Call for action to help save cetaceans

More than 250 cetacean experts from around the world have signed an open statement to global leaders calling for action to urgently address the precarious situation of many populations of whales, dolphins and porpoises (collectively known as ‘cetaceans’), many of which face extinction threats due to harmful human activity such as incidental bycatch by fisheries, chemical and noise pollution, global warming and ship-strikes.

The scientists say that of the 90 living cetacean species, more than half now have a concerning conservation status. Without urgent action, they predict the Northern Atlantic right whale could vanish, along with the critically endangered vaquita porpoise in Mexico, which sits “poised on the knife edge of extinction”.

Signed by some of the world’s leading cetacean scientists from more than 40 countries, the statement warns: “The lack of concrete action to address threats adversely affecting cetaceans in our increasingly busy, polluted, over-exploited and human-dominated seas and major river systems, means that many populations, one after another, will likely be declared extinct within our lifetimes…

Click below to read more. (The full article can be found on page 11)