Squadrons of gray whales could be winging their way across the Atlantic within a decade to restock British waters under plans put forward by two conservation scientists.
Andrew Ramsey and Owen Nevin of the University of Lancaster's School of Natural Resources in northern England floated the idea at a meeting in Brazil earlier this week.
"Some people will say it is impossible but we are deadly serious about this," Nevin said on the university's Web site.
"It's ecologically, logistically and economically feasible and whale watching could regenerate struggling fishing communities around our coasts," he added.
Gray whales, known as the "friendlies of the deep" because of their tranquil nature, were once common in the seas around northern Europe but have been extinct for 400 years.
But the 15m-long, 40-tonne leviathans are in plentiful supply off the coast of California.
Ramsey and Nevin propose airlifting 50 surplus gray whales from the Californian population for release off the coast of northern England, starting in 2015.
Ramsey said cargo aircraft can easily accommodate adult gray whales and the journey from California to Britain would take less than 12 hours.
"Providing the whales are kept moist at all times, they are more than capable of surviving the long-haul flight," he said.
But other conservationists said the plan was impractical.
"The notion of taking whales from one place and reintroducing them somewhere else is far more complex than it might appear and very unlikely to be in the best interests of the animals," said Mark Simmonds of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society.
However, Ramsey and Nevin noted that Gray whales did not compete with fishermen for food because they fed on worms, not fish, and said whale watching tourism would be a boon for the coastal population."The gray whale is an incredibly charismatic species and it can ignite the imagination of the public in a way few other animals can," Ramsey said.
Right whales have also been a concern for conservationists lately because more may be dying each year than researchers have previously estimated. Marine scientists called for emergency action to help prevent humans from accidentally killing the rare animal.
In an article published in the journal Science, researchers estimated that deaths of North Atlantic right whales may be underreported by as much as 83 percent annually. Only 350 of the animals are believed to exist.
There isn't time for proposed protections to slog through the federal rule-making process, said Amy Knowlton, a New England Aquarium researcher and one of the article's 18 co-authors.
``We can't wait to deal with a bureaucratic maze,'' Knowlton said.
Federal regulators say emergency rules could be put in place six months earlier than the normal 18-to-24-month process but would not be permanent and would not save much time since the final rules are close to completion. Rules also could do more harm than good without proper review and public comment, officials say.
The estimate of unreported whale deaths is based on a population model that considers the known death rates of male, female and juvenile right whales. Scientists don't presume a whale dead until it hasn't been seen for six years.
The Science article, citing the Endangered Species Act, called for emergency rules to protect against ship strikes and fishing gear entanglements, the two primary ways that humans kill right whales.
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