Greenpeace action against Japanese whaling in Southern Ocean.
In spite of nearly four decades of protection, Antarctic Blue
whales show little sign of recovery according to the latest science
from the International Whaling Commission (IWC).
As the largest of the great whales, Blue whales were the most
profitable species for Antarctic whalers to catch and consequently
their population of about 250,000 was reduced to around 1,000
within 60 years.
Despite intensive surveys of the Antarctic, only 75 Blue whales
have been sighted in the past 20 years, according to the IWC
Scientific Committee report released today.
"Whales don't recover quickly from over-exploitation and it's
particularly worrying that the Blue whale is failing to recover
because they've been protected for so long," says Greenpeace oceans
campaigner Richard Page.
"There are also less southern and northern hemisphere Minke
whales than previously thought," Page says.
The report estimates southern hemisphere Minke populations in
all Antarctic areas surveyed are less than half previously
estimated. Most of the Antarctic has now been surveyed for a third
time, although the whole survey will not be completed until 2004.
On average, the Minke population in all the areas surveyed was 46
percent of the estimate from the previous survey.
"IWC scientists haven't agreed on an explanation for this
drastic reduction. One possibility is climate change, which is
known to be having an increasing impact on the Antarctic
ecosystem," Page says.
Although this decline was found in the areas in which the
Fisheries Agency of Japan (FAJ) conducts its "scientific research"
whaling it was never reported by the "scientific" whalers. In fact,
after their Southern ocean expedition this year, they reported
seeing large numbers of Minkes.
The report also contains new surveys submitted to the IWC by
Norway showing there are not as many North Atlantic Minkes as
previously thought, and an increased level of uncertainty about the
population estimate.
This should decrease the number of whales Norway takes in the
future. But when it was revealed their catch was predominantly
female in 2000, Norway simply changed the way it calculated its
catch limits (by lowering the tuning level for the Revised
Management Procedure agreed to by the IWC) in order to keep
catching the same number of whales.
"Given this history, Norway will just bend the rules again to
catch as many whales as it can," says Page. "The number of whales
caught by Norway is driven by the whaling industry, not by sound
science and the need to protect whales."
The report also reveals:
After the release of the Kondo/Kasuya report, which documented
systematic and organised falsification of catch statistics by
Japanese coastal whalers, the IWC Scientific Committee has set up a
working group to investigate the nature and quality of past data.
Japan has refused to provide scientists for this group and says the
previous official catch statistics are correct. Total reported
bycatch (whales caught in fishing nets) for 2001 in Japan was three
times the average figure for the previous five years. This follows
the introduction of new regulations in Japan which allows fishermen
to sell whales caught in fishing nets.
"All the scientific evidence from the IWC points to the need to
adopt a truly precautionary approach and to stop Japanese
"scientific" whaling and Norwegian commercial whaling," Page
says.