"Research" can't
rule out whale 'immortality'
23 March 2007 - Tokyo, Japan — The Nisshin
Maru arrived in Tokyo Bay today. Its time
in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary was
cut short by a tragic fire, which claimed
the life of one crewmember and threatened
the Antarctic environment. Over the course
of this past season 505 minke and three
endangered fin whales were killed.
Recently an International Whaling Commission
(IWC) review of Japan's so-called whaling
programme showed that their "research"
has learned virtually nothing about whale
populations in the Southern Oceans despite
18 years of hunting.
Scientific review
Japan justifies its whale hunts by issuing
"scientific" whaling permits.
Its original Antarctic whaling program (called
JARPA) ran from late in 1987 through early
2005 - despite repeated requests by the
IWC to call it off.
Late last year 56 scientists (including
29 from Japan) held a workshop under the
auspices of the International Whaling Commission's
Scientific Committee to review JARPA. The
goal of this workshop was simply to evaluate
how well the objectives of JARPA had been
met.
Research a failure - minke whales 'immortal'?
The reviewing scientists recently issued
conclusion is that none of JARPA's four
objectives, which involved harpooning 6,778
whales, was reached.
A major objective was to establish the
natural mortality rate for minke whales.
The results?
"It was noted that the confidence
intervals around the estimates of natural
mortality estimated from the JARPA data
alone spanned such a wide range that the
parameter remains effectively unknown at
present." and "in particular,
even a zero value was not excluded by the
analysis."
So, their bogus research programme could
not establish reliable mortality rates for
minke whales and the statistical analysis
cannot even rule out a zero mortality rate
- which would make minke whales immortal!
Attempts to determine if whale populations
were increasing or decreasing also failed.
The workshop noted that, "the current
confidence intervals for the estimates of
trend are relatively wide. These results
are, therefore, consistent with a substantial
decline, a substantial increase, or approximate
stability in minke whale abundance in these
geographic areas over the period of JARPA."
As Junichi Sato, Greenpeace Japan Whale
Campaign Coordinator put it, "The Japanese
people have spent 18 years and millions
of yen funding a so-called research programme
that has produced nothing of substance."
What next for the factory ship?
The whalers are rushing to repair their
factory ship in time for a North Pacific
whale hunt later this year. And next December,
the whalers plan to hunt up to 935 minke
whales, 50 endangered fin whales and 50
threatened humpback whales off the coast
of Antarctica.
Instead, the Nisshin Maru should be retired,
and Japan's thinly-veiled commercial whaling
programme ended. The government should also
give a full public account of the cause
of the fire.
Our own ship, the Esperanza, will arrive
in Japan next week. We have invited both
whalers and government officials to meet
on board.
