Pollution is lethal to all animals and plants, big and small. Many plastic shopping bags kill millions of sea animals each year from getting trapped in it or swallowing it, including whales and dolphins. Whales and dolphins also get tangled, trapped, and drown in free-floating drift nets and discarded fishing nets.

Bycatch is when innocent and unwanted creatures are accidentally caught in fishing gear such as nets and hooks. In purse seines, hundreds of dolphins are caught and killed along with the Yellowfin tuna the nets were meant to catch, which the dolphin pods follow in search of food. Purse seining works by surrounding a school of fish with a massive wall of netting reaching from the sea bed to the surface. Like a  drawstring bag, the net closes up and the netting forms a sack that gets smaller and smaller. The contents are either scooped out with smaller nets or pulled aboard the fishing vessel. Fortunately, Purse seining is currently banned in the US.

You can help: Use reusable canvas shopping bags instead of disposable plastic ones. If you do have any plastic shopping bags, reuse them. If you can, pick up stray plastic bags you find outside that are not in trash cans. Also, you can buy dolphin-safe tuna where dolphins were not harmed when the tuna was caught.

According to an article on the Environmental News Network read on Tuesday September 29, 2009; the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service is considering removing the Humpback Whale, which is the most threatened whale on earth next to the Northern Right Whale, from the endangered species list. They are considering this because since the international whaling ban, the Humpback Whale population has increased 4.7% per year. Before the Ban, there were only about 1,000 individual whales, and today, the North Pacific population alone numbers around 15,000.

However, though the signs of recovering are good news, there are still many threats to the Humpback whales that they still must be protected from. Humpback whales are still susceptible to entailment in massive fishing nets, and the Japanese might try hunting them again. Though we are not absolutely sure that removing Humpback Whales may affect their protection, it would be a great risk. If this does affect the whale’s protection, including their whaling ban, it will be harder to testify against the Japanese whalers with the fact that they might be hunting endangered whales. There is a good chance that if Humpback Whales are removed from the endangered species list, the present threats could possibly cause them to be endangered again. But no one knows for sure.

You can help: If you live in america, you can write to the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service or other authorities and ask what will happen when the Humpback whales are removed form the endangered species list, and what conservation status they will have afterward. If you find out, please post your answer as a comment to this post.