Savannah Morning News
3.11.05
Pleasure boat injures endangered whale
Strike comes less than a week after a state panel approved a controversial marina complex nearby
Mary Landers
A 45-foot yacht struck a highly endangered right whale Thursday, slicing into its tail with propeller blades.
It's uncertain whether the wounded whale, struck about 10-15 miles off Cumberland Island, will survive its injury, according to Tricia Naessig, Georgia right whale survey team leader for the Wildlife Trust. The whale's best hope is for the injured portion of its tail to fall off.
"Animals with huge amounts of their tail gone have survived," Naessig said. "Others have bled out from the injury."
According to Naessig, the movements of the floppy, injured fluke reopened the wound as the agitated whale repeatedly slapped its tail. The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration Marine Fisheries Unit is investigating the incident. The boaters involved, who NOAA officials declined to identify, could receive penalties ranging from a verbal warning to criminal charges, according to Mark Oswell, spokesman for NOAA Fisheries Office for Law Enforcement."It depends on the actions of the boaters before, during and after the event," he said.
The incident, which occurred off the coast of Cumberland Island, came less than a week after a state panel approved plans for the state's largest marina complex to be built nearby. That approval was granted over environmentalists' concerns, among them that increased recreational boat traffic in the area poses a danger to Northern right whales, which use the water off south Georgia to give birth to their calves in the winter. An estimated 300-400 Northern right whales exist.
On March 4 the Coastal Marshlands Protection Committee approved plans for two marinas, three community docks and up to 92 private docks for Cumberland Harbour, a new subdivision near St. Marys. Atlanta-based Land Resources Companies is building the 1,000-acre upscale housing development on the mainland across from Cumberland Island National Seashore.
The whale strike shows that the decision to allow the marina complex was based on faulty or incomplete information, said Chris DeScherer, an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center.
A key document in the decision indicated that because the whales use coastal Georgia waters in the winter, they were unlikely to encounter boats from the development.
That document, the Biological Assessment, reads: "The majority of the vessels proposed for the project will be smaller vessels needing to remain inshore during these months due to rough seas inherent during this season. Larger transient vessels that could use the south Point Village Marina located on the St. Marys River normally traverse the Intercoastal Waterway and typically do not travel within the wintering grounds of the right whale at this time of year. As a result the time period most likely to have the highest vessel traffic will not likely coincide with peak right whale concentrations."
But Thursday's strike involved a boat that didn't behave in the predicted way, according to DeScherer. "This example shows that even small boats, boats 45-feet in length, go out in the ocean in the winter," DeScherer said. "They can interact with right whales and they can injure them."
A representative for the developer sees the situation differently. "We haven't built anything yet and this happened and it's happened in the past and could happen in the future regardless of the Cumberland Harbour project," said Mike DeMell, a vice president for Environmental Services Inc., which is Land Resources Companies' environmental consultant. "The best way to avoid it is to educate the people.The proposal for Cumberland Harbour includes an extensive education plan about all marine species."
The conditions of Cumberland Harbour's marina permit make mandatory a homeowner's environmental handbook and a boater education class that trains boaters about the endangered species in the local area. Land Resources worked with the DNR the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Marine Fisheries Service and others for more than 18 months to develop extensive education plans that would prevent boaters from harming whales and manatees.
"Either you develop coastal Georgia in a mindful way or develop it and people continue to access water without conditions on them," DeMell said. "People are going to get to the water."
DeMell noted that the residential component of Cumberland Harbour - about 1,000 new homes - is already being built. Many of those homeowners are likely to bring additional boats to the county, he said. "So the important part is what can Cumberland Harbour do to help prevent unfortunate encounters with wildlife," he said. That education plan extends to boaters traveling through and using the marinas temporarily. Those boaters are normally even less likely to be aware of endangered whales or manatees in the area, DeMell said.
Recreational boaters aren't the primary cause of right whale deaths, according to Brad Winn, wildlife biologist with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources. "On the broad scale it's a very rare event," he said.
Strikes from commercial vessels or entanglement in fishing gear do kill right whales, but a NOAA spokeswoman was reluctant to rule out smaller boats as a problem. "A lot of the injuries seen during necropsies on right whales are consistent with large vessel strikes," said Laura Engleby. "But that's preliminary information. We're still assessing it."
Aerial surveys of coastal waters Friday failed to turn up the injured whale, Naessig said. The female whale, who is unnamed, has never given birth. Her age and gender make her especially precious.
"That would be a hard thing for the population to lose," Naessig said. "In less than a year we've lost five breeding age females."
There was some good news this year, though. Researchers have recorded 26 Northern right whales born this calving season, the second highest count since 1990. And the injury Thursday gave researchers an opportunity to see whales interacting, when a second adult female whale was seen swimming with the injured animal.
"She was staying close to female who was injured," Naessig said. "She never seemed to go more than half a body length away. You could see the other animal directly below as if touching its stomach."
About the North Atlantic Right Whale
Name: The right whale was given its name by whalers. It was the "right" whale to hunt, because it moves slowly in the water and floats after being killed.
Numbers: Approximately 300
What they eat: Schools of crustaceans, especially copepods and krill
Where they live: Between northern Florida and Nova Scotia, migrating throughout the year.
Primary cause of death: Accidental collisions with ships and entanglement in fishing gear
Source: Woodshole Oceanographic Institute
