European Whales, Dolphins, and Porpoises

Marine Mammal Conservation in Practice

Peter G. H. Evans

• Publisher: Academic Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780128190548
• Topic: Biowissenschaften
• Subtopic: Meeresbiologie

European Whales, Dolphins, and Porpoises: Marine Mammal Conservation in Practice presents an intimate view of the workings of international conservation agreements to protect marine mammals, detailing achievements over the last 25 years, identifying weaknesses and making recommendations that governments, scientists, marine stakeholders and the public can take to improve conservation efforts. The book is written by an experienced marine mammal scientist and award-winning conservationist, providing a unique synthesis on their status, distribution and ecology. In addition, it presents information on various conservation threats, including fisheries by catch, contaminants, noise disturbance, plastic ingestion and climate change.

This comprehensive resource will appeal to marine mammal conservationists and researchers, as well as environmental and wildlife practitioners at all levels.

• Offers an accessible review on how scientists study this challenging group of mammals to gather necessary evidence for conservation action
• Illustrates, with striking images, all recorded regional species, including distribution maps, key threats and specific research methods
• Includes contributions from leading scientists, conservationists, and members of government and international bodies, like IWC and UNEP

Chapter 1

History of the ASCOBANS agreement

Abstract

The first regional conservation agreement for marine mammals was signed in 1992, following concerns about the status of the harbour porpoise and the threats it was facing. ASCOBANS (Agreement on the Conservation of Small Cetaceans of the Baltic, Northeast Atlantic, Irish and North Seas) promotes close cooperation between countries with a view to achieving and maintaining a favourable conservation status for Europe’s small whales, dolphins and porpoises throughout the Agreement Area. In all, 10 European countries have now become Parties to the Agreement. This chapter describes the background to the inception of the Agreement, how it functions, and how it has developed over the next quarter of a century.

Keywords

ASCOBANS; Baltic Sea; Northeast Atlantic; Irish Sea; North Sea; conservation agreement; marine mammals; small cetaceans; harbour porpoise

During the 1960s around the world there was an environmental awakening that our planet had finite resources; the burgeoning global human population and technological developments taking place were applying pressure that simply could not be sustained. It was the decade of Rachel Carson’s book ‘Silent Spring’, drawing attention to the effects that pesticides were having around the world, and following it 10 years later in 1972 was ‘A Blueprint for Survival’, a special edition of the Ecologist magazine, later published in book form, which presented the case for societal action to help protect our environment. In northern Europe, the collapse of fish stocks such as herring and mackerel drew attention to the effects of overexploitation of marine resources, and the impact of modern whaling during the first half of the 20th century resulted in campaigns to ban commercial hunts. In 1976 the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations invited marine mammal specialists from around the world to a meeting in Bergen, Norway, called ‘Mammals in the Seas’ to review and debate the global status of marine mammals. With concerted pressure also from a number of environmental NGOs, this heralded moves towards a moratorium on commercial whaling, which came into effect in 1986.

Whilst attention during the 1970s was focused upon the effects of human exploitation of whales, concerns were being expressed in many parts of Europe for the decline of its smallest cetacean, the harbour porpoise (Fig. 1.1), for other reasons. The species was becoming scarce in the Baltic Sea, the southern North Sea, the Channel and around the Biscay coasts of France and Spain south to Portugal. It was extremely rare in the Mediterranean, and seriously threatened in the Black Sea. Several possible reasons were put forward: pollution from a range of new chemicals introduced on a large scale during the 1950s and 1960s; entanglement in fishing gear with the widespread introduction of monofilament nets over the same period; excessive exploitation of fish resources with ever-larger and more technologically advanced vessels in the 1960s; seismic exploration of the North Sea for oil and gas during the 1960s; and increased vessel traffic particularly in areas such as the Channel, Bay of Biscay, and Straits of Dover and Gibraltar, throughout the second half of the 20th century.

Figure 1.1 Concern for the conservation status of the harbour porpoise led to the establishment of ASCOBANS. Photo: Florian Graner.

During the 1970s and 1980s a number of publications highlighted porpoise declines around Europe (Belgium – De Smet 1974, 1981; Denmark – Andersen 1982; Kinze 1987; France – Collet and Duguy 1987; Germany – Benke, Siebert, Lick, Bandomir, & Weiss, 1998; Kremer 1987; Kroger 1986; The Netherlands – Addink and Smeenk 1999; Smeenk 1987; Portugal – Teixeira 1979; Spain – Casinos and Vericad 1976; Sweden – Berggren and Arrhenius 1995; Lindstedt and Lindstedt 1988, 1989; United Kingdom – Evans 1980, 1990, 1992; Evans, Harding, Tyler, & Hall, 1986; Kayes 1985). The result was pressure from scientists and NGOs for political initiatives in Europe to help protect the species. A special meeting was arranged by WWF Germany at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven (Kroger, 1986) in order to coordinate research and conservation efforts, and what was initially going to become a European Harbour Porpoise Working Group led to the founding of the European Cetacean Society (ECS) in Hirtshals, Denmark in January 1987. One of the society’s first initiatives was a statement of concern presented to the second North Sea Ministerial Conference, held in London in 1987 (Evans, Kinze, Kroger, & Smeenk, 1987), with support from NGOs such as WWF Germany, WWF Sweden and Greenpeace, and with continued pressure, a Memorandum of Understanding on Small Cetaceans was agreed at the third North Sea Ministerial Conference, held in The Hague in March 1990.

In this climate of environmental concern, moves were afoot to establish a number of international conservation agreements and directives. One of the first regional agreements under Article IV of the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (UNEP/CMS or Bonn Convention as it was termed), which had come into force in 1983, was ASCOBANS, the Agreement on the Conservation of Small Cetaceans of the Baltic and North Seas (ASCOBANS). The Final Act was signed on 13 September 1991, and it was then opened for signature by Range States, at the UN Headquarters in New York on 17 March 1992.

The British government offered to host an interim Secretariat based at the Sea Mammal Research Unit, which was occupying part of the British Antarctic Survey building in Cambridge. The role of Executive Secretary was taken on by Dr Christina Lockyer in 1992, supported subsequently by Sara Heimlich. The Agreement would come into force once at least six Parties had signed and ratified. This occurred 2 years later on 29 March 1994, the early Parties being Belgium, Denmark, Germany, The Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom. Since then, four other countries have signed and ratified as Parties to the Agreement. These are Poland (January 1996), Finland (September 1999), Lithuania (June 2005) and France (October 2005). The Secretary General of the United Nations has assumed the functions of Depository of the Agreement.

Initially the Agreement Area was confined to the Baltic, North Sea and Channel, but on 3 February 2008, an Atlantic extension of the area came into force westwards and southwards to the southwest tip of Portugal, which changed the name to the ‘Agreement on the Conservation of Small Cetaceans of the Baltic, Northeast Atlantic, Irish and North Seas’. The original boundaries and those of the Extension Area are depicted in Fig. 1.2.

Figure 1.2 Map of the agreement area (along with the Atlantic area extension).

ASCOBANS is open for accession by all Range States. These have been defined as States exercising jurisdiction over any part of the range of a species covered by the Agreement, or States whose flag vessels are active in the Agreement area and cause adverse effects for the species. In addition, they include Riparian States not yet Party to ASCOBANS: Estonia, Ireland, Latvia, Norway, Portugal, Russian Federation and Spain, and regional economic integration organisations such as the European Union. Although the European Union has the possibility to accede to the Agreement, it has not done so as yet.

All non-Party Range States are encouraged to join the ASCOBANS Parties in their efforts to conserve the small cetacean species they share with other countries in the ASCOBANS Area, conscious that the management of threats to their existence, such as bycatch, habitat deterioration and other anthropogenic disturbance, requires concerted and coordinated responses. And in fact all of these non-Party states as well as the European Commission have sent representatives to ASCOBANS meetings at one time or another.

The full text of the revised Agreement is given at the end of the book in an Appendix. Every 3 to 4 years there is a formal Meeting of the Parties (MOPs) at which Resolutions are passed, addressing priority conservation actions as well as internal administrative matters. The locations of each of these meetings are given in Tables 1.1 and 1.2 respectively. Every year, an Advi...

Table of contents

• Cover image
• Title page
• Table of Contents
• Copyright
• List of contributors
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Chapter 1. History of the ASCOBANS agreement
• Chapter 2. Conservation agreements for the protection of whales, dolphins and porpoises
• Chapter 3. Regional review of cetaceans in Northwest Europe
• Chapter 4. Systematic list of European cetacean species
• Chapter 5. Conservation threats
• Chapter 6. Conservation research
• Chapter 7. Conservation actions
• Chapter 8. Focus on the future
• Appendix. Agreement on the Conservation of Small Cetaceans of the Baltic, North East Atlantic, Irish and North Seas
• Index