by Nathalie Ward
A humpback whale, named “Salt,” makes a 3,000-mile round-trip journey each year — swimming from the colder waters of the North Atlantic to the warm waters of the Caribbean Sea. To protect Salt and her species on both ends of their migration, the United States and the Dominican Republic and have joined hands to form a special relationship — a Sister Sanctuary.
Salt was first seen in New England waters in the mid-1970s. She is a greatgrandmother! Over the past 30 years, she has escorted ten of her calves from the mating and calving grounds in the Dominican Republic back to New England’s feeding grounds.
DR and US Partner in Historic Conservation Effort
The Dominican Republic’s Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources and the United States’ National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have established the world’s first sister sanctuary linkage protecting an endangered migratory marine mammal species on both ends of its range.
The Santuario de Mamíferos Marinos de la República Dominicana (Marine Mammal Sanctuary of the Dominican Republic) and Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary off the coast of Massachusetts, two marine protected areas 3,000 miles apart, provide critical support for the same humpback whale population of around 900 whales, which spend spring and summer in the rich feeding grounds of Stellwagen Bank before heading south to the warmer waters of the Dominican Republic in late fall to mate and give birth to their young.
The sister sanctuary agreement was designed to enhance coordination in management efforts between the two sanctuaries and help improve humpback whale recovery in the North Atlantic.
“Long-term research tells us that the same individuals that summer off New England spend their winters off the Dominican Republic,” said Stellwagen Bank Sanctuary superintendent Dr. Craig MacDonald. “Coordinating management and research across these habitats moves us several steps closer to ensuring the health of this endangered species.”
The official memorandum of understanding to create the sister sanctuary relationship was signed by Daniel J. Basta, NOAA Sanctuary Program Director and Dr. Maximiliano Puig, Minister for the Environment and Natural Resources for the Dominican Republic. The sister sanctuary agreement goes into effect immediately and establishes the cooperation guidelines for the next five years.
“This conservation action is important as a model for the Wider Caribbean Region,” said Puig. “Our sanctuary was the first marine mammal sanctuary established in the region, and it continues to lead by example. Our broadest mandate is to engender a new discussion in our society about the importance of marine mammals, the oceans in which they live and our responsibility as ocean stewards.”
As sister sanctuaries, the two sites will explore new avenues for collaborative management efforts, including joint research, monitoring, education and capacity building programs. The NOAA National Marine Sanctuary Program anticipates that the relationship will be crucial to future protection of the North Atlantic humpback whale population, as well as to the development of further cooperative agreements.
“The sister sanctuary relationship will play a powerful role in protecting endangered humpback whales, and the opportunity for international cooperation in marine conservation is invaluable,” said Basta. “This agreement has the potential to improve our scientific knowledge, enhance our management ability and increase the program’s visibility — benefits that extend far beyond the sanctuaries involved.”
Regional Significance
During the past two decades, awareness of marine mammals and their habitats in the Wider Caribbean Region has increased. Because marine mammals are transboundary animals, successful conservation of marine mammals in the region will ultimately depend upon the commitment of countries there to build and maintain, with international assistance, internal capacities for setting conservation priorities and achieving high standards of population and habitat protection. Our ability to protect humpback whales will be determined by understanding the mosaic of interactions, including the pervasive historical, geographic, biological, chemical and human factors, which influence their abundance and distribution. The human activities that affect these animals are unlikely to stop but we can think about what we do, and make choices about an integrated regional-scale approach to research, outreach and policy strategy within an environmentally relevant and socially responsible framework.
One of the goals of the Protocol concerning Specially Protected Areas to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Convention for the Protection and Development of the Marine Environment of the Wider Caribbean Region is to develop specific regional and national management plans for endangered, threatened or vulnerable species in support of national biodiversity conservation efforts. In order to achieve this, The Caribbean Environment Programme of UNEP, under the framework of the Specially Protected Areas Protocol, developed a draft “Marine Mammal Action Plan for the Wider Caribbean Region” in 2005. (See www.cep.unep.org/pubs/meetingreports/MMAP/mmap.php). This framework of activities has been developed in order to assist governments in the region with their efforts to develop and improve marine mammal conservation practices and policies. In order to accomplish these
objectives, the draft Marine Mammal Action Plan specifically requests the following
actions needed:
“…design marine protected areas and other management regimes that maintain
ecological connections between marine protected areas in order to satisfy species’
requirements, including ‘sister sanctuary’ relationships that promote protection for
transboundary assets.”
The Northern Sister
The Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary encompasses 842 square miles of ocean, stretching between Cape Ann and Cape Cod offshore of Massachusetts. Renowned for its scenic beauty and remarkable productivity, the sanctuary supports a rich assortment of marine life, including marine mammals, more than 30 species of seabirds, more than 60 species of fishes, and hundreds of marine invertebrates and plants. The NOAA National Marine Sanctuary Program seeks to increase public awareness of marine resources and maritime heritage by conducting scientific research, monitoring, exploration and educational programs.
The Southern Sister
In October 1986, the Silver Bank Humpback Whale Sanctuary was established in the Dominican Republic to protect the mating, calving and nursery grounds of humpback whales. In 1996, the sanctuary was extended to include Navidad Bank and part of Samana Bay, covering the three main humpback breeding grounds in Dominican Republic waters. At this time the sanctuary was renamed Santuaria de Mamíferos Marinos de la Republica Dominicana. Today, it protects all marine mammals within its 19,438-square-mile area. Within the sanctuary, Silver Bank, located approximately 50 miles northeast of the Dominican Republic coast in the Caribbean Sea, represents the densest concentration of humpbacks found in the North Atlantic.
Partners in Conservation
Created in the year 2000 by the merger of more than ten institutions, the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources is one of the young ministries of the Dominican Republic. Its mission is to protect and manage the country’s environment and natural resources with the objective of reaching sustainable development.
Every year, during the humpback whale observation period of January to March, the ministry establishes an agreement with local and governmental institutions to promote tourism, marine and business activities within the sanctuary that do not affect the habitat and reproductive cycle of the mammals. This initiative is the result of the ministry’s policy for an open, democratic and participative management based on the cooperation and strategic alliances between the state, local communities, the private sector and non-governmental organizations.
NOAA, an agency of the USCommerce Department, is celebrating 200 years of science and service to that nation. From the establishment of the Survey of the Coast in 1807 by Thomas Jefferson to the formation of the Weather Bureau and the Commission of Fish and Fisheries in the 1870s, much of the United States’ scientific heritage is rooted in NOAA. NOAA is dedicated to enhancing economic security and national safety through the prediction and research of weather and climate-related events and information service delivery for transportation, and by providing environmental stewardship of the United States’ coastal and marine resources. Through the
emerging Global Earth Observation System of Systems, NOAA is working with its federal partners, more than 60 countries and the European Commission to develop a global monitoring network that is as integrated as the planet it observes, predicts and protects.
Humpback Whales’ Family Tales
At Stellwagen Bank, humpback whales are named each year at a “Whale Naming Party.” The underside of a humpback’s tailflukes have a distinctive black and white pigmentation pattern, unique to every individual, just like human fingerprints. Researchers name whales based on these coloration patterns. Stellwagen Bank boasts four generations of humpback whales. Born in 2001, Eden is the great-grandchild of Veil. (Veil gave birth to Batik, who gave birth to Filament, who gave birth to Eden.)
From their summer feeding grounds in high latitudes, humpback whales migrate thousands of miles to their winter calving and mating grounds in the tropics. The humpback migration between New England and the Caribbean is approximately a 3,000-mile round trip.
Born in warm, tropical waters of the Caribbean (January to March), a humpback whale is between ten and 15 feet (3 to 4.5 metres) long at birth, and weighs up to 1 ton (907 kg) — the size of two pick-up trucks.
The calf, born tail-first, nurses on the mother’s rich milk which has a very high fat content — 35 to 50 percent compared with two percent for human milk and three to five percent for cow’s milk). Hundreds of litres are drunk daily. During the first six months of its life, the calf can grow almost an inch a day or almost 100 pounds (45.45 kg) per day. This weight gain is important because the calves need to build a thick blubber layer for their migration north to the cold waters of the North Atlantic. The transition from nursing to feeding begins at around nine or ten months (October/ November), when the calf begins to learn how to catch fish. During the Fall, calves “experiment” with different feeding techniques including filter feeding (taking large gulps of water below the surface and filtering the water through baleen plates), bubble feeding (releasing large bubbles to the surface to corral fish) and kick feeding (slamming her tail down on the surface to stun swimming prey).
During the feeding season (April to October), a humpback whale may consume up to a ton (1,361 kg) of food a day — easily over a million calories! Or they can eat about 5,000 sand lance. Each sand lance has fed on hundreds of zooplankton, that in turn has fed on millions of diatoms. So, one meal for a humpback may represent more than 400 million diatoms.
Humpback whales reach sexual maturity at six to ten years of age or when males reach the length of 35 feet (11.6 m) and females reach 40 feet (15 m). Each female typically bears a calf every two or three years and the gestation period is 11 to 12 months. A calf will travel with its mother for 9 months to a year, learning everything it needs to know to survive on its own.
Humpbacks do not eat during winter months, subsisting instead on reserves of fat built up over the summer feeding season. In fact, female whales may lose up to a third of their body weight during the nursing period, which can last up to a year. Scientists estimate the average life span of humpbacks to be between 30 to 50 years, although no one knows for certain.
For more information visit: Dominican Ministry of Environment www.medioambiente.gov.do; Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary stellwagen.noaa.gov; NOAA
www.noaa.gov; NOAA National Ocean Service www.oceanservice.noaa.gov; US
National Marine Sanctuary Program sanctuaries.noaa.gov.
Dr. Nathalie Ward, External Affairs Coordinator for Stellwagen Bank National Marine
Sanctuary, negotiated the sister sanctuary memo of understanding. Since 1990, she has
served as marine mammal consultant for the United Nations Environment
Programme/Specially Protected Areas and its draft Marine Mammal Action Plan. She
divides her time as a marine biologist and marine mammal educator between Bequia,
Saint Vincent & the Grenadines, and Woods Hole, Massachusetts. For additional information about the sister sanctuary relationship, please contact Nathalie.Ward@noaa.gov
or nward@mbl.edu.
This article originally appeared in the March 2007 print edition of Caribbean Compass.
