From noaa-whale-advisory-l at rain.org Wed Nov 7 20:26:41 2012 From: noaa-whale-advisory-l at rain.org (Whale Advisory E-mail List for NOAA West Coast) Date: Wed, 7 Nov 2012 20:26:41 -0800 Subject: West Coast Whale Announcements: Discontinued Advisories, WhaleWatch, and latest research Message-ID: Greetings Whale Advisory Listserv members! As the busy whale season draws to a close along the US west coast, NOAA staff have a few announcements to share with you: 1) Discontinued Whale Advisories 2) WhaleWatch resource 3) Seasonal Whale Advisories: have they been effective in slowing ships? Please contact me if you have any comments or questions regarding these announcements. And stay tuned; our next e-mail announcement will include a whale stranding report for 2012. *1) Discontinued Whale Advisories* UPDATE Effective 11/1/12: Based on the best available whale sightings data, NOAA has determined that it is appropriate to discontinue the seasonal whale advisories (LNMs) in the Southern California and Central/Northern California regions, including the Traffic Separation Schemes. Feeding whales typically move away from the California coast in late fall, and begin to reappear in the spring. We will keep our advisories up-to-date to reflect these changes as they occur. Please check the ONMS Ship Strike websiteto stay current with whale activity and seasonal notices in the area. * * *2) WhaleWatch research resource* WhaleWatch is a collaborative project that combines satellite telemetry and remotely sensed environmental data to provide predictions of whale occurrence in the California Current System to reduce human impacts. This collaboration is between the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, Oregon State University and NOAA's Southwest Fisheries Science Center. To stay up-to-date with the progress of this project, visit the project's website at: http://www.umces.edu/cbl/whalewatch . *3) Seasonal Whale Advisories: have they been effective in slowing ships?* NOAA staff and colleagues recently published the report "Response of Commercial Ships to a Voluntary Speed Reduction Measure: Are Voluntary Strategies Adequate for Mitigating Ship-Strike Risk?" in *Coastal Management *. You can view the report here: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08920753.2012.727749, though access to the full article requires a fee. The report concludes that the request for ships to voluntarily reduce speed was largely ineffective. Report abstract: "Collisions between ships and whales are an increasing concern for endangered large whale species. After an unusually high number of blue whales (*Balaenoptera musculus*) were fatally struck in 2007 off the coast of southern California, federal agencies implemented a voluntary conservation program to reduce the likelihood of ship-strikes in the region. This initiative involved seasonal advisory broadcasts requesting vessel operators to voluntarily slow to 10 knots or less when transiting a 75 nm stretch of designated shipping lanes. We monitored ship adherence with those speed advisories using Automatic Identification System data. Daily average speed of cargo and tanker ships and the average speed of individual ship transits before, during, and after the notices were statistically analyzed for changes related to the notices. Whereas a small number of individual ships (1%) traveled significantly slower during the requested periods, speeds were not at or below the recommended 10 knots, nor were daily average speeds reduced during the notices. Voluntary conservation measures are established in a variety of contexts, and may be preferable to regulatory action; in this case, a request to make voluntary changes appeared largely ineffective. Reducing collision risks for whales in this area will require consideration of the various factors that likely explain the lack of adherence when developing an alternative strategy." -- Sara Hutto Sea Grant Fellow Resource Protection Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary 113 Harbor Way, Suite 150 Santa Barbara, CA 93109-2315 805-966-7107 x371 sara.hutto at noaa.gov -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: