Interesting read from the AGE this morning:
It's about more than just whales
By Erich Fitzgerald, a palaeobiologist at Monash University and Museum Victoria.
December 21, 2007/the AGE
Illustration: Dyson
WHALES and dolphins stir the imagination and evoke our emotions to an extent almost unique among non-human critters. As fellow mammals, whales share a deep evolutionary heritage with us, just as rats, cats, dogs, bats and aardvarks do. Whales are long sundered from us by the vastness of over 60 million years, yet they are our true distant cousins in the sea. Perhaps it is this primeval shared ancestry that contributes to humankind's long-held fascination with cetaceans. They are like us in numerous ways: generally highly social, with complex behaviour; have sophisticated communication; possess what may best be described as culture; and, after humans and next to chimpanzees, include the most intelligent known organisms.
Ever since humans put to sea, we have relentlessly hunted whales and dolphins. With industrialisation and quantum leaps in technology, the oceans have seemingly shrunk and no depth is too great for our trawls, lines, nets and hooks. And so the "great days" of unchecked, unsustainable, whaling of the 20th century decimated populations of the great whales, with population after population, in species after species, inexorably and predictably crashing. When we had whaled-out the larger (or easier to kill) and more economically desirable species such as the sperm, right, blues and humpbacks, we moved on to progressively smaller species.
The International Moratorium on Whaling halted all commercial harvesting of cetaceans once it was clear that at least the great whales were in serious trouble, some facing imminent extinction. We had saved the whales, or so it seemed. Now, in the first decade of the 21st century, the "save the whales" campaign is regrouping. Focusing on the Japanese Government-sponsored harvesting of baleen whales for scientific research has led to a resurgence of the campaign.
In response, the Rudd Government has arguably increased tensions over Japanese whaling by deploying a civilian customs ship to monitor the Japanese whaling fleet.
Japanese whaling is undertaken with the justification that it is scientific research, yet most whale biologists (outside Japan) question its scientific merits, let alone ethics. Japan claims that data on population and reproductive biology that they seek can be acquired only through lethal means. This is patently incorrect: non-lethal blood, blubber and faecal sample collection, supplemented with photographic documentation can provide this information. Such methods are standard practice among marine mammal scientists worldwide.
Despite assurances from Japanese government and whaling officials, there is simply no practical, rapid or humane way to kill a whale, especially in the open Southern Ocean. Although it is difficult to measure scientifically, there can be little doubt that the whales are in substantial amounts of pain and shock as they are being slaughtered in a process that can take several minutes.
Rather than reacting emotionally to this, we should make science our guide. A humpback or minke whale is no more special than a tuna, orange roughy, lobster or Barrier Reef coral. Every single species is equally important, each being the result of thousands to millions of years of evolution, and each playing a part in its ecosystem.
Japan claims that whaling is part of its history and cultural heritage. However, there is little, if any, evidence of Japan sending whaling fleets to the Southern Ocean before the 20th century.
On numbers alone, the planned Japanese minke whale hunt would not have a drastic impact on the Southern Ocean minke whale population, which may be more than 300,000. The main questions that surround the Southern Ocean minke whales are not only how many are actually there, but also how many species and subspecies exist? So, which and how many of each species are being killed?
For management, it is critical that we first understand whether one, two or even three species of minke whale are in. As for the humpbacks and fin whales, the estimated humpback population remains at half its pre-whaling size, while there is not even a vaguely accurate estimate of the fin whale population size. The lack of population estimates is clearly reason enough to argue strongly against Japan's intent to take humpback and fin whales this season. This can be done on scientific grounds without emotion or the notion that the humpbacks are "ours" as at least some Southern Ocean humpbacks migrate to Australian waters.
While we target Japanese whaling with attention and political as well as emotional investment, we are being distracted from the plight of other whales and dolphins in far more dire straits than minke, or even humpback and fin whales. It was only this year that the baiji, or Yangtze River dolphin, was pronounced extinct. Like the baiji, the North Pacific right whale is the living dead, it being a matter of time before the species is extinguished. The little vaquita porpoise of the Gulf of California numbers perhaps 100 to 300, and without immediate and decisive efforts by the Mexican Government to halt incidental by-catch in gillnets it may be headed for extinction in the coming decades. Then there is the mighty blue whale, the largest animal that has ever lived. Before industrial whaling, its Antarctic population was between 200,000 and 300,000; today, there are perhaps no more than 3000 of these superlative mammals in the Antarctic region.
Our exploitation of the ocean's resources and pollution of its depths now pose a clear threat to the survival of not only whales but other marine organisms that are less charismatic, but no less important. Ultimately, Japanese whaling is a sideshow to the global and far more urgent problem of destruction and simplification of marine environments worldwide. We claim to acknowledge the long-term damage wreaked by 20th century whaling, but history and current events show we aren't learning from our mistakes.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/its-about-more-than-just-whales/2007/12/20/1197740464569.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1
