On October 16, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that a draft recovery plan for the Main Hawaiian Islands insular population of false killer whales had been prepared and was open for public comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The insular population, numbering\u00a0167 individuals, was listed as endangered in November 2012, but until now, no recovery plan had been prepared. Recovery plans for federally listed endangered species, or, as in this case, a distinct population segment (DPS) of a species, spell out the threats and the criteria for either downlisting (categorizing it as threatened) or delisting it altogether.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Most of the area presumed to be inhabited by the clusters of insular false killer whales is already off-limits to longline\u00a0fishing vessels, whose interactions with\u00a0false killer whales impact the wider-ranging pelagic population. According to the draft recovery plan, \u201ccommercial\u00a0longline fisheries have very little overlap\u00a0(about 5.4 percent) with the range of the [insular false killer whale population]\u00a0due to a longline fishing prohibited area around the Main Hawaiian Islands.\u201d (The\u00a0interaction of longliners with pelagic false killer whales is discussed in another article in this issue of\u00a0Environment Hawai\u2018i.<\/em>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n But even if the insular population\u00a0doesn\u2019t interact much, if at all, with longliners, it is still thought to interact with non-longline commercial\u00a0and recreational fisheries, such as troll,\u00a0handline, kaka line (where the line is set on or near the bottom or in shallow mid-water), and shortline fisheries. For all of these non-longline fisheries, regulatory\u00a0and reporting schemes are practically non-existent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Vessels in these fisheries carry no observers, their owners have no reporting\u00a0requirements, and their crews have no\u00a0training in handling false killer whales and other protected species such as turtles and seabirds with which they may\u00a0interact. This means that the degree of\u00a0harm to the population caused by these\u00a0fisheries is unknown. But that they do\u00a0cause harm is evident in the scars on dorsal\u00a0fins and mouthline injuries that are seen\u00a0by researchers and scientists studying these animals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the actions recommended in the draft plan is that threats from the\u00a0non-longline fishing sector be addressed,\u00a0\u201cincluding incidental take and competition with fisheries for prey. Specifically,\u00a0determine how, why, and which non- longline commercial and\/or recreational\u00a0fishery or fisheries may be causing serious\u00a0injury and\/or mortality by implementing\u00a0adequate reporting requirements for those fisheries, coupled with enhanced outreach with fishermen who may interact with\u00a0MHI FKWs. Implement management actions as needed to reduce incidental\u00a0take and competition with fisheries, and\u00a0monitor their effectiveness.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Other threats to the population called out in the plan include reduced prey size and abundance; environmental contaminants that bioaccumulate in the whales\u00a0(for example, PCBs, pesticides such as DDT, and heavy metals) and naturally\u00a0occurring toxins; changes to the ocean\u00a0climate including warming, acidification,\u00a0and low-productivity zones; harmful dis- ease vectors that may increase as a result of climate change; anthropogenic noise; and marine debris.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Recovery to the point the population is delisted is expected to take at least 50 years and \u201cassumes an increasing average\u00a0annual population trend … greater than or equal to 2 percent over two generations\u00a0and assumes high resource investment into implementation of recovery actions,\u201d the plan states, with a minimum popula- tion of 406 individuals. \u201cIf resource investment into recovery is low to moderate or if the average annual population trend is not increasing at the predicted rate, then this timeframe may need to be revised.\u201d The earliest possible time scenario,\u00a0NOAA says, is \u201cat least 25 years based on\u00a0the current reclassification criteria.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The cost? \u201cWe estimate the total cost of recovery over a minimum of 50 years to be at least $346,866,000.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The draft plan is available for public comment through December 15. For more information, see: https:\/\/www.federalregister.gov\/documents\/2020\/10\/16\/2020-22950\/ endangered-and-threatened-species- draft-recovery-plan-and-draft-recovery- implementation-strategy-for.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2014 Patricia Tummons<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On October 16, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that a draft recovery plan for the Main Hawaiian Islands insular population of false killer whales had been prepared and was open for public comment. The insular population, numbering 167 individuals, … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7856,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,8,17,475],"tags":[7],"class_list":["post-13041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-endangered-species","category-fisheries","category-marine","category-november-2020","tag-patricia-tummons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13041"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13041\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}