Seven Alternatives to Scientific Japanese Whaling (That Can Save The Whale)

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This week, Australia has asked the international court of justice to withdraw all permits for whale hunts from the Japanese fleet. Japan's annual whale hunt, which uses a loophole in the 1986 International Whaling Commission (IWC) ban on commercial whaling, has been controversial for many years. This loophole allows for scientific whaling, at any level determined appropriate by the member country. Japan's "JARPA" scientific whaling program plan describes this "long-term research program of undetermined duration" that studies feeding ecology, environmental pollution, and stock structure. (Stock structure is the makeup of the population of whales. It is a term often used to describe commercial fish, which are managed similarly to how whale populations were managed until 1986).

The members of the scientific committee of the IWC published an article a full ten years ago, criticizing the "unnecessary use of lethal sampling" in the Japanese whaling program. The killing of these whales is unnecessary because there are many available alternatives, which have been used successfully by scientists all over the world. Here's a breakdown of seven of these techniques, with the Japanese research goal that they meet in parentheses next to each.

1) Prey Collection (Feeding Ecology)

If you want to know what an animal is eating, one of the most effective ways is to look at what it's eating. This is exactly what many researchers do. For example, in the Pacific Northwest, researchers collect fish scales in the wake of foraging killer whales. They can then analyze these scales and determine exactly what species of fish the whales have been eating.

2) Scat analysis (Feeding Ecology, Environmental Pollution)

If you can't see what the whale is eating on the way in, look at what comes out the other end. Specially trained dogs sniff the water for the scent of whale poo and direct researchers toward the prize (I am 100% serious - there IS such a thing as a dog specially trained to sniff out whale poop). The poop is collected with a net. Researchers can then analyze the feces to look at what the whale was eating, as well as to analyze stress hormones and toxins.

3) Camera Tagging (Feeding Ecology)

Suction-cup-attached cameras video the whales as they are looking for food and eating. Although it would be difficult to attach a suction cup to a furry animal, like a bear, they stick on to whales because whales are big and smooth (kind of like windows). The suction cups don't hurt the whale, and scientists get to watch them eat.

4) Biopsy Sampling (Feeding Ecology, Environmental Pollution, Stock Structure)

To look at the genetics of a whale population, researchers sometimes need to collect tissue samples. This is done by means of a biopsy. You may have heard of biopsies before - Doctors use them in human patients to test for diseases, such as cancer or an infection. A biopsy occurs when a sample of tissues are taken for analysis. In humans, a doctor usually removes a small sample of the tissue with a scalpel or needle. Wild whales don't usually hold still for doctors, so researchers take tissue samples using a small dart that collects a tiny plug of skin. This tissue can be used to do genetic analysis to determine how whales are related and for other information, such as the whale's sex. In addition, tissue analysis can tell scientists about what toxins the whales have been exposed to, and even what the whales have been eating.

5) Necropsies on Stranded Whales (Feeding Ecology, Environmental Pollution, Stock Structure)

A necropsy is the animal equivalent of an autopsy - it is when a scientist or vet opens up a dead animal to see how it died. When a dead whale washes up on the beach, the Whale CSI takes over to look for clues to the cause of its death. Stomach contents can be analyzed to determine what the whale has been eating, and genetics can be done to see how it is related to the other animals in its population. Age and sex can also be determined, depending on how long the animal has been dead.

6) Breath Analysis (Environmental Pollution, Stock Structure)

Yes, there is a Breathalyzer test for whales. But while the human Breathalyzer tests for alcohol, whale breath tests analyze hormones and pathogens. This can tell us if a whale is sick, stressed, or reproductive.

7) Photo-identification (Stock Structure)

Many whales have unique patterns, much like humans have fingerprints. Just like humans, you can identify an individual whale by this pattern and even identify them over time. As researchers collect more and more photos of individual whales, they can start to estimate how many whales there are in the population, and how they interact. This method was used to estimate the entire population of humpback whales in the north Pacific. That's a lot of whales.

These are just a few of many methods that can be used to study whales in the wild without resorting to lethal methods. With these innovative methods, many of the goals of the JARPA Japanese Scientific Research project would be met, without having further impact on whale populations that have already been decimated through human interaction. Although one species of whale may be close to pre-whaling numbers, many species that the Japanese Scientific whaling program targets have not recovered from whaling, such as the sei whale and fin whale, which are still endangered.

What do you think would be the best way to study these species while allowing them to recover from the effects of whaling?

Alexis Rudd is on twitter as @SoundingTheSea

References:

Calambokidis, John, Gretchen H. Steiger, Janice M. Straley, Louis M. Herman, Salvatore Cerchio, Dan R. Salden, Urban R. Jorge et al. "Movements and population structure of humpback whales in the North Pacific." Marine Mammal Science 17, no. 4 (2001): 769-794. (Paywall, but you can read a similar report here).

Calambokidis, John, Greg S. Schorr, Gretchen H. Steiger, John Francis, Mehdi Bakhtiari, Greg Marshall, Erin M. Oleson, Diane Gendron, and Kelly Robertson. "Insights into the underwater diving, feeding, and calling behavior of blue whales from a suction-cup-attached video-imaging tag (CRITTERCAM)." Marine Technology Society Journal 41, no. 4 (2007): 19-29 (Paywall)

Clapham, Phillip J., Per Berggren, Simon Childerhouse, Nancy A. Friday, Toshio Kasuya, Laurence Kell, Karl-Hermann Kock et al. "Whaling as science." Bioscience 53, no. 3 (2003): 210-212.

Government of Japan, 2002. Research plan for cetacean studies in the western North Pacific under special permit (JARPN II). Paper SC/54/o2 presented to the IWC Scientific Committee.

Hanson, M. Bradley, E. A. Ashe, Michael R. Heithaus, and Gregory J. Marshall. Studies of Foraging in Southern Resident Killer Whales During July 2002: Dive Depths, Bursts in Speed, and the Use of a Crittercam System for Examining Sub-surface Behavior. National Marine Fisheries Service, National Marine Mammal Laboratory, 2003.

Hanson, MBradley, Robin W. Baird, John KB Ford, Jennifer Hempelmann-Halos, Donald M. Van Doornik, John R. Candy, Candice K. Emmons et al. "Species and stock identification of prey consumed by endangered southern resident killer whales in their summer range." Endangered Species Research 11, no. 1 (2010): 69-82.

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Kieckhefer, Thomas R. "Feeding ecology of humpback whales in continental shelf waters near Cordell Bank, California." (1992).

Lick, Roland, and Uwe Piatkowski. "Stomach contents of a northern bottlenose whale (Hyperoodon ampullatus) stranded at Hiddensee, Baltic Sea." JMBA-Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom 78, no. 2 (1998): 643-650. (Paywall)

McLellan, W. A., Sentiel Rommel, Michael Moore, and D. Ann Pabst. "Right whale necropsy protocol." Final report to NOAA Fisheries for contract (2004).

Rosenbaum, H. C., R. L. Brownell, M. W. Brown, C. Schaeff, V. Portway, B. N. White, S. Malik et al. "World‐wide genetic differentiation of Eubalaena: questioning the number of right whale species." Molecular Ecology 9, no. 11 (2000): 1793-1802.

Ruegg, K.C., E.C. Anderson, C.S. Baker, M. Vant., J.A. Jackson, and S.R. Palumbi. "Are Antarctic minke whales unusually abundant because of 20th century whaling?." Molecular Ecology 19, no. 2 (2010): 281-291. (Paywall)

Todd, Sean, Peggy Ostrom, Jon Lien, and Jun Abrajano. "Use of biopsy samples of humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) skin for stable isotope (δ13C) determination." Journal of Northwest Atlantic Fishery Science 22 (1997): 71-76.