Whale guide - Russian translation soon available

A guide widely used by Alaska fishermen to help them avoid the world's most endangered whale will soon be available in Russian.

About 2,000 copies of the guide, already available in English, should be available in Russian within two months, said David Benton, executive director of the Juneau-based Marine Conservation Alliance, which represents about 80 percent of commercial fishing and crabbing interests in Alaska.

There once were more than 10,000 right whales in the North Pacific but figures are dwindling. Fewer than 100 whales are believed to be swimming off the coasts of Alaska and Russia. These whales share the Bering Sea with the largest commercial fishery in the U.S. They have been protected by international law since 1934 but have not recovered.

The whales are slow-moving and feed near the surface. They have little instinct to avoid ships and when encountering obstacles, they tend to roll, increasing the chance of becoming entangled in fishing gear.

The hope is that fishermen on the other side of the Bering Sea will use the guide to avoid the whales, the two-page laminated guide, designed to be placed on a ship's bridge for easy reference, already has been distributed to thousands of commercial U.S. fishermen. It includes a map of all known sightings of the right whale and photos of how to identify it from the humpback and gray whale. The guide also instructs fishermen on what to do if they encounter a right whale. Recommendations include taking the ship's fishing gear out of the water, leaving the area slowly and reporting the sighting.

In the 1960s, a Soviet whaling fleet illegally harvested an estimated 300 to 400 right whales in the Gulf of Alaska and Bering Sea in what was thought to be the final blow to the species. Losing even one right whale from the Bering Sea, is drastic and these mammals need all the help they can get.