Well the science team at the Japanese government sponsored whaling program has significantly increased their productivity by publishing one more paper that actually could require killing whales to produce, while slaughtering 1300+ whales in the past two years. They have gone from 1700(+) whales per paper in late 2005 to 1600(+) whales per paper with the latest paper released (after two journals declined to publish it) in Polar Biology.
Anthony at Small Fish, Big Apple has more on the current paper, which for the Japanese whaling has some rather felicitous conclusions.
Over the past 20 years the Japanese “Scientific” whaling program has taken between 8,000 and 9,000 whales, including the 1,000 to be taken in this year’s hunt.
A minke whale mother and calf being dragged aboard a Japanese factory whaling ship. Photo AFP
Increasing pressure from Greenpeace and the Sea Shepherd disrupted this years hunt for three weeks, but the biggest blow to the whaling may come from ex-Midnight Oil lead man Peter Garrett. Now the Australian Minister of the Environment, Peter Garrett released the above image taken by an Australian Customs official. The customs officials were tailing and documenting the hunt which Australia considers illegal. The Japanese government first claimed the photo of a mother and calf being hauled into a factory whaling ship were fake, but now claim that both whales were adult females, and that Australia is engaged in “dangerous emotional propaganda” agaist its “scientific” whaling efforts.
So how scientific is the whaling effort?
Well, two years ago that question was examined by an informal panel of Australian scientists on the ABC show Catalyst. At that time the 18 year old scientific whaling program had taken 6,800 whales. The panel found that of the 55 peer reviewed papers published by the Japanese government sponsored whaling program only 14 were relevant to study of cetaceans or developing and managing a whaling industry. Only 4 of those 14 would have required lethal sampling methods to actually obtain the information required. So the final score, by their count, was 1700 whales killed for each paper.
While I’m reluctant to condone the aggressive actions of Sea Shepherd, on this issue I find myself wondering if it is not warranted since the Japanese fleet is violating the spirit of international law in waters where no individual nation has the authority to intercede, yet every nation has a vested interest.
In related news Terri Irwin, who gave permission to the Sea Shepherd to rechristen their flagship in honor of Steve, has set up an agreement with Oregon State University to launch a southern ocean whale research program to prove to the Japanese you don’t need lethal whaling to conduct significant whale research.
While their future is still up in the air, the whale’s past has gotten a little clearer…
(Edit 9pm) It seems the past is even clearer with a paper posted today in Systemic Biology analyzing genetic and morphological evidence to track the evolution of baleen whales.
