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Vessel Strikes of Large Whales in the Eastern Tropical Pacific: A Case Study of Regional Underreporting

Authors

Ransome, Nicola; Loneragan, Neil R.; Medrano-González, Luis; Félix, Fernando; Smith, Joshua N.

Year

2021

Journal

Frontiers in Marine Science

Volume

8

Issue

2

ISBN

2296-7745

Keywords

anthropogenic threat, eastern tropical Pacific, ETP, humpback whale, megaptera novaeangliae, reporting scheme, ship strike, shipping, vessel collision, vessel traffic, whale watching

Abstract

Vessel strike is recognized as a major modern threat to the recovery of large whale populations globally, but the issue is notoriously difficult to assess. Vessel strikes by large ships frequently go unnoticed, and those involving smaller vessels are rarely reported. Interpreting global patterns of vessel strikes is further hindered by underlying reporting biases caused by differences in countries’ research efforts, legislation, reporting structures and enforcement. This leaves global strike data “patchy” and typically scarce outside of developed countries, where resources are more limited. To explore this we investigated vessel strikes with large whales in the Eastern Tropical Pacific (ETP), a coastal region of ten developing countries where heavy shipping and high cetacean densities overlap. Although this is characteristic of vessel strike “hotspots” worldwide, only 11 ETP strike reports from just four countries (
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