23
Jun 2008 - Santiago, Chile: The argument
that increasing whale populations are behind
declining fish stocks is completely without
scientific foundation, leading researchers
and conservation organizations said today
as the International Whaling Commission
opened its 60th meeting in Santiago, Chile.
The Humane Society International,
WWF and the Lenfest Ocean Program today
presented three new reports debunking the
science behind the ‘whales-eat-fish’ claims
emanating from whaling nations Japan, Norway
and Iceland. The argument has been used
to bolster support for whaling, particularly
from developing nations.
“It is not the whales,
it is over-fishing and excess fishing capacity
that are responsible for diminishing supplies
of fish in developing countries,” said fisheries
biologist Dr. Daniel Pauly, director of
the University of British Columbia Fisheries
Centre.
“Making whales into
scapegoats serves only to benefit wealthy
whaling nations while harming developing
nations by distracting any debate on the
real causes of the declines of their fisheries.”
Who’s eating all the
fish? The food security rationale for culling
cetaceans, the report co-authored by Dr
Pauly for the Humane Society International
contrasts “the widely different impacts
of fisheries and marine mammals” with fisheries
targeting larger fish where available and
marine mammals consuming mainly smaller
fish and organisms.
“The decline of the
mean trophic levels of fisheries catch over
the past 50 years is a signature of fishing
down marine food webs and leaves marine
mammals exonerated,” the report said.
The report also probes
the culling whales increases food security
for the poor argument by examining the final
destination of catches of coastal fisheries
in the South Pacific, Caribbean and West
Africa. With less than half the catch going
to domestic markets and the majority “gravitating
toward the markets of affluent developed
countries, one can speak of fish migrating
from the more needy to the less needy”.
Also presented to the
IWC Scientific Committee was the preliminary
results into analysis of the interaction
between whales and commercial fisheries
in north west Africa. The modeling, funded
by the Lenfest Ocean Program, shows no real
competition between local or foreign fisheries
and great whales.
The whales spend only
a few months in the area during their vast
seasonal migrations, eat relatively little
while breeding and tend to consume fundamentally
different types of food resources than the
marine species targeted by both local and
foreign fisheries. Inserting modelling assumptions
to presume that whales are not breeding
in the area and eat species important to
the fishing industry still fails to show
whales are a significant source of competition
to fishing.
Also released today
is review of the scientific literature originating
from Japan and Norway - the two countries
most strongly promoting the idea that whales
pose problems for fisheries. The review,
funded by WWF, found significant flaws in
much of the science and concluded that “where
good data are available, there is no evidence
to support the contention that marine mammal
predation presents an ecological issue for
fisheries.”
Dr. Susan Lieberman
of WWF said “These three reports provide
yet more conclusive evidence that whales
are not responsible for the degraded state
of the world’s fisheries. It is now time
for governments to focus on the real reason
for fisheries decline – unsustainable fishing
operations.”
"Dr. Pauly's findings
should refute, once and for all, the misconception
that whales are eating all the fish and
need to be killed to protect the world's
fisheries," said Patricia Forkan, president
of the Humane Society International
+ More
Whales set to chase shrinking feed zones
20 Jun 2008 - Endangered
migratory whales will be faced with shrinking
crucial Antarctic foraging zones which will
contain less food and will be further away,
a new analysis of the impacts of climate
change on Southern Ocean whales has found.
Ice breaker: Pushing
the boundaries for whales, released just
ahead of the opening of a crucial International
Whaling Commission (IWC) meeting, summarises
WWF research showing that levels of global
warming predicted over the next 40 years
will lead to winter sea-ice coverage of
the Southern Ocean declining by up to 30
per cent in some key areas.
“Essentially, what we
are seeing is that ice-associated whales
such as the Antarctic minke whale will face
dramatic changes to their habitat over little
more than the lifespan of an individual
whale,” said Dr Susan Lieberman, Director
of WWF International's Species Programme
and head of the WWF delegation to the IWC
meeting.
Migratory whales meanwhile
may need to travel 200-500 kilometres further
south to find the “frontal” zones which
are their crucial foraging areas. Migratory
whale species which will be affected include
the Blue Whale, earth's largest living creature,
and the humpback whales which are only now
coming back from the brink of extinction
after populations were decimated by commercial
whaling, mainly during the first half of
the 20th century.
Both species build up
the reserves that sustain them throughout
the year in the frontal zones, which host
large populations of their primary food
source – krill.
“As frontal zones move
southward, they also move closer together,
reducing the overall area of
foraging habitat available,” the research
notes. As the krill is dependent on sea
ice, less sea ice is also expected to reduce
the abundance of food for whales in the
feeding areas.
“The impact on whales
is one more imperative for the world to
take decisive action to reduce the risk
of catastrophic climate change,” Dr Lieberman
said. “However, the IWC must also take the
opportunity of this southern hemisphere
meeting to look at every possible way to
increase the resilience of whale populations
to climate change.
“For Antarctica’s whales,
the best way to do this would be to reduce
all other threats – such as the unregulated
and unjustified so-called ‘scientific whaling’
of these species conducted by Japan.”
WWF is recommending
the protection of critical habitats and
for also limiting other non-climate stresses
to whale populations such as fishing, pollution
and ocean noise.
