Northern bottlenose whale populations have struggled to rebound, even though commercial whaling was outlawed in their habitats more than 50 years ago.Long-term monitoring shows that one population of the species has begun to recover since their year-round habitat, a submarine canyon off Canada’s east coast known as the Gully, became a Marine Protected Area in 2004.The Gully MPA provides a rare marine conservation success story, but protection for marine mammals that migrate is more complex.
Populations of northern bottlenose whales (Hyperoodon ampullatus), playful animals that resemble large dolphins, stretch across the Atlantic Ocean, with each group of whales living year-round in a particular deep ocean canyon. Historically, commercial whaling targeted these animals, causing their numbers across the basin to collapse.
Even as protections against whaling increase, northern bottlenose whale populations struggle to recover globally due to low reproductive rates and ongoing threats such as ship strikes and fishing-gear entanglement.
A group of northern bottlenose whales gather at the water’s surface in the Gully, Nova Scotia during a research expedition by the Whitehead Lab in 2017. Image by Deepdivewhales via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).
