Lost and abandoned fishing gear which is deadly to marine life makes up the majority of large plastic pollution in the oceans, according to a report by Greenpeace. More than 640,000 tonnes of nets, lines, pots and traps used in… Read More ›
Entangled Sealife
Ghost Nets & Gear Remain An Entanglement Cause
Colossal numbers of plastic bottles and bags float around the earth, and their severe impact on marine life has been extensively documented. But there’s another, lesser-known killer plastic lurking in our oceans. Every year, more than 136,000 whales, dolphins and… Read More ›
Crab Season Opens with Entanglement Concerns
The commercial Dungeness crab fishery will open north of Sonoma County on Monday after several delays needed to allow the crustaceans to mature before the harvest begins. The northern season, which usually starts Dec. 1, is opening two months after… Read More ›
Right Whales in “perilous decline”
By Adam Wagner GateHouse Media Posted Nov 24, 2017 at 10:33 AMUpdated Nov 24, 2017 at 10:33 AM One of the world’s most endangered animals used to be routinely seen off the NC coast. Not anymore. WILMINGTON — After years of steady improvement, one of the Atlantic ocean’s most at-risk… Read More ›
Endangered Whales, Sea Turtles Protection Thrown Out
“The Trump administration has declared war on whales, dolphins and turtles off the coast of California,” Todd Steiner, director of the California-based Turtle Island Restoration Network, told the LA Times.
‘Vaquitas will be extinct in a few years’
“The situation is completely out of control,” says Lorenzo Rojas-Bracho, a cetacean expert at the National Institute of Ecology and Climate Change in Ensenada, Mexico, and member of the International Committee for the Recovery of the Vaquita, an international advisory group to the Mexican government. “Of course, there’s a risk in capturing the vaquitas. But it’s clear now that they will be killed [in gillnets] anyway.”
“entanglements have long-term negative physical and reproductive effects (on whales)”
Entanglements have surpassed ship strikes as a leading danger to right whales in recent years. Forty-four percent of diagnosed right whale deaths were due to ship strikes and 35 percent were due to entanglements from 1970 to 2009, the study said. From 2010 to 2015, 15 percent of diagnosed deaths were due to ship strikes and 85 percent were due to entanglements, it said.
