Marine Mammals

Asaduzzaman Rassel :
Two dead whales had been washed up on the coastline of Cox’s Bazar, consecutively over the last two days on 9 and 10 April and 5 dolphins at Kuakata and 1 in Sitakunda shoreline recently. Biodiversity conservation and fisheries experts tried to find out the causes of tragic deaths of said animals. The district administration, forestry, environment and fisheries departments buried them under sand following standard protocol. Samples have been collected by Bangladesh Oceanographic Research Institute (BORI), Marine Life Alliance and Department of Forestry for post mortem analysis to find out the possible causes of death of the whale. It has been suspected that the whales died after a strike with speedy vessels or consuming plastic debris.
Whale populations have recently been subject to threatened due to unregulated commercial whaling, environmental degradation, increased plastic and ghost fishing nets, etc.
Whales are the biggest animals on earth. These mammals are considered as ecosystem engineers and play a vital role in consistent of marine ecologies in many ways. There are many reasons to protect whales and others marine mammals. Whales play a vital role in calming the aquatic food chain and imitation of other species. As more whales are killed, the ocean’s food delivery system is damaged and this causes disruption in the food stock of many other marine species. Scientific findings of the cetacean species (whales, dolphins, and porpoises) have led to many detections and progresses regarding echolocation, marine atmospheres, oceanic ecology, marine mammal intelligence, and other significant sea topics. Whale poop plays a great role in steadying the offset of carbon in the atmosphere, providing a better atmosphere for both land and marine life forms. Whale display and various other watching activities have been a business of billions dollars, helping excite financial development in numerous cities, states, and states. Even in death, whales contribute to life.
There is a saying that the very ruins of greatness are great. Considering all aspects of said proverb is perfectly applicable for whale. Scientists estimate that because of whaling, large whales now store roughly nine million tons less carbon than before large-scale whaling. Not only a significant “carbon sink”, whale falls also develop mini-ecosystems, assisting deep sea organisms for years.
Protecting whales is critical to the resiliency of marine environment. In order to protect the most valuable megafauna like whales, other cetaceans and turtles, measures should be taken without delay.
WorldFish Bangladesh, an non-government organisation has taken several initiatives to conserve biodiversity under USAID funded ECOFISH II activity including beach cleanup, trained skippers on various aspects of marine ecology, environment, fishes, and mega fauna, and the necessity of conservation of marine turtle, dolphin, sharks, skates and rays. They have been trained on not to pollute the rivers and oceans with plastic containers and nylon netting materials.
The project has taken comprehensive actions to safeguard biodiversity, and enhance ecosystem resilience in the areas. The project has been implementing various measures towards biodiversity conservation, ecosystem health improvement and pollution control, and livelihood supports for marginalized coastal fishers.
This activity has introduced ‘blue guards’ as environmental volunteers to improve the quality of the open waters by controlling the major polluting materials and help cleaning the coastal waters and sea beaches.
There’s a lot that we can do to help conserve whales and other marine wildlife. Use less plastic-made products as much as possible and not to throw plastic bottles and cans into the coastal and marine waters; artisans at fishing boats should not carry disposable plastic bottles during sailing to fish nor to throw them into the marine waters; exercise and follow responsible boating, kayaking and other water based entertaining activities; Tourists of all ages must not throw plastic bottles, empty cans, plastics packets or similar garbage’s into the sea beach or coastal waters and rather dump into specific containers supplied in the beaches; awareness building to the boat skippers and tourists for avoiding the activities that may cause deaths of the whales, other megafaunas and fishes as well as the environment; leave the environment cleaner than you found it by participating in beach cleaning initiatives; ship strikes are a major cause of whale mortalities, the crews should take proper care to avoid deaths of large creatures in the marine waters; buy sustainable seafood. Travel reasonably and generate less waste as much possible, eat locally available foods; dispose properly used fishing line at a selected recycling bin, unrecycled fishing supply destroys or harms thousands of aquatic animals each year; use eco-friendly cleaning products as all water system lead to the sea; avoid plastic bags- plastic bags are mostly hazardous because of their resemblance to jellyfish and are estimated to kill over 100,000 birds, turtles and marine mammals each year; recycle plastic products and netting materials as much as possible.

(Mr. Rassel works as Communications Specialist, USAID/ECOFISH-II Activity, WorldFish Bangladesh).