Most IWC* member countries accidently kill whales, e.g. by unintentionally ramming into them with motorized vessels or by using fishing methods that may entangle and suffocate these air-breathing mammals as accidental by-catch. While this type of accidental deaths is reported from most member nations, Japan and South Korea have an inordinate amount of accidental by-catchs, says Professor Scott Baker, associate director of the Marine Mammal Institute at Oregon State University.

By analysing the DNA of whale-meat products sold in Japanese markets, Baker, a cetacean expert, and Dr Vimoksalehi Lukoscheck of the University of California-Irvine, found that meat from as many as 150 whales came from the coastal population. Japan’s scientific whaling program only targets whales from open ocean populations, but whales accidently killed outside the program are allowed to be sold.

Humpback Whale

Japan and South Korea are the only countries that allow the commercial sale of products derived from whales killed as accidental by-catch and the sheer number of whales represented by whale-meat products on the market suggests that there might be something fishy about these allegedly accidental kills.

They DNA study showed that nearly 46 percent of examined Minke whale products came from a coastal whale population, which has distinct genetic characteristics, and is protected by international agreements. In addition to minke whales, Baker and Lukoscheck also found DNA from Humpback whales, Bryde’s whales, Fin whales, and Western gray whales.

“The sale of bycatch alone supports a lucrative trade in whale meat at markets in some Korean coastal cities, where the wholesale price of an adult minke whale can reach as high as $100,000,” Baker said. “Given these financial incentives, you have to wonder how many of these whales are, in fact, killed intentionally.”

In January 2008, Korean police launched an investigation into organized illegal whaling in the port town of Ulsan, reportedly seizing 50 tons of minke whale meat.

Japan has asked the IWC, who is holding its annual meeting this week, to allow a small coastal whaling program in Japanese waters. This request is something that professor Baker says should be scrutinized carefully because of the uncertainty of the actual catch and the need to determine appropriate population counts to sustain the distinct stocks.

Baker and Lukoscheck have presented their findings to the IWC commission and the study will also be published in a forthcoming issue of the journal Animal Conservation.

* International Whaling Commission

Norway, one of the two countries that openly defy the IWC ban on commercial whaling, has suspended this year’s whale hunt mid-season after catching less than half the quota of 885 whales. The suspension coincides with this week’s annual IWC meeting in Portugal, but is not linked to the meeting or any adjacent negotiations. Instead, a lack of demand in the Norwegian distribution chain is cited as the reason behind the surprising deferment.

“The number of whales killed so far is enough to meet the known demand,” said Willy Godtliebsen, head of sales at the Norwegian Fishermen’s Sales Organisation (NFSO). “They may resume the hunt later if new buyers turn up.”

According to NFSO marketing director Lise Mangseth, the suspension is an effect of the current financial crisis. The financial situation has dissuaded processing plants from freezing and stocking the meat the way they normally do, in order to save money.

“More generally, [the suspension is due to] organisational problems rather than a problem of demand,” Mangseth said. “The whalers are such small actors and the volumes from the hunt are so limited that the distribution chains don’t really want to invest in their product and there are no marketing campaigns as there are for other food products“.

She also claimed that it isn’t unusual for whalers to take a break during the season.

Greenpeace are interpreting the suspension as a sign of waning consumer demands for whale meat.

“If they don’t start the hunt again later this season, 2009 will be the ‘worst’ year for whaling since Norway resumed commercial whaling”, Greenpeace spokesman Jo Kuper said.

Norway resumed whaling in 1993, despite international protests. When Norwegian whalers were asked to suspend their hunt on Tuesday this week, 350 Minke whales had been harpooned since the start of the whaling season in April. Normally, the hunt would continue until October.

Australia and New Zealand announced Thursday that they will carry out a six-week long non-lethal whale research expedition in the Antarctic early next year. Dubbing the expedition non-lethal is a direct challenge to Japan’s research program that kills up to 1,000 whales a year.

Iceland and Norway are the only two countries openly defying the IWC ban on commercial whaling; Japan is instead using a lope whole that allows for “lethal research”. Whale meat resulting from the Japanese research is sold for human consumption and many critics claim that this is the real motive behind the program.

In a joint statement, Australia and New Zealand announced their intentions to reform science management within the International Whaling Commission, which holds its annual meeting in Madeira, Portugal, next week, and end Japan’s “so-called scientific whaling.”

“This expedition and the ongoing research program will demonstrate to the world that we do not need to kill whales to study and understand them,” said Australian Environment Minister Peter Garrett.

The expedition aims to increase our knowledge of population structures, abundance, trends, distribution, and the ecological role of whales in the Southern Ocean.

During the latest Japanese hunt, which ended in April, 679 minke whales and one fin whale was killed over a period of five months.

The 2009 whaling season has now started in the waters off Iceland.

Iceland and Norway are the only two countries that openly defy the international whaling moratorium; Japan is instead using a loop whole, claiming their whaling to be carried out for scientific purposes.

Former Icelandic fisheries minister Steingrimur Sigfusson said in February that Iceland would make no changes to its whaling quotas of 150 Fin whales and up to 150 Minke whales per year.

“The first batch of meat will be in stores by the weekend,” says Gunnar Bergmann Jonsson, manager of the Minke Whaler Association. He said 50 to 60 per cent of the meat will be sold domestically, while the rest is sold to Japan.

The first whales are usually killed in a bay outside Reykjavik, since whaling is prohibited close to the harbour. The prohibition has been imposed to prevent whalers from disturbing whale watchers, since that may cause damage to the Icelandic whale watching business.

The Icelandic whaling season usually runs from May to late September.

Whale facts
Also known as Little Piked Whales or Lesser Rorquals, Mink Whales prefer icy waters but are found world-wide. Once perceived as one single species, the population has quite recently been recognized as consisting of two distinct species: the Northern Mink Whale, Balaenoptera acutorostrata, and the Southern Mink Whale, Balaenoptera bonaerensis. Together, the two species are believed to form a population of over 1 million Minke Whales world-wide. Balaenoptera acutorostrata is listed as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, while Balaenoptera bonaerensi is listed as Data Deficient since it was recognized as a separate species so recently.

The Fin Whale (Balaenoptera physalus) is also found world-wide, with 40,000-56,000 specimens living in the North Atlantic. Unlike the Mink Whale, the Fin Whale is listed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

Photograph created by Erik Christensen. Taken on the Faroe island not Island.

Thanks to a system of underwater hydrophones, scientists have been able to document the presence of North Atlantic Right whales in an area where they were believed to have gone extinct.

The North Atlantic Right whale (Eubalaena glacialis), where even the name is a reference to it being the “right” whale to hunt, was heavily targeted by whalers during the 19^th and 20^th century and the entire species was on the brink of extinction when the moratorium on whaling was implemented in the 1960s.

Being an important whaling area throughout the 19^th century, Cape Farewell Ground off the southern tip of Greenland was believed to have no surviving population of Right whales, but when scientists from Oregon State University (OSU) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) begun investigating the area using hydrophones, they recorded a total of 2,012 Right whale “calls” from July through December 2007.

“We don’t know how many right whales there were in the area,” says David Mellinger, assistant professor at OSU’s Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport and chief scientist of the project. “They aren’t individually distinctive in their vocalizations. But we did hear right whales at three widely space sites on the same day, so the absolute minimum is three. Even that number is significant because the entire population is estimated to be only 300 to 400 whales.”

During the last 50 years no more than two Right whales have been sighted at Cape Farewell Ground, so even a figure as low as three during the same day is good news.

The project has been using five hydrophones engineered by Haru Matsumoto at OSU, configured to continuously record ambient sounds below 1,000 Hz over a large region of the North Atlantic. These underwater hydrophones are sensitive enough to record sounds from hundreds of miles away. The scientists used previous recordings of Atlantic and North Pacific Right whales to identify the species’ distinct sounds, including a type of vocalization known as “up” calls.

“The technology has enabled us to identify an important unstudied habitat for endangered right whales and raises the possibility that – contrary to general belief – a remnant of a central or eastern Atlantic stock of right whales still exists and might be viable,” says Mellinger.

Results of the 2007 study were presented this week at a meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in Portland, Oregon.

In addition to Mellinger and Clapham, scientists involved in the project include Sharon Nieukirk, Karolin Klinck, Holger Klinck and Bob Dziak of the Cooperative Institute for Marine Resources Studies – a joint venture between OSU and NOAA; Phillip Clapham, a right whale expert with NOAA’s National Marine Mammal Laboratory, and Bryndís Brandsdóttir of the University of Iceland.