Dominica is rightly famous for its resident sperm whale population. The Dominica Sea Turtle Conservation Organization is poised to help protect our sperm whales as well. For more than 10 years, we have been monitoring ship traffic off our shores, to understand where satellite-tagged leatherback turtles and ship traffic overlap. This information is critical in our efforts to reduce ship-turtle collisions and protect the last six leatherback sea turtles that call Dominica home. This ship traffic information, and available knowledge of where whales reside off the Dominica coast, presents an important opportunity for action to protect our whales.
Our waters are home to a unique community of sperm whales. The females, specifically, spend their entire lives in our Eastern Caribbean waters. This isolated community exhibits behaviors around communication, feeding, family structures, and other habits that rise to the level of culture. Sperm Whales are an iconic species and part of Dominica’s natural identity, and they attract human visitors to our island as well. Whale watching and swim-with-whale ecotourism accounts for a significant part of Dominica’s travel and tourism industry, which as a whole makes up about 33% of Dominica’s GDP. Whale tourism revenue has been estimated to be about $US 3 million annually.
Beyond their economic value, Dominica’s whales, along with its dolphins, sea turtles, and coral reefs, are a big part of why we can call our home “The Nature Island”. Unfortunately, Dominica’s whales are under threat from climate change, entanglement in fishing gear, noise pollution, and collisions with vessels. Our sperm whale mortality rates are high and just one of three calves lives to their first birthday, putting the community at severe risk of reaching a population size too low to sustain itself.
Ship strikes are a significant source of whale mortality globally, and a significant threat to Dominica’s whales as well. Many of Dominica’s sperm whales reside off the western shore of the island, which is where all the sea vessels, cruise ships, and an increasing number of high-speed ferries ply Dominica’s waters. To make matters worse, vessel traffic in Dominica is not organized with established shipping lanes (a traffic separation scheme to TSS in maritime parlance). However, there are available fixes to this problem.
Established and regulated shipping lanes in Dominica’s water would be an important first step, as would establishing and expanding Marine Protected Areas to save our whales and other marine wildlife that our economy depends on. The Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary off the US coast of Massachusetts is another region of high whale density and heavy vessel traffic where whales suffered from routine ship strikes, making the area safer for whales. This shows that whales and vessel traffic can safely coexist, without adverse economic impact, by establishing marine protected areas and clearly defined and regulated shipping lanes.
The benefits of marine protected areas and regulated ship traffic to Dominica’s whales and the people of Dominica are clear. These would protect whales, other marine life, and the fisheries that are a crucial part of our economic livelihood. Whale-based ecotourism would be sustainable for the long term through a healthy and resilient whale population. Finally, through these actions, Dominica would play a role in achieving the United Nations’ “30 by 30” initiative, which aims to designate 30% of Earth’s land and ocean area as protected areas in order to enhance global conservation and to help mitigate climate change (a threat to Dominica as a whole).
It is not only whales but sea turtles and other marine life, fishers, other ocean users, and air quality that will benefit from organizing ship traffic around Dominica. Establishing shipping lanes will strengthen Dominica’s ocean management for everyone’s benefit by protecting and preserving the natural resources that draw people from around the world to The Nature Island.
Sometimes, the joke of Dominican talkers are not even laughable!
How do a Dominican protect a wale or any sort of fish including turtles from a sailing, Ship?
The idea is so damn ridiculous, it’s not even worth paying any attention. “we can do better for our unique Sperm Wales” as if insinuating that Dominica is the only place on the planet they are found!
Note: “Sperm whales are the largest of the toothed whales and have one of the widest global distributions of any marine mammal species. They are found in all deep oceans, from the equator to the edge of the pack ice in the Arctic and Antarctic.”
We had a ship, we sailed it around Europe, Denmark, Germany and other place to the Caribbean, including Dominica, never once we struct a Wale, of any species, never came close to one; but these pseudo wale caretakers want to make idiots believe they have a nursing bottle feeding wales, or some crap!
What the hell can you all do for Wales when you can’t even feed…
I’m from a sperm but I’m not a whale. I need medical attention and protection. I cannot afford to swim over to Martinique for medical treatment if my finger hurts. So then, why you continue with your distraction on the sperm whale why don’t you build a real “Hospital”? Those whales are fine and doing very well in their habitat – as they have been here in the Dominica before any one of us. They don’t bother us, neither should we bother them. Sperm whales didn’t vote for you; people did. Now you want to preference fish over people? Build a real hospital. That whale business is just to get more Chinese into our already overpopulated country.
There is nothing as simple as designating shipping lanes. It remains up to the government with it’s deplorable track record on marine conservation to do something. Yes, fisheries are understaffed but they too lack the power to employ suitably qualified individuals without a lengthy “soon come”.. People have been requesting shipping lanes for almost 30 years. The ferries are prime examples, running as close as half a mile from shore sometimes, destroying fishing equipment and dive buoys. Yet, off the French islands they adhere to shipping lanes because it’s the law, they would be fined. And people care.
Whales learn very quickly where to avoid boats, as has been shown everywhere else on the planet.
The government has to stop making noise about doing something….and do it.
Donn’t talk nonsense, if you are not stupid!
And so let me show you how much you do not even understand what you are talking about!
A shipping lane is a shipping route that is covered on a regular schedule. Shipping lanes can be on land, in the sea, via rail or in the air. Shipping lanes can be busy or not, depending on the popularity of the route.
Nevertheless, you can’t standardized any one route, where it applies to the ocean, or air!
Assuming you are sailing to the island of Barbados from Dominica, you would have to travel a certain distance South at a certain degree, plus or minus talking drift into consideration; then you would have to change course to a certain degree East, as Barbados is out there in the middle of the Atlantic!
So, this bull you talking about government should do this; that is one thing that damn corrupted crook Roosevelt Skerrit or nobody in Dominica has power over, because you all can’t dictate where a fish or Wales can swim!
Only God Can!
“have to travel a certain distance South at a certain degree, plus or minus talking drift into consideration;”
The word should be taking rather than “talking drift into consideration.”
And if you do nor understand drift: it’s like this if you are suppose to be sailing at 20 degrees east, you had better set you compass to sale 25 degrees East, so by the time you drift down five degrees, you will not be off course, but get to your precise destination, the same rule applies to flying!
OMG!!
Thank you so much.
This guy is always high on some kind of drug.Skerrit invented the Yes We Care and is paying to take care of more than 300 senior citizens.Skerrit invented a $300 monthly salary for 2,700 senior citizens.All you to wicked cursed sons and daughters of Satan.Go,take care of mothers and fathers.Wicked IBO and Francisco,make a contribution from your RAT holes in the USA. Honour your mother and father so your days may be long and not tormented as they are today.
One easy way to protect the resident sperm whales is to ban tourists jumping into the water with them. Permits for this activity should completely cease before we drive them away with our interference. We’re supposed to be the nature island – but only when it suits us and we can make money, it seems. Pure hypocrisy.
Nothing is wrong in advocating better care for the sperm whales that have taken up residence in our waters. Most living species deserve a fair chance to survive and thrive on this mundane planet.
Having said that, people matter more. Before we make a convincing case for the sperm whale, what about our people? Many residents, at this very moment, are just merely existing. Living, right now, is as difficult as trying to squeeze water out of a stone.
Presently, our elderly people at the Grotto, come to mind. What is happening to the inmates at this home is shamefully unacceptable especially knowing that Roosevelt and his immediate family live in unbelievable opulence ( $64K monthly at tax payers’ expense), while our ‘ pioneers’ are neglected and left to swim in their own body fluids.
Wow you managed to bring the prime minister’s name into a story about conservation of an endangered species. That is some next level of obsession
Next level of care and concern. The homeless/vagrant population is exploding exponentially during Roosevelt’s tenure like no other time before. Fact!
Hunger pains prevalent, joblessness abounds, poverty widespread, malnutrition among the babies and the aged abnormally high. People should be priority. They matter much more than sperm whales. They should be our main focus. Am I wrong? Plus, every thing I just mentioned is the irrefutable truth.
lbo, I have no intentions of offending you; but how are these talking Dominicans going to take better care of a whale?
You know; the grooming of wales are carried out by what is scientifically known as cleaner fish, which are ” the smaller species Etoplus maculatus, they remove dead skin ectopararasites,, and infected tissues from the surface or gill chambers , of Whales!
The Dominica hoopla is not as if these whales are kept in an aquarium and they are fed by anybody in Dominica, the beast are free living in the ocean, where they eat any amount of fish which no one in Dominica can provide.
They making a big deal out of it in Dominica as if Dominica is the only place they are found; they travel all the way to Alaska and back.
Listen to Sixty Minutes this Sunday, on CBS; these people in Dominica, are simply running their mouth off since CBS came and left: Did CBS leave them any money to feed the whales?
Talking crap; what the hell better can they do for Spern Wales!