Gray Whale Could Make Atlantic Comeback After Disappearance; Here Are the Clues

The gray whale has become the prime focus of analysis efforts as it approaches to comeback to European seas sometime after a half-millennium hiatus.

Youri van den Hurk is organizing for a potentially significant complimentary event: the comeback of the gray whale to European seas after the last 500-year sabbatical. As per van den Hurk, the gray whale departed from the eastern Atlantic in the fourteenth century as well as the western Atlantic in the seventeenth to eighteenth centuries.

Van den Hurk, a research scientist at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), is a participant in a project, driven in part by multiple encounters of isolated gray whales from the North Pacific species in the Atlantic Ocean in the past years.

"The gray whale remains the only whale population that has vanished from a whole ocean," he remarked. Van den Hurk is a member of the Demise of the Atlantic Gray Whale (DAG) project, which is exploring if the animal will ever reemerge to European seas. A better comprehension of the past, obviously, is necessary for a better understanding of the future. This is the reason DAG is probing the reasons of the gray whale's extinction throughout the eastern Atlantic 5 millennia ago, as stated in a report from Sixth News.

Gray whales typically expand to be up to 15 meters long and weigh up to 40 tons, which is approximately the weight of 20 automobiles. Their expected lifespan is 50 to 70 years.

Baleen Whale's Nature

These are a specific species of whale for whom the lips have comb-like layers of bone called baleen instead of teeth. Baleen whales all digest by filtering plankton, krill, as well as tiny fish into the ocean.

Gray whales take the food from the ocean bottom while floating and flipping on their bellies, a technique rare among baleen whales. The ensuing "mud plumes" are advantageous for the environment since they generate real nutrients and crustaceans, benefiting other marine wildlife.

In accordance with the United States National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) published data, the populations of gray whales throughout the North Pacific totalled roughly 27,000 in 2016.

Gray whales engage in one of the greatest recorded migrations of any mammal, departing from their Arctic eating areas in September-October and traveling across the Atlantic Ocean. On the other hand, van Hurk mentioned that the disappearance of the gray whale may be caused by environmental or human issues.

Probing The Cause of Gray Whale Disappearance

Scientists do acknowledge that the number of Atlantic gray whales started to decrease steadily around about 50,000 years ago, a phenomenon that scientists believe was caused by environmental causes. Through the 16th century, numerous whaling cultures were thriving across Europe, allowing van den Hurk to assume they assisted in the demise of whales. The central challenge remains understanding the particular circumstances that produced this disappearance.

Thus, according van den Hurk, resolving this issue will be critical to European conservation efforts if the species recovers. Van den Hurk researched the collagen maintained in whale bone fragments at places utilized by numerous cultures throughout Europe, particularly Spain, south-western France, Normandy, and Scandinavia, there under direction of Dr. James Barrett, an NTNU environmental and historical research scientist.

Gathered specimens were delivered to a research facility at the University of Cambridge in England, wherein scientists utilized mass spectrometry, an analytical method used to assess the mass-to-charge proportion of ions. Collagen, a bone protein, is crucial for the research. Moreover, stable isotopes maintained in remains send information on the migrating paths of gray whales.

Noise Hints of Gray Whales

Considering the compilation of the findings, a further stage is going to estimate the whales' migration trajectories in order to offer knowledge on potentially dangerous impacts including such plastic debris or ship noise, which seem to be likely to impact potential regeneration of the eastern Atlantic.

Jakob Tougaard, a lecturer at Aarhus University at Denmark's Department of Marine Ecology, is focused on vessel noise. He has still been studying the comments in response of marine animals to subsurface noise from whale-watching boats as part of yet another project called SATURN.

Those disruptions decrease the amount of time whales spend seeking food or feeding their young, jeopardizing their survival, he adds.

This SATURN project educates regulators as well as stakeholders on permissible vessel noise limits and productive methods to underwater noise reduction.

Climate change might boost the odds of the gray whale returning to European seas. The Northwest Passage, the maritime route connecting the Atlantic and Pacific through the Arctic, has been exposed for longer as a consequence of rising temperatures. As added by van den Hurk, this is what has caused at least four whales to take a false turn in North Alaska, bringing them towards the Atlantic but instead of back into the northern Pacific.

Last year, a gray whale was observed off the coastline of Morocco in the summertime, as well as near to France and Italy.

It might take years and years for gray whales to restore their home in the eastern Atlantic, van den Hurk explained.

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