The Canadian federal government is enhancing protections for endangered North Atlantic right whales by adding two important feeding grounds to the Species at Risk Act. The Roseway Basin off Nova Scotia and the Grand Manan Basin in the Bay of Fundy have been listed as critical habitats in the Act.

The measure means Ottawa is obligated to legally protect Roseway Basin and Grand Manan Basin from activities that might harm them, like vessel strike and entanglement in fishing gear.

These Canadian feeding grounds are important for to ensure right whales replenish their blubber supply before migrating to their US southeast breeding grounds. Under the US Endangered Species Act, right whales have already been afforded critical habitat in the US - both in the Northeast and the Southeast. Off the coast of Massachusetts this critical habitat includes Cape Cod Bay and the Great South Channel. And in the Southeast the critical habitat is along the coast of Georgia and Florida.

This spring we were lucky enough to add Blandine Melis to our list of AMAZING interns. Blandine is french and has bettered our lives in uncountable ways -  including improving our taste in wine and cheese. Because Blandine is so passionate and knowledgeable - it's hard to know where to start when describing how we have come to love and depend on her.

Blandine's work experience as a marine biologist began with coral reefs, but then she quickly moved to working to get the message of conservation spread out into the world. She worked as a marine biologist in a Senegalese NGO “Oceanium” - actively involved in marine conservation and MPA creation.  From there, Blandine moved onto communication’s officer of the Regional Coastal and Marine Conservation Programme for West Africa (PRCM). And now Blandine has brought her awareness-raising and communication skills to whale protection.

Blandine has focused on taking our WDCS North American message outreach to a new level.And in typical Blandine style - she did it big. Blandine's outreach plan has taken us to France....she will be interviewed tomorrow (Tuesday the 16th) and Thursday the 17th- check it out.

http://www.nausicaa.fr/direct

You will definitely be hearing more from and about Blandine. But over the next few days we'd like you to met our newest star.

The intern program for WDCS started as a way for us to help students that wanted to get into the marine mammal field. What I've quickly found is that we are the lucky ones- we have amazing interns that offer us so much more than we could hope to offer them- and saying thank you is far from adequate. Amanda White and Alex Hill who accompanied us on yesterday's research trip are two of those interns. During the trip, I heard Amanda said it was her "best whale watch ever" which is more of a reward than I could ever hope for in my career. However, one thing I will say, is I was only 10 minutes late for the 6AM departure because I forgot to buy dog food when I was buying boat food- so had to get some in the morning! Here's Amanda's summary of our trip!


Best Whale Watch Ever!!!

So the three of us, Alex, Lindsay, and I spent the night at Nelson Street, catching a few short hours of sleep, before getting up at the crack of dawn to look at whales. We all stumbled around still half asleep, packing everything into the car to be on time for a 6:00 am departure. Captain Regina was adamant in wanting to leave the dock by 6:00. We won’t hold it against her that she was late for this 6:00 departure.

The day was beautifully calm, with winds 5-10 out of the NW, and warm enough in the sun. Perfect whale watching weather. We started off the trip with some great looks at quite a few new whales, as well as old friends Nimbus, Tracer, and Broomball. We had several close approaches, including one particularly playful calf who surfaced not 10 feet from me. There can’t be too many people out there who get excited about getting covered in whale snot. An encounter with the Dolphin VIII left us with two beautiful and cozy new Dolphin Fleet sweatshirts. Thanks Brian!

The trip ended up lasting 14 hours. We had 94 sightings with a total of 80 whales of three species: humpback, finback, and minke, as well as 1 harbor and 1 gray seal. 8 of those sightings included mother calf pairs. We also spent an hour and 20 minutes picking up trash. Side note to all: those metallic balloons for special occasions get very gross after sitting in salt water for days. The coating disintegrates into tenacious glitter that covered my hands, boots, and the entire bow of poor Easterly. But as a reward after all that hard work we had a particularly exciting sighting with a playful calf, and lots of great kick feeding and open mouth feeding. Other whales included Charger, Alphorn, Blackhole and calf, Lavalier and calf, Fracture, Jabiru, Firefly, Sloop and calf, and the adoptable Crystal!

We had three people taking photos, for a grand total of 2501 images, in addition to two video cameras. Unfortunately, now that fun in the field is over we have to go through all these pictures, code the good ones, and delete the bad ones. This will obviously lead to hours of bonding in the office for us all. Thanks for the great trip Regina and Dave!

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If you live in Boston or just stopping by for a visit, be on the look out for WDCS's new Anti-Whaling posters