WCC 2020 Rec 094 - Activity Report

The Plan Ocean team, who also work closely with veterinary universities, are providing capacity building for veterinarians and university students to enable them to conduct necropsies and understand pathologies typically affecting NRFPs and other cetaceans.

The key proponents and coordinators of the Resolution, now working through the NGO Plan Ocean, have followed up on two virtual conferences held in 2021 and 2022 to form a cross-sectorial working group involving researchers, NGOs, and policymakers from Korea, China, and Japan. The working group has thematic subgroups addressing different aspects of research, policy making, public awareness and education. Online and in-person meetings are planned throughout the rest of 2023.

Plan Ocean is working with coastal fishing communities in the South and Western seas of Korea to conduct interviews and gather important local ecological knowledge on their interactions with NRFP, while also educating them about the important role that cetaceans play in keeping coastal ecosystems in balance.

Korean stakeholders are collaborating with policy makers to assess the feasibility of designating new protected areas for NRFP.

Fisheries gear developers working with the National Institute of Fisheries Science, a science-oriented subsidiary under the Ministry of Fisheries in Korea are designing and testing porpoise excluder devices that are installed on stow nets - the gear most responsible for finless porpoise bycatch. The results of initial trials were presented to the meeting of the Scientific Committee of the International Whaling Commission in April/May, 2023. The same team is testing the effectiveness of acoustic deterrents (pingers) on stownets to reduce bycatch. Plan Ocean is collaborating with Universities and other research teams to conduct line transect surveys, augmented by the use of drones, to assess distribution and abundance of narrow-ridged finless porpoises (NRFP). They have also collaborated with the relevant government authorities to gain access to NRFP carcasses and conduct necropsies. The majority of examined carcasses bore signs of death caused by suffocation/drowning due to entanglement in fishing gear. The necropsies also revealed microplastics and BPA in the GI tracts and the presence of DDTs and PCBs. Finally the team is also using underwater video to try and monitor porpoise behaviour around stownets to better understand how excluder devices are working and/or could be improved.