Here is what I said:
"Thank you Chair. Before I introduce the paper CC05, I should explain its genesis, as also explained in footnote 1. The Conservation Committee planning meetings last year and this tasked me to work with others to develop suggestions for the [Conservation] Committee on advancing work to reduce cetacean bycatch.
As you can see, I was able to assemble an excellent and
remarkable group of people (you will see their names at the top of the document)
and over the last few months we have developed this paper. (Please also note
that whilst I am speaking from the UK microphone this is not a UK document and
my Commissioner will probably offer his own observations in due course.)
The document is intended to provide an overview of the
topic to provide context – this is contained in its annex – and, as the last planning
meeting requested, it makes some broad suggestions about how to take this issue
forward.
Bycatch is an enormous conservation issue – enormous
in terms of importance and scope - as you will see in the document we call it a
‘global crisis’ – in some cases it is driving populations towards extinction. Undoubtedly
it is the most pressing conservation issue of our time for cetaceans. Hence
we should undoubtedly now be trying to steer some energy and effort towards it.
Bycatch includes all entanglements in fishing gear and
is an issue for both large and small cetaceans, and occurs throughout all the
world’s oceans and rivers. It involves a wide variety of fishing operations
from artisanal to very large-scale commercial operations.
Back in 2006, Professor Andy Read and colleagues provided
the now famous global estimate for bycatch of cetaceans. They suggested that it
was in the region of 308,000 animals per year.
Since then, there has been an increase in the amount
of gear deployed globally and often with stronger equipment being used,
increasing the potential for bycatch and subsequent mortality. Large cetaceans
may be underrepresented in fisheries observer data - as they often do not
remain with the gear or will carry it away with them, hence the estimate from
Read and colleagues is now likely to be an underestimate of the real toll.
Animals which are captured in fishing gear but
subsequently escape, often have scars on their bodies indicative of such
events. Such matters have been most studied in the North America region – so we
take some of our examples from there but this should not be taken to mean that
we think that the issue was limited to this region - recent investigations
documenting these scars on endangered North Atlantic right whales and humpback
whales along the East Coast of the USA indicate that they regularly encounter
and shed gear and that many more have been affected than have been reported
entangled. Researchers have found that between 65-85% of the individuals within
these populations bear scars from having encountered gear and that, on average,
12-16% of these populations exhibit new scars each year. These studies have
also shown that there has been a significant increase in the rate of serious
entanglements detected over the last 30 years in the Northeast Atlantic.
Again, these results indicate that bycatch is a more
frequent occurrence than fisheries data indicate.
Generally, given the low rate at which these bycatch
events have been reported (e.g. some <10% in the case of carcass detection rates);
the most effective management initiatives are likely to be those that focus on
prevention.
For
some populations and species, the observed deaths and serious injuries caused
by bycatch continue to exceed what are considered to be sustainable levels and
bycatch is a particular conservation concern for some small cetacean
populations and species.
These include, of course, the vaquita, many river
dolphin populations and others.
Given
the large number of small cetacean species that are ‘data deficient’ according
to the IUCN, there are also likely to be populations that are not well
described that are also threatened by bycatch, especially as the world’s fishing
fleets expand in some areas.
Bycatch is not just a conservation issue but a welfare
matter too.
Chronic entanglement is regarded as one of the most
severe forms of animal cruelty. Cetaceans as breath-holding animals will not
experience a swift death if trapped underwater. Prolonged suffering can occur
and in the case of the largest whales that swim away with netting and other
fishing gear wrapped around them they can experience severe wounding and
sometimes impaired feeding leading to severe emaciation or other health
consequences that can eventually lead to death sometime later or which may
affect the health and fecundity of the animal even after gear is removed. These
effects often go undetected following release or escape from fishing gear and
there is often uncertainty about the outcome because “survivors” are not
necessarily re-sighted and deaths not necessarily observed.
Many studies on bycatch focus solely on quantifying
mortality to understand the risk to population viability, however, the stress
and suffering experienced by individual animals cannot be ignored. And the
average time to death to death for an entangled, free-swimming North Atlantic
right whales is 6 months.
We cannot ignore either the conservation or the
welfare implications of this issue.
In
his 2008 paper, ‘The Looming Crisis’,
Professor Read stated that one of the areas most needed to address this issue
globally is a system through which successful mitigation measures can be made
available to a global audience. In our paper to you we echo this, and we
propose that it is the ‘Transfer of expertise, technology and management
measures’ that would be the primary focus for the contribution by the
IWC.
It is perhaps, remarkably there is no global effort
being made to address this matter. We have the opportunity; arguably we have
the responsibility.
Finally, in section 3 of paper CC05 – we outline some
options [for the IWC], including a ‘threats-based’
Conservation Management Plan addressing Bycatch Mitigation; The Establishment
of a Bycatch Working Group of the Conservation Committee; the Development of
the Bycatch Initiative following the Example of the Disentanglement Initiative,
and the establishment of an expert panel.
If we move forward with a bycatch Conservation
Management Plan – it would be the first threat-based CMP. Hitherto CMPs have
focused on species and populations and many are likely to include bycatch.
Perhaps the CMPs should maintain their taxonomic focus. A working group of the Conservation Committee
would not be difficult to establish and could follow the model already being
effectively used for ship-strikes. The Disentanglement Initiative shows us how
effective it can be to have the right person in the right place at the right
time: and we should certainly take this into account (and there is of course a
relationship between the Disentanglement work and the proposed bycatch
mitigation initiative) – and I draw the meeting’s attention to the key elements
identified as bullets in section 3.3 and, we also highlighted the idea of
establishing an expert panel or group to advise the initiative.
Our intention here was not to be prescriptive but to
try to help inform the view of the conservation committee by looking at the various
mechanisms that might be used to develop a BYCATCH MITIGATION INITIATIVE. And I
should stress that this is what we are talking about, not assessment of
removals – this is already embedded in the work of the Scientific Committee –
but ways to mitigate bycatch. So we should perhaps call this the bycatch
mitigation initiative.
My working group went on discussing this matter after
we filed the paper and key in our ongoing thinking are the expert panel and a
bycatch initiative coordinator.
And, of course, inherent in any effort made from the
IWC is that this should work hand in hand with those other international
organisations which also have complementary interests. A list is provided in
CC05 and would include inter alia the
Convention for the Conservation of Migratory Species and its cetacean-facing
daughter agreements and FAO.
In closing this introduction Chairman, I note that
this is certainly a multi-faceted issue – addressing it will not be easy - but
there needs to be a beginning.
So, let us be bold and make a start to try
to positively influence this very pressing matter now."
I am pleased to report that the Bycatch Initiative went on to win support in the Conservation Committee and then in the Commission meeting where there were also some donations made to support it and it is now open for further support.
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| Tonya Wimmer at the IWC Scientific Committee in May |
The original 'heavy lifting' on paper CC05 was mainly done by Tonya Wimmer and I am very grateful to her and the other participants in the drafting group for their work.
Potentially this is something both novel and very important which has now been initiated at the IWC and the tremendous support of WWF (who lobbied around the halls in support of it), HSI, WDC and other NGOs - as listed in the intervention made by Aimee Leslie (HERE) - should also be acknowledged and likewise the support from the IWC Scientific Committee.
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