The First International Conference on Marine Mammal Protected Areas

used to study smaller-scale habitat use, including the extent to which dolphins overlap
with gillnets which are allowed to be used inside harbors in both protected areas. Twelve
months of acoustic monitoring of Akaroa Harbour showed Hector’s dolphins to be
present on 41% of the days at the time of year when gillnets are legal. This helps explain
the eight reported catches of dolphins inside the sanctuary during 1995-2005. Our
research approach was to estimate the sizes of protected areas needed to achieve
sustainable dolphin populations rather than to identify “critical” areas for the animals or
areas with the greatest overlap between dolphins and certain types of fishing gear. This is
partly because fisheries are relatively mobile and past protection measures had resulted in
substantial displacement of fishing effort to adjacent unprotected areas with relatively
high dolphin densities.
New protection measures announced by the Minister of Fisheries in 2008 are a major
improvement. In addition, the Minister of Conservation created three new marine
mammal sanctuaries. In these and the two existing protected areas, seismic exploration
and mining will be regulated, but fishing restrictions are no longer part of the sanctuary
regulations. This new package of protection measures is likely to mean that Hector’s
dolphin numbers will, at best, remain stable or, at worst, continue to decline. By
comparison, without fishery bycatch the populations would be expected to recover to
approximately half of their original levels in less than 40 years. Under the new protection
measures, this is expected to take more than 1,000 years.
Scientific innovation at the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary
Leila Hatch
Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary provides feeding and nursery habitat for
numerous cetacean species, including humpback, right, sei, and fin whales. Situated in
the middle of Massachusetts Bay, the sanctuary is heavily used for commerce and
recreation; it is sometimes regarded as an “urbanized” MPA. Meeting the protection and
management objectives of the sanctuary requires a good understanding of large whale
behavior and habitat use, information about the spatial and temporal characteristics of
human activity in the region, and mechanisms for assessing the effects of human
activities on whales in sanctuary waters.
Low-frequency acoustic data are being used to address multiple questions regarding the
locations, movements, and behavior of vocally active species in the sanctuary, and to
assess the potential for hearing loss and masking of those animals’ sounds. State-of-theart
multi-sensor tags and custom visualization software make it possible to examine the
behavior of individual whales, including foraging behavior and responses to vessels. Ship
tracking data allow researchers to characterize patterns of commercial traffic in the
sanctuary and, when integrated with acoustic data, to estimate the “acoustic footprints”
of vessels within the frequency ranges used by whales for communication. By integrating
empirical noise measurements, ship tracks, and data from tagged whales, water-column
sampling, bottom mapping and surface buoys, it is possible to examine whale behavior
and distribution in relation to variation in the physical and ecological environment.
ICMMPA <strong>Conference</strong> Proceedings
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