So how they distribute thru the waters of the islands?
LF: The mouth of pan is right in front, in Caniçal in this bay. The bottlenose dolphins are further north, but we are given complete and submit reports to the Regional Government and which will then be made public in September.
These data are important even in terms of fishing, if it is not sustainable?
LF: That is more complicated because the sustainability of fisheries has to do with the effort of fishing itself and then one must measure the resources to fishing is intended.
But fishermen consider that dolphins somehow compete with them for fish.
LF: That's true and inescapable fact of life, the issue here is that if we remove all the dolphins and all predators, and I'm not talking about the swordfish eventually, in fact also for some fish to shore, in the case of Tuna is not so complicated, there is predation, but the competition is not so great. The competition exists but if we remove all cetaceans from the sea fishermen do not stand to gain anything because it is human activity that takes the stocks to the limit. In Madeira, tuna fishing is sustainable, has little impact on cetaceans, it was the third goal of the CMII, who was doing the monitoring of human activities offshore, so we had teams of observers on fishing vessels for tuna and one of the things we had to see was the number of interactions between cetaceans and the tuna and found that they are very low, on the order of 3%. This means that cetaceans disturbing the fishing activity is minimal, this does not mean that some species do not eat smaller tuna than the fishermen also fish, but there it is if we start to take ecosystem components so fishermen have more fish to catch, we will tinker with this delicate balance with consequences far more unpredictable and catastrophic, which may not be in our interest. So it is that fishing cannot exceed certain limits and no fault can be attributed to certain species of predators.
These findings lead to awareness activities within the fishing communities.
LF: One of the crucial components of the work of the museum is communicating with society and within the CMII, in particular, the fishermen. Through the shipments that we made with the teams, and we have to commend the crews and owners of tuna ships who had all this willingness and openness, sought whenever possible we try to sensitize them. We also learned a lot from them, information about the sea, and the impact of human activities on the waste in the ocean. It's a two-way process, because they also have a body of knowledge, which are not of a scientific nature, is more objective and pragmatic, but help us. It is true and considering the cultural issue, people are not always open to knowledge, passing this message is an effort. On the other hand, this aspect is a challenge because we have to use other tools to get the message across.
Which other objectives are proposed in the CMII?
LF: Lectures for the fishermen, for the community in general, producing a DVD and content that can get the knowledge society and one that was a success, the project "baleiarte", an exhibition in partnership with the schools in which we can associate science with art and an innovative way to show the scientific knowledge to the children and the general population, that this patent in Madeira Shopping, where a technique particularly associated with research photo identification with forms of artistic expression.
The "whale watching" is also a component of this project is to help tourism businesses associated with this activity in what way?
LF: We already do since 2004, i.e., training and workshops we organize together with these companies. We have information sessions and we also monitoring to understand what is the activity on cetaceans, which exert pressures, the extent to which we are reaching the limits or not and what the consequences. Initially there was concern over a period of growth in activity, however it stabilized. After there was a care to create new legislation to frame this practice, there was a voluntary regulation that had been created by the museum and a code of conduct that was not legally binding, now with this new legal framework there are a set of mechanisms for managing the activity sustainably and with higher quality without major impacts to the animals. Although this is a complicated job, because we can easily define the impacts of short duration, the reaction of the animal, only then we cannot know what the long-term consequences in terms of reproduction and the presence of animals. It is a process that requires many years of research and has no immediate results. We currently carry over these short-term reactions to this population impact with consequences for the populations in the long term, but this is an ongoing work.
You mentioned the species that pass through our territorial waters, the warming of the temperature of the ocean has some influence on the emergence of new species or not?
LF: That is a question that is difficult to answer even from the scientific point of view for a very simple reason, as we have no exact data of previous populations. We knew of animals ended up on the coast and had some literary references, for example, a publication of 1996 states 15 species to Madeira. There are other specimens that appear in our waters that over the years have been detected and this is all the bibliographic compilation of this knowledge. In the past there was not a systematic campaign at sea in search of new species and there were others that are very difficult to find, or then the people glimpsed them but did not record it. We have an unknown knowledge in terms of the past, for example, we have a species of whale, the Braille, which comes mainly from tropical waters and which did not have a very large record between 2000/04, although there have been some identification problems. From that date until the present, the animals appear here consistently every year, often. If it can establish a direct relationship with the warm of the ocean water is hard to say it. The heating of seawater may have consequences at different levels in the ecosystem and therefore we cannot establish such a direct relationship. Now that there is evidence and we have seen more tropical species in our waters but, if it is a direct cause or not, we do not know. There may have been simply an increase in populations of Braille whales that are expanding their presence in the area, we do not know, the rest is speculation. And above all it was necessary to have a historical record to absolute state that all that has to do with global warming. Maybe twenty years from now, given what we've done so far, campaigns count, hard data, we can have a more complete answer.
In terms of sustainability of several cetacean species inhabiting the island, there are dangers; their populations have been declining for some reason in particular?
LF: No. We are in a privileged situation; we have a set of human activities that I would say have been benign for the various species. This is the case of fisheries, we have no gill nets, were banned, the arts of tuna and swordfish are made with hooks, we can speak of tuna in particular, because we have data that corroborate this trend, although it was interesting how far there interactions with swords fishing boats. But doesn't seem to be troubling, because this is a type of fishing with hooks and the period of greatest interaction with animals would be when the fish comes to the surface. Furthermore, there is no animal wash to the coast that indicates a problem. In principle there is no evidence of concern as there are in other areas, with far more serious consequences. Furthermore, the island fishing is not as intensive as in other places, fleets are smaller, although we must be aware that they are more fragile island ecosystems and their capacity to produce is lower and in Madeira they develop in very rich waters.
