Posted by Irene onboard the Esperanza

The Great Whale Trail is far from being the only whale tagging project. A team from The Oregon State University Marine Mammal Institute went down to Antarctica in the beginning of 2007, to find out more about the humpback whales in the area off the Antarctic Peninsula.

Little is known about the timing and migration routes of the humpbacks there, what they do and which risks they face.

"Our goal is to identify the critical habitats of endangered species and reduce the impact of human activities in these regions to facilitate their recovery."

Dr Bruce Mate

Reading about the project online, I noticed this line:

"Worryingly, whalers have proposed hunting Antarctic humpbacks in the near future, maybe even in 2008."

Since this text was written the Japanese government has declared that 50 humpback whales will be killed in this years catch. In addition it has been clearly stated that the goal with this "scientific" lethal research is to overthrow the moratorium on commercial whaling.

Wouldn't it be nice if we could find out more about these creatures before hunting them to the brink of extinction once more? It reminds me of deep sea fishing - like blowing up Mars before we get there. Only in this case it is more like "shoot first and ask questions later".

You can check out where Emily, Dutch, Molly and the other humpback whales went, and what they were doing on the love earth website.