A group of Marine scientists has recently revealed that whales and boats on the New England coast, more known as the Gulf of Maine, has been crashing to each other more often than people would have thought. These collisions were said to cause injuries on whales.
The conservative group Whale and Dolphin Conservation has recently published their journal Marine Mammal Science, showing that the humpback whale population located in the southern Gulf of Maine were seen with injuries that could only be conflicted with vessel strikes.
In their journal, these scientists found out that 15 percent of the humpback whales found on the body of water located on Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine were the injured as a result of clashing to boats. These whales were reported to come to New England to feed every spring of the year.
Alex Hill, the lead author of the study, said that vessel strikes are detrimental not only to whales but also to boaters. "Long-term studies can help us figure out if our outreach programs to boaters are effective, what kind of management actions are needed and help to assess the health of the population," Hill said in a report by Press Herald.
However, New England Aquarium chief scientist for marine mammal Scott Kraus was skeptical of the study. He said that the journal might have overestimated the level of ship strikes since there could be a different interpretation of scars and markings on humpback whales. Still, Kraus believes that the findings are still valid and should be given a concern.
Scientists all over the world are still studying and debating if these ship strikes are affecting negatively to the population of whales. Various studies of ship and whale clashes are showing polarizing conclusions.
In a 2014 study, 171 blue whales in the eastern North Pacific stated that shipping lanes modifications could reduce the collisions with vessels. However, a Marine Mammal Science at that year mentioned that these ship strikes only had minimal impact on blue whales.
Between 1978 and 2011, 15 out of 108 whale collisons have resulted to death in Alaska. This was mentioned in a 2012 report published by Journal of Marine Biology.
