In 1997, the Government of México convened a committee of international experts (CIRVA) to advise it on methods to save its endemic porpoise, the vaquita, from extinction. CIRVA met for the fourth time, in February 2012, in Ensenada, México.

CIRVA recognized that since 2008 México established a Vaquita Refuge in the core of the vaquita’s distribution and initiated a scheme of monetary compensation to eliminate gillnetting and industrial trawling within this Refuge.  That scheme reduced, but did not eliminate, un-permitted fishing. The Government of Mexico, with significant support and funding from US government agencies and other groups, conducted a new survey of vaquita abundance, established an acoustics program to monitor population trends, and developed an alternative, “vaquita-safe” method for catching shrimp.  Never before has so much serious effort and funding been invested to protect the vaquita.  Without these efforts, vaquitas might already have reached a state where recovery would not be possible.

However, information presented at the February 2012 meeting showed that the vaquita population is still declining and now likely consists of fewer than 200 individuals.  The Vaquita Refuge protects only about half of the population and illegal gillnet fishing is still common inside the Refuge. Also, gillnets are still commonly used to catch shrimp and finfish outside the Refuge. CIRVA concluded that if the continuing decline in vaquita abundance is not halted within the next five years (by 2017), the species may be too depleted to ever recover.

Based on information presented at this meeting, CIRVA made a number of recommendations, the most important being:

• All gillnets and other entangling nets need to be removed from the vaquita’s entire range.
• Artisanal shrimp fishing vessels should be converted immediately from using gillnets to using small trawls.
• Additional research is needed to develop vaquita-safe methods to fish for finfish with artisanal vessels. Spatial management measures are needed that provide access incentives for shrimp fishermen who use small trawls rather than gillnets.
• A legal limit on the length of gillnets and the number of nets per vessel needs to be enforced for fisheries with such limits, like the shrimp fishery.
• A legal limit on the length of gillnets and the number of nets per vessel needs to be established and enforced for all other fisheries (besides the shrimp fishery).
• More effective enforcement of no-fishing regulations within the Vaquita Refuge is needed.
• The boundaries of the Vaquita Refuge should be changed as described in the report.
• The current acoustic monitoring scheme should continue for at least the first planned 5-year period so that vaquita population trends can be tracked and recovery strategies adapted accordingly.

The full report of the workshop is available here:

The Mediterranean subpopulation of common dolphins Delphinus delphis, is listed as Endangered on the IUCN Redlist.  As recently as 50 years ago, in the Mediterranean waters of Israel, short-beaked common dolphins were thought to be more common than bottlenose dolphins, Tursiops truncatus[1]; a conclusion that was based mainly on stranding records.  Today, common dolphin strandings are very rare in Israel reflecting their regional decline.  However, encouraging news is that over the last few years, there have been repeated sightings of large groups (for the region i.e. 10-80 individuals) of short-beaked common dolphins in Israeli waters.  The recent sightings occurred in the southern part of the region, and some were within the waters of the Gaza strip[2]. Purse-seining in Gaza waters has declined substantially since Israel imposed a naval blockade and common dolphins may have responded to a resultant increase in prey abundance. It is hoped that cooperative research and conservation efforts will one day lead to the recognition of this region as one deserving of special conservation measures for common dolphins (and other cetaceans).

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[1] Bodenheimer, F.S. 1960. Animal and man in bible lands. Collection de Travaux de l’Académie Internationale d’Histoire des Sciences, No 10. E.J. Brill, Leiden

[2] see http://seamap.env.duke.edu/dataset/819

The Government of Bangladesh recently declared three new wildlife sanctuaries for endangered freshwater dolphins in the world’s largest mangrove ecosystem – the Sundarbans. The sanctuaries, which were officially declared on January 29, will protect two species of freshwater dolphins: the Ganges River dolphin and the Irrawaddy dolphin. Although there is no global population estimate for either species, both have disappeared from major portions of their range. However, both species occur in the Sundarbans in sufficient numbers that it may serve as a global safety net for preventing their extinction.  The three wildlife sanctuaries safeguard 19.4 mi (31.4 km) of channels with a total area of 4.1 sq mi (10.7 sq km).  The locations and sizes of the sanctuaries in the Sundarbans were determined according to a study conducted by WCS and the Bangladesh Forest Department and published in the journal Oryx in 2010. The study found that the habitat of Ganges River and Irrawaddy dolphins were clumped in waterways where human activities are most intense.

The dolphins are threatened by fatal entanglements in fishing gear, depletion of their prey from the enormous by-catch of fish and crustaceans in fine-mesh “mosquito” nets used to catch fry for shrimp farming, and increasing salinity and sedimentation caused by sea-level rise and changes in the availability of freshwater river flow.  It is hoped that the new wildlife sanctuaries in the Sundarbans will also provide protection for other threatened aquatic wildlife including the river terrapin, masked finfoot, and small-clawed otter.

Of six Western Grey Whales satellite tagged off Sakhalin Island, Russia in September 2011, the tag on a single individual was still transmitting at the end of February 2012.  Varvara, an 8 ½ year old female, crossed the Okhotsk Sea from the northeast coast of Sakhalin, navigated around the southern end of Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula, struck out eastward across the Bering Sea into Alaskan waters and then migrated down the west coast of North America to reach Baja California, Mexico, by early 2012.  At the end of February, Varvara was moving in the vicinity of Cedros Island and the lagoons of Ojo de Liebre and Guerrero Negro, Mexico. Agent, a 6 ½ year old female, was also satellite tagged in September and followed a similar route to Varvara, however her tag stopped transmitting while in Alaskan waters.  Varvara’s journey of more than 7,000 miles suggests that the migration of Flex, the male grey whale satellite tracked off Sakhalin last year, was not an anomaly.

For more information see:  http://mmi.oregonstate.edu/Sakhalin2011 and http://www.iucn.org/wgwap/

Dr Randall R. Reeves, Chair of the IUCN Cetacean Specialist Group, has been awarded the Species Survival Commission Chair’s Citation of Excellence. The award was given in recognition of his leadership of whale and dolphin conservation worldwide and his exceptional service as Chair of the SSC Cetacean Specialist Group over many years. The award was presented by Simon Stuart Chair of the Species Survival Commission at Meeting of SSC Chairs held in Abu Dhabi, February 2012. Randall Reeves has been the Chair of the IUCN Cetacean Specialist Group since 1997 and was Deputy Chair from 1992-1997.

An international team of scientists, including several from the CSG, spent the week of 9-13 January 2012 in Cambodia working with Cambodian counterparts on efforts to refine understanding of the status of dolphins in the Mekong River (Orcaella brevirostris), determine cause(s) of the exceptionally high calf mortality documented in recent years, and improve protection measures (especially pertaining to bycatch in gillnets). This was a follow-up to an earlier meeting in October 2009 (see previous report on this website under Special Projects: Mekong River Irrawaddy Dolphins).

A recent publication led by Gerry Ryan of the WWF-Cambodia dolphin project had estimated current abundance of this relict population as only 85 (95% CI= 77.9-91.2) based on a novel mark-resight estimation method (Ryan et al. 2011). Perhaps more importantly, Ryan and his co-authors estimated seniority at 0.999 (0.028 SE), recruitment at 0.001, and population growth rate at 0.978, concluding: “Although the population size appears to be stable, we believe this represents the slow disappearance of a long-lived animal with no recruitment.”

A key finding by the visiting scientific team (which included veterinarians Frances Gulland, Thijs Kuiken, Antonio Fernández, and Paul Jepson) was that there is no evidence to support the idea that a disease process is involved in the high incidence of calf deaths. Nor is there any support for the view that this population is suffering significantly from contaminant exposure or inbreeding. Entanglement in fishing gear, mainly gillnets, is unquestionably the primary cause of death for non-calves, but the primary cause(s) for the very high mortality of calves remain unknown.

By the end of a week of meetings, laboratory work, and field observations, the responsible parties in Cambodia – the Commission for Conservation and Development of Mekong River Dolphin Ecotourism Zone, the Fisheries Administration of the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, and WWF-Cambodia – signed a document called the Kratie Declaration on the Conservation of the Mekong River Irrawaddy Dolphins. The declaration commits them to work collaboratively and with a sense of urgency to address the conservation and scientific recommendations developed jointly by the international experts and the local and regional participants who attended the workshop.

The Kratie Declaration, together with its appendices which contain the findings and recommendations from the workshop, is available for download from the Downloads tab on this site or by following this link.

The following news article was produced by Uzma Noureen at WWF-Pakistan.  For more information  she can be contacted at:  unoureen@wwf.panda.org

The Indus River Dolphin (Platanista gangetica minor) is an endangered subspecies of freshwater dolphin found only in the Indus River System in Pakistan.  In 2006 the entire subspecies was estimated to number about 1600 – 1750 individuals (Braulik et al. in review). The largest subpopulation, consisting of about 1200 individuals, exists at high density in a 200 km stretch of the Indus River between Guddu and Sukkur barrages in Sindh Province.  In the past, mortality rates within this subpopulation were very low (0-2 animals/year).  However, Indus dolphin mortality has increased dramatically following the devastating flood in 2010.  An unprecedented total of 28 dolphins were reported dead from between Guddu and Sukkur barrages in the year 2011.

The flood severely affected the socio-economic condition of indigenous communities escalating their dependence on natural resources.  Although fishing in the river is banned between Guddu and Sukkur barrages, a Dolphin Reserve, local people are dependent on fishing in the adjacent or appended temporary lakes, channels, canals and pools for their subsistence.  It is suspected that dolphins are attracted to such areas due to availability of prey, and become entangled in nets.

In addition, the recent amendments to the fisheries legislation in Sindh have changed fishing practices.  In the past powerful contractors controlled the fishing rights, but licenses are now issued to individuals at very low cost.  This has resulted in over harvesting of fish resources, and an increase in illegal fishing practices in the river, such as over-night netting and pesticide poisoning.  Traditional contract fishing systems still operate in some locations in the protected area, where contractors either hire local people to fish or bring in migrant labourers.

Finally, river turtles are the target of a new, large-scale, illegal trade to China.  Turtle hunters use methods such as leaving baited hooks over-night and pesticide poisoning, both of which may also have contributed to the increased river dolphin mortality.

Local wildlife departments and WWF-Pakistan are working to identify the causes of the Indus dolphin mortality.  They are also involving communities, and working with the provincial and federal government to address this emerging issue.

The 24^th October is International Freshwater Dolphin Day. Declared at the “Workshop on Establishing Protected Areas for Freshwater Cetaceans” in East Kalimantan, Indonesia in October 2009, International Freshwater Dolphin Day will be celebrated by many events across the world.

In India, Ganges River dolphin awareness rallies will be held in villages.  Activities will include a boat safari to visit the dolphins, media press release, street theater, poster and drawing competitions, and informational lectures on the dolphins and the rivers they inhabit.

Along the Mahakam River in Indonesia, home to a critically endangered population of Irrawaddy dolphins, school education campaigns will be held to celebrate Freshwater Dolphin Day.  The day will also be marked by finalizing the management plan for a river dolphin Protected Area in West Kutai District, and it is hoped that an official community agreement will be reached for establishment of a second dolphin Protected Area in Central Kutai.  A National Conservation Strategy Action Plan for Mahakam dolphins from 2010-2020 has been developed under assignment of the General Directorate Conservation of Nature Department, Forestry Department.

In Bangladesh International Freshwater Dolphin Day is being marked with a month-long celebration. During the first week of October, the Bangladesh Forest Department approved the boundaries for three new wildlife sanctuaries for Ganges and Irrawaddy dolphins in the Eastern Sundarbans mangrove forest and forwarded the notification document to the Ministry of Environment and Forests for final approval. All three Wildlife Sanctuaries are based on recommendations from the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Bangladesh Cetacean Diversity Project (BCDP), which has been working on freshwater dolphin conservation in the Sundarbans since 2002.  The BCDP also convened a one-day training course on freshwater dolphin survey techniques for a team of 18 local and international scientists and university students. This was followed by a survey of dolphins in the Sundarbans mangrove forest. October also saw the initiation of an exciting new project, led by Nadia Richman of the Zoological Society of London, to study Ganges dolphins in the Karnaphuli-Sangu river system of southeastern Bangladesh.

For more details on these and other activities being held to celebrate Freshwater Dolphin Day, and also for information on research and conservation of the world’s freshwater dolphins, check the following website: http://www.freshwater-cetacean.110mb.com

This summer 6 western gray whales, one male and five females, were tagged with satellite tags off Sakhalin, Russia and their movements are now being monitored.  One tag was not well attached and has fallen off, at present there are still tags on 5 animals.  The whales are all in the Sakhalin area, three in the offshore feeding ground and two nearshore.

During the tagging efforts this summer, Flex (the whale tagged in 2010) was seen on several occasions.  He appeared to be in good body condition and, while scarred, the tag area has healed.

For more information and regular updates on the location of the tagged whales visit: http://mmi.oregonstate.edu/Sakhalin2011

The Fiordland subpopulation of common bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) inhabits the fiords and bays of Fiordland, a mountainous, rainforest-covered World Heritage Area in the southwest of New Zealand’s South Island.  These dolphins are at the southern limit of the species’ global range and recent studies have shown them to be genetically and geographically isolated from bottlenose dolphins elsewhere in New Zealand.

The subpopulation was estimated to consist of only205 individuals in 2008, of which 123 were mature. In a Population Viability Analysis, more than two thirds of the model runs predicted a decline of > 25% over one generation and more than a third predicted a decline of > 80% over three generations.  As a result, the Fiordland Bottlenose Dolphin subpopulation was assessed as Critically Endangered (A3bcd;C1).  For the full assessment, which was completed in 2010, see http://www.iucnredlist.org/apps/redlist/details/194300/0