Megaptera novaeangliae | UAE National Red List of Mammals: Marine and Terrestrial
Taxa
Megaptera novaeangliae | (Borowski, 1781)
Asessment status in full
Endangered
Assessment status abreviation
EN
Assessment status criteria
D
Assessment rationale/justification
Based on the confirmed sightings of this species in UAE waters (see under Geographic Range below), the population size suspected to be less than 50 mature individuals thus qualifying the species for a Critically Endangered assessment under criterion D. However, all animals found in UAE waters are most likely part of the Arabian Sea Humpback Whale subpopulation, so there may be ongoing movement of individuals from the waters off Oman into UAE waters, hence the population is subject to a rescue effect. The regional assessment is therefore adjusted downwards by one category to Endangered (EN*) under criterion D.
Assessment year
2018
Assessors/contributors/reviewers listed
UAE National Red List Workshop
Affliation of assessor(s)/contributors/reviewers listed on assessment
Government
IGO
Assessor affiliation specific
Government|IGO
Criteria system specifics
IUCN v3.1
Criteria system used
IUCN
Criteria Citation
IUCN. 2012. IUCN Red List Categories and Criteria: Version 3.1, Second edition. IUCN, Gland, Switzerland and Cambridge, UK. iv + 32pp pp. And IUCN. 2012. Guidelines for Application of IUCN Red List Criteria at Regional and National Levels: Version 4.0. Gland, Switzerland and Cambridge, UK: IUCN. iii + 41pp.
URL (link) of redlist assessment or publication
https://www.moccae.gov.ae/assets/download/b352eff1/UNRL%20of%20Mammals%20-%20Report%202019.pdf.aspx?view=true
Endemic to region
Not_assigned
Endemism Notes
Is an endemic?: Not_assigned
Threats listed in assessment
The main threats to cetaceans in UAE waters include: incidental mortality in trawl and drift nets, depletion of prey populations (due in part to commercial overfishing); ship and boat strikes, offshore oil and gas exploration; noise from shipping, submarine sonar and oil and gas rigs (IWC 2016). Illegal Soviet whaling resulted in the capture of 242 Humpback Whales in Arabian seas in the mid-1960s (Mikhalev 2000). Current threats to Humpback whales are widespread and include fisheries entanglements (Minton et al. 2011, Anderson 2014, Moazzam and Nawaz 2014, Willson et al. 2016), ship strikes (Wilson et al. 2016), and pollution (Baldwin et al. 2010, Dakteh et al. 2017). Thirty to forty percent of Humpback Whales off of the coast of Oman displayed scars consistent with fishing gear interaction (Minton et al. 2011). ASHW may also be more susceptible to disease: nearly 70% of examined whales from the Soviet catches in the Arabian Sea in the 1960s showed liver anomalies (Mikhalev 2000) and over 20% of whales examined from Oman displayed signs of tattoo-like skin disease (Van Bressem et al. 2014). This population of whales may also be more vulnerable to climate change if shifts in oceanographic conditions affect productivity or prey distribution in their restricted Northern Indian Ocean range (Thomas et al. 2016).
Conservation Measures
Conservation measures:
Conservation measures notes:
Required conservation measures:
History
The backcasted 1996 assessment for this species is Endangered which differs from the Data Deficient assessment by Hornby (1996).
Scientific Name | Kingdom | Phylum | Class | Order | Family | Genus |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Megaptera novaeangliae | Animalia | Chordata | Mammalia | Cetartiodactyla | Balaenopteridae | Megaptera |