CHAND: U.S. regulators say a unique species of baleen whales in the Gulf of Mexico may be threatened with extinction and could get special protection.
In April, the National Marine Fisheries Service announced it was looking at granting endangered or threatened status to the small population of Bryde’s whales (pronounced Bru-dihs whales) that live in the DeSoto Canyon region, a deep-water area 50 miles (80 kilometers) east of the BP’s catastrophic oil spill five years ago.
The Interior Department has begun to open up a sliver of the eastern Gulf to drilling operations near the whales’ habitat. Most of the eastern Gulf remains off-limits to drilling due to a moratorium.
Bryde’s whales are found in tropical waters around the world, but the population in the Gulf has been deemed likely a genetically separate species from other baleen whales. Scientists believe there are fewer than 50 of the whales in the Gulf. A recent survey found about 15 of the animals.
“Whenever you have a species down in their tens, it’s spooky in terms of their long-term survival,” said John Hildebrand, a whale specialist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California-San Diego.
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