KARACHI: The population of the endangered Arabian Sea humpback whale faces a grave danger of extinction and there is an immediate need for regional research for its conservation, say experts.

They reached the consensus at a three-day workshop recently held in Dubai and said the humpback whale, classified as endangered on the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) Red List of Threatened Species, has the smallest population in the world.

The workshop was organised by the World Wide Fund for Nature, the Emirates Wildlife Society (EWS) and Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), with funding support from the US Marine Mammal Commission.

The gathering brought together researchers and conservation organisations from countries bordering the Northern Indian Ocean to develop a research strategy for the conservation of endangered Arabian Sea humpback whale.

The species is restricted to the Arabian Sea in a current range identified to include Oman, Iran, Pakistan and India. It may also occur in the Red Sea and along the coasts of Yemen, Somalia, Sri Lanka and the northern Maldives.

Experts believe the species had the smallest population in the world. “The recently published genetic analyses indicates the species is also the world’s most isolated whale population, and that it is probably a subspecies, the most likely name will be Megaptera novaeangliae indica,” said Mohammad Moazzam Khan who represented the WWF-Pakistan at the meeting.

The specific whale, he pointed out, faced a greater risk of extinction because it was non-migratory, unlike other humpback whale populations, which were found in every ocean basin and travelled predictable migration routes between high-latitude feeding grounds and low-latitude breeding areas.

“The whale’s non-migratory nature presents a number of research and conservation challenges. Recordings of their songs (for which the species is famous) indicate that the whales breed along the coasts of Oman and possibly along the Pakistani and Indian coasts off the Rann of Kutch,” he said.

According to Mr Khan, the whale has been recently sighted a number of times in Pakistani waters along the Balochistan coast. But, unfortunately, there has also been a worrying number of stranding incidents of the species across the region.

“These whales are greatly threatened by entanglement in gillnets, ship strikes, marine pollution and underwater noise from human activities,” he explained.

Cetacean scientists from regional countries (Pakistan, Iran, Oman, the UAE, India, Sri Lanka and the Maldives) as well as experts from the UK, the USA, South Africa, Italy and Canada participated in the meeting.

The participants stressed the need for a regionally collaborative research and conservation programme, which would include scientific surveys to estimate population size and current distribution, collection of further information on the whales’ biology and ecology, and working with different industries to reduce the threats these whales are currently facing.

Any action taken to protect humpback whales would also benefit other large whale species that occurred in the region, including blue whales and Bryde’s whales, they concluded.

Published in Dawn, February 6th, 2015

On a mobile phone? Get the Dawn Mobile App: Apple Store | Google Play