Dear MARMAM Community,
I'm pleased to announce the publication of a new study in the journal
Marine Policy: "Commercial whale-watching reduces vessel incidents in
the vicinity of killer whales in Washington State".
Abstract:
There is increasing focus on the impacts of whale-watching on marine
mammal species around the world. In the inland waters of Washington
State and British Columbia, a region known as the Salish Sea, killer
whales (Orcinus orca) are protected by regulations to help mitigate the
acoustic and physical disturbance from small vessels. Most recently, the
State of Washington implemented a commercial whale-watching licensing
program that restricts viewing hours of whale-watching vessels within
one-half nautical mile of endangered Southern Resident killer whales to
four hours a day during three months of the year. During the development
of these regulations, an identified data gap was regarding the “sentinel
effect”, a question of whether the presence of commercial whale-watching
vessels can help mitigate speed and distance incidents by private
vessels via modeling correct viewing behavior and/or by directly
contacting vessels to prevent such incidents from occurring. This pilot
study conducted five months of boat-based and shore-based data
collection on vessel incidents in the proximity of two killer whale
populations in the Salish Sea. A negative binomial model predicts a
significant decrease in mean estimated incidents per hour by private
vessels in the presence of commercial whale-watching vessels, while
there was no significant difference in the presence of boater education
vessels. This study provides the first quantitative support for the
sentinel effect, a finding that should be analyzed further in ongoing
studies and incorporated into the adaptive management of vessel
regulations, especially those that restrict only commercial
whale-watching vessels.
The full paper is available open access here:
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2022.105290
<https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2022.105290>
Best,
Monika Wieland Shields
Director, Orca Behavior Institute
Friday Harbor, WA
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