FRANCE: Increase in temperatures in Pacific Ocean is making life of whales hell. In 2015, more than 60 whales have been found entangled in fishing gear along the coast causing 400% hike over normal and a pattern that began in 2104. Capt. David Anderson of Captain Dave’s Dolphin and Whale Watching Safari in Dana Point, Calif., spotted whale entanglement for the first time. Now you would be thinking that how increase in water temperatures is linked with entanglement of whales? The reason to that is warm water influences feeding patterns forcing whales to move closer to shore. This further causes whales to reach much closer to fishermen and get trap in gill nets and lobster gear.
The good news to note is that the crab fishery has started working hard with state and federal agencies and environmental groups to figure out where and how the whales are running into their gear. Jim Anderson, a crabber who’s helping to mobilize the state’s 562 licensed Dungeness crab fishermen, said it seems bad to know that this year whales are at the place where the crabs are. They would have been much offshore, but due to increase in oceanic temperatures the whales are found mostly near the beaches.
There is vital need to have highly trained volunteer rescue teams to disentangle a small percentage. They should use tracking devices to follow entangled animals for miles and protect them at earliest possible, because the whales with rope stuck in their mouths pr wrapped tightly around their fins or tail are more likely to die if not freed. Recently, the rescue team has partially freed one humpback whale off La Jolla, California, having a line stuck in its mouth, a huge knot of rope six feet behind its tail and 200 additional feet of rope and buoys dragging behind it.
The Dungeness crab fishery brings up to $100 million a season. The State and federal agencies decision to tap into the crabbers’ collective knowledge to figure out the reason for the overlapping of wayward whales and fishermen will cause major loss to the Dungeness crab fishery. Already, the crab season has been delayed because of toxicity in the Pacific, but crabbers agreed to help when the season resume later this winter or in 2016. Fishermen will work alongside scientists on their boats to test different densities and strengths of rope and gear configurations. As another pilot program, crabbers will drop their pots on GPS-enabled iPads to track the position of whales.