To Michael Moore, “We Are All Whalers”

‘For people like you and me, who are consumers, the solution is to leverage our consumption of products from the fishery, or imported by ship, to make those activities less traumatic to whales. We are all responsible for the survival of whales, and our daily choices have an impact on their reality.

As for the fishing industry, several solutions can be implemented, but the simplest would be to reduce the amount of fishing gear in the marine environment, and rope in the water column. The less gear there is, the lower the risk of marine mammal entanglement. One way to do this is to replace traditional traps with acoustic traps: fishing gears without ropes. They are located by using GPS or acoustics and hauled up by remote release of either bottom stowed buoyant rope, or an inflatable bag. This technology is currently not widely used and represents only a small proportion of the traps used. In addition, these devices are currently expensive and more difficult to obtain than rope traps. This technology will take some time to become more accessible to all. Combined with this, in-store identification of products from a fishery using such measures is also a possible solution.

‘However, these initiatives can be costly – but regulatory incentives are starting to encourage a change in current practices both in Canada and the U.S. But the real question is, do marine mammals, particularly North Atlantic right whales, have time to wait for these solutions that will take a few more years to materialize?

The Canadian measures of the last few years seem to be bearing fruit, which allows for some optimism.’However, it is harder to say the same about the American side: where the highly complex administrative system slows down the implementation of effective measures. For conservationists and environmentalists, this is a leviathan of a problem.