Norway Kills Less Whales Than Planned!
Norway - the only country in the world to openly conduct commercial whaling (Japan and Iceland hide behind the flimsy veil of 'scientific whaling'), is failing to reach it's Minke whale quota for this year. Excellent news!
This year was the highest ever quota: 1,052 whales were due for slaughter, up from 797 last year However, since the season started on April 1st, about 500 Minkes have been despatched. The whaling industry that the lack of catch is down to poor weather and rising fuel prices - but we know that it's down to a lack of market demand - people in Norway are losing the taste for whale meat.
Either way - it's reasonably good news for the whale population.
Norway Whalers Land Only Half of Quota »
The Guardian: Norway fails to fulfil whaling quota »
BBC: Norway's whale catch falls short »
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Comments
Allegations that Japan and Iceland conduct commercial whaling are highly questionable.
Iceland hunts an exceedingly small amount for it's research purposes. Less than 50 each year as I recall. This is clearly no where near approaching a commercial scale. The American people of Alaska kill more of the much larger Bowhead species every year than Iceland kills for research purposes. Being this the case, can one seriously claim that Iceland's hunt is commercial?
Japan hunts more whales than anyone - 850 minke Antarctic whales being the most significant of their hunts. Consider though that even under the most pessimisitic of abundance estimates for the Antartic minke (only 200,000), 850 is a mere 0.4% of the underestimated population. The real abundance for minke whales is likely to be at least double this, so we are talking more realistically of a figure of about 0.2% of the estimated population. The IWC Scientific Committee is going to be in a position to agree to a new abundance estimate by next year's IWC meeting in Anchorage.
As Japan states, to have any statistical credibility, 850 is a reasonable sample size for such a large population, studied over such a large area of ocean. Those who disagree with the sample size have not presented a figure which they believe to be appropriate.
Also, it's worth noting the commercial hunt in the Antarctic in the early 1980's was up over the 8,000 mark for minke whales (http://luna.pos.to/whale/sta_minke.html).
Also of interest is that the FAO's John Gulland stated in 1982 that such a take was sustainable: "Where commercial whaling is still being carried on, the catches are, by and large, within the productive capacity of the stock and should be sustainable indefinitely" (http://luna.pos.to/whale/iwc_fao82.html)
Japan's hunt today is thus a mere 10% of the previous amount of whales taken for commercial purposes immediately prior to the imposition of the commercial whaling moratorium, and certainly no where near approaching a level that would be targeted under genuine commercial whaling.
One has to ask oneself why we haer so much in the western media about allegations of sham research, and whether we are not getting accurate information.
> 1,052 whales were due for slaughter
This is misleading. What the quota is is a limit that scientists have deemed safe. Whether the whalers fill the quota is another matter entirely. Of note is that a 443 quota of minke whales from the Jan Mayen area was not utilised at all, because no whalers were willing to make the trip. Thus, more realistically the whalers took almost all of the quota excluding that for the Jan Mayen area.
Posted by: david@tokyo | August 22, 2006 1:30 AM
Hi David. I'd refer you to something that Andrew wrote a while ago, here »
He quotes from the UK government's press release on the demarche presented to the Japanese government:
Posted by: Dave | August 22, 2006 9:26 PM
Thanks for your repsonse.
Any skepticism of the JARPA research amongst members of the general public needs to be reconciled with the fact that the IWC Scientific Committee reviewed the JARPA programme in 1997 and concluded that it had the potential to improve whale management:
http://www.iwcoffice.org/conservation/permits.htm#jarpa
The IWC SC will review the completed JARPA programme again this year in December.
Additionally, you are right that more than 6,800 whales were killed during the course of the JARPA programme (almost 20 years).
As I indicated in my original comment, 8,000 whales were killed annually for commercial purposes prior to the imposition of the moratorium.
That looks like more than a 1000% reduction in production, doesn't it? Would you invest in such a "commercial" enterprise?
On the contrary, the lack of whales killed for research purposes in the past indicate that insufficient research was being conducted. Is it any wonder the catch limits that were set in those days were not sustainable?
Posted by: david@tokyo | September 6, 2006 5:51 AM
Thanks for your post, David. Bit confused though - are you saying that *more* whales needed to be killed, in order to make the killing sustainable?
Posted by: dave | September 8, 2006 11:19 AM
it is really sad that japan is killing that much whales. it will be really good if they could get band or something so they will stop killing the poor whales. they have no right to kill those whales.
Posted by: sarah | October 18, 2007 5:00 AM
yeah stop killing these poor animals lets go to war with the people who kill the whales!!!!!!!!!!!!
Posted by: haza boy | March 3, 2009 10:30 AM