Serious Injury and Mortality Determinations for Baleen Whale Stocks along the Gulf of Mexico, United States East Coast, and Atlantic Canadian Provinces, 2012-2016

The Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) requires the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) to estimate annual levels of human-caused serious injury and mortality to marine mammal stocks (section 117) and to categorize commercial fisheries based on their frequency of incidental serious injury and mortality of marine mammals (section 118). Criteria for serious injury (SI) determinations were addressed at NMFS-convened workshops in 1997 and 2007 (Angliss and DeMaster 1998; Andersen et al. 2008), and in January 2012 the agency published national guidelines for distinguishing serious from non serious injuries (NSI) of marine mammals. There are currently no national guidelines for determining cause of death, but Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC) staff have used a set of criteria to evaluate reports of human-caused mortality to baleen whales since 2005 (Cole et al. 2005; Henry et al. 2014). This report presents the results of applying the national SI criteria and the NEFSC mortality criteria to all reported baleen whale events from along the Gulf of Mexico, United States east coast, and Atlantic Canadian Provinces for 2012 through 2016. Affected stocks include the North Atlantic right whale (Eubalaena glacialis), Gulf of Maine humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae), western North Atlantic fin whale (Balaenoptera physalus), Canadian East Coast minke whale (B. acutorostrata), Nova Scotian sei whale (B. borealis), western North Atlantic blue whale (B. musculus), and the northern Gulf of Mexico Bryde’s whale (B. edeni).