Improving Right Whale Management and Conservation Through Ecological Research. Report of the Working Group Meeting, April 16, 2004

摘要

The working group was convened by the Northeast Fisheries Science Center (N EFSC) and met at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on 16th April 2004. Management of the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale (Eubalaena glacialis), and mitigation of some specific issues facing this population, requires better data on the foraging ecology of the animals. For example, knowledge of how right whales use the water column when foraging would likely assist the development of gear design or other mitigation strategies aimed at reducing entanglement risk. Similarly, foraging ecology can potentially provide invaluable information to characterize habitats that are important to right whales, and this information can subsequently be used to better understand their distribution (both overall and in relation to threats such as fishing gear and ship traffic). The working group held an informal one-day meeting to discuss critical knowledge gaps regarding North Atlantic right whale diving behavior, foraging ecology and habitat, and how studies of these topics can assist management. The major objectives of the meeting were to identify research objectives and methods that: (1) provide data to assist development of mitigation measures for fishing gear entanglements$ (2) better characterize habitats important to right whales$ and (3) improve our ability to predict the distribution of right whales from environmental variables.