AWI Quarterly Articles | Marine Wildlife

AWI has long been involved in the United Nations Caribbean Environment Programme, and specifically its Protocol Concerning Specially Protected Areas and Wildlife (SPAW Protocol), which prohibits the taking of listed flora and fauna species. Sea...

Three Sisters Springs is an important 1.5 acre manatee wintering area within the Crystal River National Wildlife Refuge on Florida’s Gulf coast, about 50 miles north of Tampa. The Florida manatee (Trichechus manatus latirostris) is...

After a long and winding process, a federal court has turned aside Georgia Aquarium’s attempt to import wild beluga whales from Russia. In June 2012, Georgia Aquarium applied for a Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA)...

In the summer of 2013, a young filmmaker from California named Jonny Zwick set out on a three-month journey around Iceland, intent on understanding the contradiction that makes the country both a burgeoning whalewatch center...

A tragedy is unfolding in Mexico’s Upper Gulf of California. Fatal entanglements in shrimp and fish nets—many of them cast by poachers—are driving the world’s smallest cetacean to extinction.

For 16 years­—the past two for AWI—Dr. Naomi Rose has been a member of the International Whaling Commission’s (IWC) Scientific Committee. She is an invited participant on the sub-committees on whalewatching and environmental concerns, and...

Ontario has become the first province in Canada to ban the breeding, purchase and sale of orcas. The new law, titled the Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, passed the legislature...

In 1995, Robert Small and Douglas DeMaster calculated annual survivorship rates (ASRs) in captive orcas and compared these results to the ASRs of wild orcas living in the Pacific Northwest of North America.

On June 5, a 3-week-old female beluga at Georgia Aquarium died. Just over a month later, another 3-week-old female beluga—born prematurely—died at SeaWorld San Antonio. The Georgia Aquarium birth had been hailed as a milestone...

AWI and Defenders of Wildlife filed a petition on May 28 with the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) to list the Northwest Atlantic population of the thorny skate ( Amblyraja radiata) as threatened or endangered...