Fri, Mar 03, 2023 page8

• Port threatens marine extinction

  • By Naomi Rose
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  Remarkably, humankind has driven very few whales, dolphins and porpoises — collectively known as cetaceans — to extinction, despite a distressing array of direct and indirect efforts to do so.

  First, centuries of commercial hunting nearly wiped out great whales. Then, over the past 200 years, industrialized fishing gear entangled and drowned millions of cetaceans — and still kills hundreds of thousands of them annually. Pollution, coastal development and disruptive activities such as war, military exercises, and seismic oil and gas exploration have taken their toll.

  Although few cetacean species have gone extinct during this onslaught, many are barely hanging on.

  A number of dolphins and porpoises are struggling to survive in increasingly urbanized coastal environments, including the Taiwanese white dolphin [Taiwanese humpback dolphin].

  This subspecies of Indo-Pacific humpback dolphin, with perhaps fewer than 60 individuals alive today, is red-listed as “critically endangered” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. In 2018, it was listed as “endangered” under the US Endangered Species Act.

  The subspecies, only identified by scientists in 2002, was previously believed to be an offshoot population of the more numerous Chinese white dolphin [Indo-Pacific humpback dolphin] across the Taiwan Strait.

  However, it is found only in the nearshore waters of Taiwan’s west coast, and there has been no genetic exchange between the two populations. Once gone, the Taiwanese white dolphin would be gone forever.

  Its tiny population faces many threats, the chief of which is entanglement in coastal fishing gear.

  However, as the Endangered Species Act celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, the Taiwanese white dolphin faces what could be a final, decisive blow — the expansion of the largest harbor on Taiwan’s west coast, the Taichung Outer Port Area.

  This project would use land reclamation methods to extend the port off the coast, a process that does enormous damage to marine habitats.

  Taiwan has ambitious plans to use more green energy and to adhere to the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, agreed at last year’s Convention on Biological Diversity.

  The framework calls for the maintenance, enhancement and restoration of the integrity, connectivity and resilience of all ecosystems, and the halting of human-induced extinctions of known threatened species. Taiwan’s plan to expand the Taichung Outer Port Area runs counter to this call.

  The port expansion is partially in support of the growing number of wind turbines along the nation’s west coast. Many of these wind farms are or would be within 3km of the shore — the outer boundary of the dolphin’s coastal distribution — and have raised substantial concerns among the conservation community.

  No one wants to discourage Taiwan’s proposals to increase renewable energy generation. An island economy also has limited options.

  However, this beautiful subspecies — which has a white body with gray spots and “flushes” pink when active — is a cornerstone of Taiwan’s wildlife heritage. It would be an irreparable tragedy should it go extinct due to the development of an industrialized moonscape in the dolphins’ only habitat.

  In a letter delivered to authorities this week, 24 non-governmental environmental and animal organizations that specialize in protecting marine mammals urged the government to reconsider the port expansion.

  The International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Cetacean Specialist Group has made the same recommendation, and additional support from international scientific societies can be expected.

  In 2019, a group of international conservationists, cetacean scientists and policy experts drafted a recovery plan for the subspecies.

  The plan offered several recommendations to reverse its decline and promote recovery, such as locating any new development away from essential dolphin habitats.

  Expanding the harbor flies in the face of that recommendation.

  The government has responded positively to the public’s concerns for the Taiwanese white dolphin before. In 2010, it moved a project to build a massive petrochemical plant away from the west coast. It should demonstrate that same flexibility again.

  If Taiwan hopes to answer the call of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, and if the Taiwanese white dolphin is to remain the nation’s signature marine mammal, then authorities must rethink the expansion of the Taichung Outer Port Area.

  Naomi Rose is a marine mammal scientist at the Animal Welfare Institute in Washington.
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