People are more and more concerned for marine animals as California coast becomes the place of entangled whales.
- The crab fishery is the most dangerous for whales
- The Pacific Ocean is experiencing unusual warming
- Whales are changing their feeding habits and come closer to the shore
The global warming issue hasn’t been discussed for nothing lately and for those of you who didn’t think it’s real, here’s a new problem we have to deal with because of climate change. The Pacific Ocean has been experiencing an unusual warming which affects the migratory routes of whales.
What happens is that the warm water somehow influences the whales’ feeding patterns so they start following their prey a lot closer to the shore. And because they come so close to the shore they get entangled in the gears and nets of lobstermen, fishermen and crabbers.
The number of entangled whales has grown more than 400 percent than usual and this year more than 60 have come close enough to the shore to get into trouble. It seems that the biggest problem is at the crab fishery and both governmental and non-governmental agencies have started to work on finding out the reason why the whales are coming especially to that area as well as on finding a solution for the problem.
Although at this time of the year whales should be offshore, they are unnaturally close to the beach and the phenomenon is so rare that fisherman with over 40 years of experience don’t recall seeing anything similar.
In order to protect the mammals, crabbers have been trained to ‘babysit’ them until authorities arrive. Because closing the crab fishery would bring a big gap in the economy, authorities are trying to find out where and how the nests get into the whales’ hunting trajectory and find a way to possibly relocate the nests to keep both whales and crabbers happy. However, crabbers will start helping as soon as the crab season starts. This year the season is being delayed because of a very large bloom of algae that are toxic.
They are planning to change the ropes they are using for the nets in order to give whales more freedom. So, if one of them gets entangled, it could free itself.
All in all crabbers, authorities and environmentalists are working together to make the California coast waters a safer place for whales where crabbers could still undergo their fishing activities.
Image source: www.bing.com
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