whales into fishing or shipping areas, said Teri Rowles, marine mammal health and stranding program co-ordinator.
“Often when you have human interactions as a contributing or causal factor for mortalities or serious injury, it takes the whales being in the right place — or wrong place,” she said.
So “it’s looking at where [the whales] are over time, what the drivers might be ecologically and environmentally for them to be there and then doing whatever management and mitigation measures we have to do with the information we obtain from that.”
Courtesy of cbc.ca
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