How to justify killing pregnant whales
Metiria commented last week on the distressing news that 60 percent of female Minke whales killed in the Antarctic by Japanese whalers last summer were pregnant; now the Institute for Cetacean Research (which haven’t updated its website since June so I can’t link) has responded by telling us that this is, in fact, good news for whales:
“This is very significant because it demonstrates the population is robust,” the Director-General of the Institute of Cetacean Research in Tokyo, Dr Hiroshi Hatanaka, said today. “The Antarctic minke whale reproduces consistently every year. Such high productivity demonstrates that the population is certainly well able to sustain a commercial hunt.”
Apparently,
“The world is realising that there is no need or reason to prevent sustainable commercial whaling in the Antarctic under IWC management procedure and Australia may find itself standing alone while the rest of world moves on,” Dr Hatanaka said.
Never mind that if you kill a pregnant female, you kill her baby too, making it pretty hard to maintain such a “robust” population in future.
July 31st, 2006 at 4:24 pm
I still can’t believe in the 21st century this practice continues. The only way I can describe it is misplaced nationalist fervor. When the news is full of stories of massive whale meat gluts and reluctant consumers of the by-product of their alleged scientific whaling programme, what other conclusion can you arrive at?
July 31st, 2006 at 9:15 pm
Yeah I agree, but we shouldn’t think that our country doesn’t do likewise, there are probably plenty of appalling environmental practices that other countries can’t believe we do, that take place not because there is a economic need for them, but because of vested interests fueling the fires of public opinion in order to make some cash. Like for example the Wellington “Bypass”. Probably every European country would be going eh? what are they thinking? Are they stuck in the 50s?
July 31st, 2006 at 10:07 pm
Its easy for New Zealand to take the moral high ground over whales; it doesn’t cost us anything. Doing anything about the 2.8 million layer hens in cages, millions of broiler chickens suffering acute pain for much of their short, miserable lives, and the 60,000 pigs being driven mad in sow stalls is a different matter. I am amazed that nobody has commented on the spineless capitulation of Agriculture Minister Jim Anderton to the battery egg industry.
Jim has overturned a Regulations Review Committee recommendation that the code of so-called “welfare” for layer hens was illegal as it didn’t allow them to display normal patterns of behaviour. Yet there has been no media coverage at all of this cowardly, arrogant, anti-democratic and anti-science action.
The agriculture lobby in New Zealand is very powerful and wants us to continue with the status quo. It suits them to let us spout off our moral outrage over whales. That way it allows us to appear oh so superior to these other unenlightened nations who torture animals, while blinding us to the cruelty in our own back yard.
http://www.epf.org.nz
July 31st, 2006 at 10:16 pm
Or firing up coal fired power stations…good point stuey.
July 31st, 2006 at 10:40 pm
The Israelis are very good at justifying the killing of pregnant humans (provided they are Palestinian or Lebanese).
That is bad, but at least Homo sapiens is not an endangered species (yet). Can the same be said for Minke whales?
In both cases women are not noticeably a part of the slaughter team.
August 1st, 2006 at 2:24 am
This complaint about the JARPA programme deserves some careful thought and analysis.
The JARPA II programme is set to take 850 minke whales each summer, of which roughly half will be female - 425 on average.
The IWC Scientific Committee estimates that there are literally hundreds of thousands of minke whales in the Antarctic during the summer when the JARPA II research is undertaken. New minke abundance estimates are set to be agreed upon by this time next year, but the current (negatively biased) abundance estimate has more than 300,000 minkes (see the latest Scientific Committee report at the IWC homepage - there’s other info there to suggest that the finalized estimate will probably turn out to be higher than this, in fact).
Anyway, we are almost certainly talking of around 150,000 female minke whales. As Hatakana says, the JARPA II sample shows that many of the mature females are pregnant (this fact was actually reported in the IWC Scientific Committee report earlier this year - HSI must not have bothered to read the IWC Scientific Committee report when it first came out back in mid-June?).
250 killed vs 150,000 left. Yes, the fetuses of the 250 are gone as well, but there’s clearly plenty more baby whales on the way as this sample indicates.
Is anyone really willing to make claims that it is ‘pretty hard to maintain such a “robustâ€? population in future’, giving the basically insignifcant numbers of whales being taken in the JARPA II programme?
The intellectually honest will admit that Hatanaka is quite right that this is good news for whale conservation. I blogged as much on this myself several days ago when the news first came out:
http://david-in-tokyo.blogspot.com/2006/07/whaling-lots-of-pregnant-mi nkes.html
August 1st, 2006 at 2:32 am
> When the news is full of stories of massive whale meat gluts and reluctant consumers of the by-product of their alleged scientific whaling programme, what other conclusion can you arrive at?
Do you believe that you are getting the full, accurate story about this, through pure unmanipulated western media?
To give you something to think about: I went down the road on the weekend to a restaurant that I had previously seen advertising whale bacon on the menu (wrote about it on this blog previously). I tried to order some, but was told that they had sold out. Do you think people go to the restaurant and buy it for their pet dogs?
August 1st, 2006 at 2:40 am
> “The world is realising that there is no need or reason to prevent sustainable commercial whaling in the Antarctic under IWC management procedure and Australia may find itself standing alone while the rest of world moves on,�
There is no “apparently” about this.
“it’s certainly true that if commercial whaling were resumed under the revised management procedure, it could be managed safely”
That’s Judy Zeh, former Chair of the IWC Scientific Committee talking to the aussie media a few years ago.
Head of Science at the IWC, Greg Donovan agrees:
“From a scientific perspective, the IWC Scientific Committee has developed probably the most rigorously tested way to estimate safe catch levels for any marine species.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/5103378.stm
To be blunt, the environmental movement discredits itself by clinging to the idea that every last whale must be protected from the harpoons.
New Zealand has populations of small dolphins that are in serious danger of extinction. The minke whale is a non-issue, in terms of pure conservation. It’s time for the environmental movement to get it’s priorities straight.
August 1st, 2006 at 1:02 pm
The Government certainly does display some interesting differences in stance. For example, the Government - specifically Fisheries Minister Jim Anderton - allows the killing of endangered marine mammals here at home in NZ waters (NZ sea lions) while advocating against other countries doing so internationally (commercial and “scientific” whaling). NZ sea lions are more endangered than minke whales and their population is in serious decline. Many sea lions killed in the squid fishery are pregnant, and have pups on shore that starve to death - killing one female sea lion is equivalent to three sea lion deaths. Anyone notice any inconsistencies here?
August 3rd, 2006 at 4:02 pm
Thanks David - I appreciate the perspective and you do provide food for thought.
August 4th, 2006 at 2:53 am
HB - I read Jim Anderton’s press releases carefully, and it seems that his decision was made in full view of the scientific advice he had received, and he made a conservative decision based on that advice.
Also worth remembering that the Fishieries Minister was taken to court in previous years for failing to make a balanced decision, and the industry won the case.
I do agree that this presents an inconsistency. Clearly New Zealand law requires the minister to make balanced decisions where there are domestic parties involved, but New Zealand’s position at the IWC is very different - politically expedient rather than principled.
New Zealand either believes in science based decision making for conservation, whether that be at home or abroad, or it doesn’t. But it’s too much to expect politicians to be consistent
farmgeek - you’re welcome
August 4th, 2006 at 11:04 am
Is this the same kind of scientific “advice” that told Anderton that hens suffer no more in battery cages than in well-managed free range systems. Is it the same sort of “advice” as that given by an industrial veterinarian who would not even divulge his methodology. Is it the same kind of “advice” as that given by the same crooked vet who supposedly did a survey of free range egg producers but failed to even contact the largest producer. Is it the same “advice” that totally ignored a scientific review by top European poultry scientists whose results were not favorurable to the industry. Is it the same kind of “advice” that instead cited a very poor, non-peer reviewed study that was totally torn apart by 3 reputable poultry welfare scientists. Is it the same “advice” that was stimulated by legal threats and bullying by the industry.
Or was it the sort of “advice” given by treasury and the Ministry for the Environment, who manipulated an independent economic report staing that importing GM crops would lower GDP, and claimed in the absence of evidence that the report said exactly the opposite. Is it the sort of “advice” that I as a policy adviser was asked to give to the Minister “can you debunk this please?”, written about an experiment showing that rats prefered non-GM to GM corn (note: Not “can you comment on this please”, or “what do you think of this research”, but “can you DEBUNK this”. Is it the same kind of “advice” as that given to the minister after I was asked to critique Jeffrey Smiths “hard to swallow”. I gave an honest appraisal, giving some cases where the authors’ science was suspect, as well as other cases where it was spot on. Surprise, surprise, and no guessing which bits were left out when my highly “edited” advice finally got to the Minister.
So forgive me for being cynical, but ministerial scientific “advice” carries about as much credibility with me as consulting a crystal ball. In fact less, because the crystal ball may sometimes come out against industry interests, but by some amazing coincidence, ministerial “scientific” advice always agrees with the industry.
http://www.epf.org.nz
August 5th, 2006 at 2:06 am
kiore1,
The scientific advice is provided by the independant scientists at NIWA.
They are not connected to the squid fishery as far as I know.
Regards.
August 5th, 2006 at 4:42 pm
^they are very much connected to Mfish, who are under A LOT of pressure from the industry…
August 13th, 2006 at 9:39 pm
Your attempt to cast doubt on the independance of the NIWA scientists doesn’t convince me at all.