USA Marine Mammal Health and Stranding Response Program

The MMPA was amended in 1992 to formally establish the Marine Mammal Health and Stranding Response Program (MMHSRP) to:

Facilitate collection and dissemination of reference data on the health of marine mammals and to assess health trends of marine mammal populations in the wild; Correlate marine mammal health with available data on physical, chemical, and biological environmental parameters; and Coordinate effective responses to unusual mortality events (UMEs).

The MMHSRP has several components including:

• National Marine Mammal Stranding Network;
• Marine Mammal Unusual Mortality Event Response and Investigation Program;
• John H. Prescott Marine Mammal Rescue Assistant Grant Program;
• National Marine Mammal Archiving Program;
• National Marine Mammal Entanglement Response Program;
• Marine Mammal Biomonitoring, Surveillance, and Investigation Program;
• Marine Mammal Analytical Quality Assurance Program; and
• Information Management Program.

The National Marine Mammal Stranding Network consists of over 120 organizations, including other federal agencies, nonprofit organizations, aquaria, universities, and state and local governments, partnered with NMFS to investigate marine mammal strandings. The MMHSRP oversees the activities of the national stranding response networks through a national coordinator and six regional coordinators. Every rescue and detailed study of stranded marine mammals yields information on species, sex, length, location, and any evidence of human interaction, as well as tissues and specimens for use in scientific research, for determining the causes of strandings and mortalities, for educational purposes, for life history investigations, and for biological or health research needs. With these data, along with data from other sources, NMFS and its partners gain insight into the causes of strandings, the health and health trends of cetacean populations, and the identification of factors that may impact the health of wild marine mammal populations.

The MMHSRP also oversees the activities of the National Marine Mammal Entanglement Response Program through a national coordinator and regional coordinators, and a network of trained and authorized partners. Every response to entangled marine mammals, particularly large whales, prioritizes documentation that allows NMFS and its partners to gain insight into the mechanics and consequences of large whale entanglements that may impact the health of wild whale populations. Responses also fulfill an animal welfare need by attempting to free whales from life-threatening and debilitating entanglements when possible.

In addition to the collection of health and disease information from stranding and entanglement response activities, NMFS works with partners to evaluate the health and disease status of marine mammals in the wild through live capture release studies, bycatch monitoring programs working with fisheries observers, subsistence monitoring programs, and assessments of free-swimming animals, including photogrammetry and remote biopsies.

In 2017 and 2018 energies were focused on day to day stranding and entanglement responses, emergency response efforts as emergencies have arisen, continuing UME responses to on-going cetacean events, responding to 3 new large whale UMEs along the Atlantic coast, continued participation in Natural Damage Resource Assessments, and post-Deep Water Horizon Oil Spill restoration planning and monitoring and adaptive management. As a follow up to the cetacean oil spill response guidelines, the program has focused on the development of cetacean disaster response plans completing the Arctic plan (from the Canadian border to the Bering Straits) and have plans under development for the Gulf of Mexico, Pacific Islands, and Gulf of Alaska (Kodiak and Cook Inlet). The group has been working to develop cetacean monitoring and assessment studies to evaluate the impacts of coastal restoration projects addressing storm surge, flood control, coastal erosion, river diversion for sedimentation, and sea level rise. The team has focused closely on the impacts or responses of bottlenose dolphins to freshwater exposures as a result of extreme weather events or anthropogenic activities. Finally, the group continues to develop guidelines for cetacean rehabilitation facilities, large whale entanglement response, and cetacean health assessments. Of note as the follow up to the death of a large whale entanglement responder in the summer of 2017, the US did initiate a shutdown of all large whale entanglement responses nationwide, underwent a review of the circumstances underlying the death, developed immediate refresher training for additional safety measures, and implemented an enhanced communication response for large whales. The team held a national large whale entanglement response workshop to review close calls and entanglement operations, training, safety, and capacity building. In addition, team members participated in the IWC Global Whale Entanglement Response Network meeting in June 2018. Finally, the team participated in development of information for IWC workshops on Harmful Algal Blooms, Population Consequences of Multiple Stressors, and Cetacean Tagging.

The National Marine Mammal Tissue Bank was established in collaboration with the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology and provides protocols and techniques for the long-term storage of tissues from marine mammals for retrospective contaminant analyses. Since 1987, tissue samples have been contributed from several sources, including the stranding network, fisheries bycatch, health assessment studies and legal subsistence hunts. The Tissue Bank uses a network of trained partners to collect tissues from specific indicator species (including pilot whales, harbor porpoises, Atlantic white-sided dolphins, pygmy sperm whales, bottlenose dolphins, rough-toothed dolphins, common dolphins, beluga whales, and bowhead whales), animals from mass-stranding events, and from UMEs. Recently, the Tissue Bank has expanded to include banking of samples for additional purposes such as infectious disease and biotoxin detection or studies from the Natural Resource Damage Assessment investigation and several UMEs.

NMFS leads the investigations of UMEs, which are declared when a stranding event or disease outbreak is unexpected, involves a significant die-off of any marine mammal species, and demands an immediate response. A Working Group on Marine Mammal Unusual Mortality Events comprised of experts in marine mammal health, conservation medicine, biology, toxicology, and marine science, aids NMFS and the Stranding Network in conducting thorough investigations of such unusual stranding events. As of July 2018, the program has investigated marine mammal 65 UMEs in the U.S. with three events declared in 2017-18 and one under consultation in August 2018. Currently the program has several active investigations as shown in the table available online at http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/health/mmume/.

Over the last several years, NMFS’s collaborations with partners including the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, state laboratories, and academic institutions have documented new viruses, new bacterial diseases, and new fungal diseases in cetaceans in the wild. Detection and response to emerging infectious diseases continues along all coasts of the U.S.

Finally the MMHSRP continues to support training, capacity building, and response assistance for marine mammal health issues in other countries. In 2017 and 2018 the MMHSRP continued the partnership with NOAA Fisheries’ Office of Science and Technology, the International Fund for Animal Welfare, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and The Marine Mammal Center (with input from additional experts) to develop an international stranding response training toolkit and provide training when requested. The program also participated in the development of the IWC Stranding Initiative and is a member of the IWC GWERN program.