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Photo courtesy PCCS
The PCCS whale rescue team gets to work on freeing a right whale from a fishing gear entanglement. |
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Whale rescue program faces funding cuts
By Kaimi Rose Lum
BANNER STAFF
PROVINCETOWN — Funding for the renowned whale rescue program at the Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies could be slashed by more than $350,000 this coming year — a shortfall that would force the center to dismantle its whale disentanglement team, PCCS executive director Rich Delaney said this week.
While in previous years the center has been assured of $450,000 from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), all that has been guaranteed for its whale disentanglement program in the federal FY 2008 budget is $94,000.
“It essentially kills the program,” Delaney said.
Delaney spent most of last week in Washington, D.C., “talking to delegates,” and said he has spoken with “everybody in the northeast division of NMFS [the National Marine Fisheries Service],” the agency under NOAA’s umbrella that has partnered with the center.
“It’s somewhat settled right now,” he said of the cuts, “but there’s time for it to change if NOAA wants to revisit how they allocate their budget.”
If not, the center will have to consider dramatic scale-backs to the disentanglement program beginning Oct. 1.
The PCCS whale rescue program has been in existence for 25 years and is responsible for freeing 89 whales from life-threatening entanglements in fishing gear, five of those rescues involving critically endangered right whales who went on to have calves. Over the years members of the whale rescue team have not only developed top-flight skills in their field but have helped train and equip an entire network of people from Key West to Canada to disentangle whales. They also gather important data from every whale rescue — data that can help them in the overall effort to reduce the number of entanglements. For example, by identifying the types of fishing gear wrapped around a whale, they can draw conclusions about which gear is most harmful and get the word out.
The center is the only organization on the East Coast authorized to disentangle large whales. It also invented the way to do it. On Thanksgiving Day, 1984, the first whale was freed using disentanglement techniques developed by Stormy Mayo, now a senior scientist at PCCS, and David Mattila. Mayo and Mattila figured out how to slow down whales that were towing gear by attaching floats to them and then using various tools to cut them free. It is a technique based on the tactics whalers used to trap whales, only, “in that case, they’d lance them. In our case, we set them free,” Mayo said.
Now, said Mayo, that technique has been put to use throughout the world, in two hemispheres, to spare whales from torturous entanglements that can sometimes persist for months on end, causing the animals to literally saw their own bodies in half as they swim through the ocean.
Mayo also noted that a leading statistician has calculated that the loss of two right whale females may be enough to push the critically endangered species over the edge. The fact that the center has freed five of them means that the disentanglement proram is making a difference in the survival of the right whale.
“It’s a program that really has, in a very real sense, put itself right on the knife edge of the future of the species,” Mayo said. Disentanglement, he added, is the only method proven so far to have a direct impact on the survival of whales. “But of course if we don’t have the funding, we lose that potential.”
After news of the budget cuts, the center received the support of Senators John Kerry and Edward Kennedy and Congressman Bill Delahunt, who on Feb. 28 wrote NOAA to express their “serious concern” about the budget cuts.
“Our federal government should be using every tool at its disposal to protect the remaining right whales, rather than making drastic cuts in a tremendously successful and valuable whale [disentanglement] program,” the letter stated.
Teri Frady, a spokesperson for NOAA, confirmed that only $94,000 has been specifically earmarked for whale disentanglement in FY 2008. She said a total of $81 million was allocated by the president to the agency’s protected species and marine mammal programs around the nation, and that they are waiting for the 2009 allocation Of PCCS’s whale disentanglement program, Frady said, “It has always been a very important program for us and I don’t think that’s going to change.”
Delaney said that while he is “certainly sympathetic” to the difficult budget situation facing environmental agencies, it is important to remember that the Marine Mammal Protection Act requires NMFS, under NOAA’s umbrella, to protect whales.
“This is a big responsibility for the government and the people who are working for it,” he said.
For the whale rescuers at PCCS, at least, it’s a cause “we’ve always felt was worth putting our money and our lives on the line for,” said Mayo.
klum@provincetownbanner.com
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