Marine protected areas for whales, dolphins, and porpoises: a world ...

Ocean Sanctuaries, Marine Reserves or Parks? 15
México. Gray whales have also been among the most susceptible to decline due
to human impact. In the mid 19th century, the whaler Capt Charles Scammon’s
discovery of the Baja lagoons almost drove gray whales to extinction in a matter
of a few decades. They were easy pickings. More recently, it has become
obvious that the lagoons must be protected not just from whaling but also from
human encroachment due to excessive boat traffic, fishing gear and nets,
pollution from local settlements, and industrial degradation of nearby land as
well as marine areas.
As more has been learned about other cetaceans, marine habitats have been
uncovered and new MPAs have been discussed and proposed. Cetacean
scientists have discovered:
• the humpback whale’s tropical mating and calving grounds in the Caribbean
and in various locations across the Pacific;
• the deep water canyons off Nova Scotia where northern bottlenose whales
live;
• the inshore feeding and breeding areas of bottlenose dolphins, tucuxi,
Indo-Pacific hump-backed dolphins and harbor porpoises in dozens of
locations; and
• the rubbing beaches and playing and resting areas of orcas around
Vancouver Island in the North Pacific.
All of these discoveries have led to the creation of valuable MPAs. Most of
this only began to happen, however, in the 1990s. There remains much to learn
about the habitat needs of every population of every species of cetacean.
Over the years, there have also been moves, mainly within the International
Whaling Commission (IWC), to declare large areas of the high seas, even entire
ocean basins, as ‘whale sanctuaries’ (Table 1.1). In 1979, an IWC majority voted
to create the Indian Ocean Sanctuary, based on a resolution put forward by the
IWC representative of the Seychelles. This sanctuary, which covers nearly 4
million square miles (10 million km 2 ), is intended to protect whales from
whaling on their mating and calving grounds as well as on some, but not all, of
their feeding grounds. The precise species remit of the IWC continues to be
debated, but the sanctuary is generally taken to cover only the large whales and
not the small whales, dolphins and porpoises that are not listed on the IWC
schedule and many of which continue to be killed in large numbers throughout
the Indian Ocean as the bycatch of various fisheries (Leatherwood et al, 1984).
Thus, the sanctuary designation falls short of providing comprehensive
protection for cetacean habitat (Leatherwood and Donovan, 1991). However,
the sanctuary has stimulated considerable research and some commercial whale
watch operations. A 2002 review of the Indian Ocean Sanctuary by the IWC
Scientific Committee featured a substantive paper detailing scientific work in
the sanctuary (de Boer et al, 2002). Although, in general, research and
conservation could be said to be at an early stage, the paper highlights the role
of the Indian Ocean Sanctuary in furthering research, management plans,
conservation strategies and other regional initiatives.