Author - CEO

So it seems that Japan's Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama has revealed he dislikes whale
meat. 

The Japanese press is reporting that the Japanese Prime Minister ‘hates whale meat’. He is apparently not alone. Demand for whale meat has fallen dramatically in Japan in recent years; prices have dropped by  half, and thousands of tonnes of meat from its two large whaling programmes languish in frozen stockpiles. Sales of whale meat, blubber and other products in Japan have made a loss of around $223 million over the last 20 years and  the government has spent over $164 million dollars in subsidies over the same period to maintain the whaling fleet and other aspects of the failing industry.

Despite not having the stomach for whale meat, the new Japanese Prime Minister unfortunately seems set to continue the policy pursued by his predecessors; propping up an unnecessary, unsustainable and uneconomic industry that has no place in the 21st century.  

Pilot whale meat on sale in the Faroe Islands

Back in the mid 1990s, WDCS was looking at how we could help move the whaling debate forward and we decided to focus some efforts on the issue of food security. Not in the sense of how much food is out there, but how were the authorities in the so-called ‘whaling nations’ actually dealing with issues of potential contaminants in whale products.

What we found was staggering. It seemed that whilst there was a potential issue, the ‘red mist’ that seemed to come across the eyes of the various governments every time whaling was mentioned was blocking them seeing the emergent evidence regarding this area of threat.

WDCS had originally looked at this issue in the Faroe Islands, where consumption of pilot whales and other toothed whales placed the local Faroese people potentially at threat from contaminants. Indeed in 1998, having recognized that environmental pollutants such as mercury (Hg) and PCBs enter the body of pregnant women via pilot whale products, causing potentially serious developmental damage to their infants, the government of the Faroe Islands issued the following recommendations to the public.
• Adults should only eat blubber and meat once or twice a month;
• Girls and women should not eat blubber until they have given birth to all their children;
• Meat should not be eaten within three months of planned pregnancy and not eaten at all by pregnant and nursing women; and
• Organs (e.g. liver and kidney) should not be eaten at all.

In June 1999 the New Scientist Magazine ran an article reporting that, ‘The study of children born in the Faroe Islands that previously revealed neurological problems linked to pollution exposure (the main dietary source of which was whale meat) has now discovered another impact on health. Further analysis of the data of the group of 917 children shows that those exposed to higher levels of mercury in the womb also had significantly higher blood pressure.’ WDCS’s Mark Simmonds was quoted as saying, ‘For many years the levels of pollutants in the pilot whales killed in the Faroe Islands have been known to be a considerable threat to the health of the islanders. Mercury and various organic pollutants exceed health safety standards. It should not therefore come as a surprise that health impacts can be detected.’

In 2008 the Faroese Health authorities finally moved to advise ‘Islanders to stop eating pilot whale meat immediately, because of dangers to their health’. The Faroese Prime Minister , Kaj Leo Johanessen  issued an extremely brief statement regarding the situation: which appeared to say that ‘The Faroese PM, Kaj Leo Johannesen has today sent to the Faroese Health department the following note, concerning the matter of pilot whales, saying, “..thank you for the letter of the 13th November 2008 from the National Health Office which has informed on the latest news on pilot whales as human food".

The Faroe Islands' Government deserve credit for their initial warnings in 1998 but why did it take so long for them to take action to protect all its population? And why are small dolphins and whales still being killed and eaten in the islands after this warning was issued? Was it because some of the information came from anti-whaling groups originally?  Were the political consequences of not taking action deemed to be acceptable? It seems amazing that whilst WDCS and others were raising this issue, Faroese health officials were also concerned enough to raise it back in 1988 and even issue warnings.

‘Something is rotten in the state of Denmark’. I have recently written on the issue of Greenlandic diet and contaminants ....so don’t intend to expand on it here - but it does seem to be a similar story of political foot dragging whilst concern grows.

Back in 1999 Frank Cipriano and Steve Palumbi had also been looking at identifying whale products on sale in Japan using new genetic techniques. These pioneering methods opened up the opportunity of seeing what identifiable products also contained contaminants.

In 1999 a group of researchers from Daiichi College of Pharmaceutical Sciences in Fukuoka, Japan, Harvard University in the United States and the University of Greenwich submitted a document to the Japanese Health and Welfare Ministry and the Fisheries Agency to request them to take measures to address the problem. The group feared that consumption of whale meat could result in health problems. Later a series of papers detailing the levels of contaminants found in whale and dolphin meat samples (and which species these came) from were published in the international and national scientific press. These papers – which were available for all to see included one entitled “Human health significance of organochlorine and mercury contaminants in Japanese whale meat” which was published  in 2002 in the Journal of Toxicology & Environmental Health (Part A: Current Issues 65 (17): 1211-1235) and published by M. P. Simmonds;  K. Haraguchi;  T. Endo;  F. Cipriano;  S. R. Palumbi; G. M. Troisi

At the 51st annual IWC that year WDCS and the Swiss Coalition for the Protection of Whales (SCPW) presented to the IWC evidence that genetic and toxicological studies undertaken in Japan earlier this year by scientists from Harvard University and two Japanese toxicology laboratories provide overwhelming and alarming evidence that Japanese consumers who believe they are buying whale meat, are being tricked into consuming dolphin and porpoise meat so contaminated it that was unfit for human consumption.

WDCS said at the time that ‘the Government of Japan must be aware that around 1,800 tonnes of unacceptably contaminated meat from dolphins and porpoises are entering the human food chain in Japan each year. If the Government ignores our evidence of widespread deception, fails to warn consumers that any cetacean meat, no matter how it is labeled or described, could be highly contaminated, and continues to promote whale meat as a healthy food, it will be complicit in an appalling fraud on the innocent public’.

In 2001 WDCS revealed that Norwegian authorities were expressing concerns over potential contaminant levels.

In 2002, the Asahi Shinbun challenged the Japanese Institute of Cetacean Research (the body that carries out Japan’s so called scientific whaling) of hiding the fact that whale products had to be treated before sales to avoid contaminants.

In May 2003, the news agency, Reuters reported that growing concerns in Norway over pollution levels in whale meat, as well as blubber ,has led to new warnings for certain people not to eat whale meat. This followed on from previous statements on blubber consumption.

"Our advice is that pregnant women and mothers who are breast feeding should not eat whale meat," Janneche Utne Skaare, deputy director of the National Veterinary Institute and a scientist on the panel, told Reuters.

In the years that followed, the numbers of scientific papers on this issue began to grow - and more-and-more people became concerned to the point where even officials in Taiji, Wakayama Prefecture, Japan, were willing to  speak out.

Now in October 2009 Hiroshi Hasegawa, writing in AERA Magazine (issues dated 26/10/2009 - No.51\380 published by the leading Asahi Shimbun) talks of the failure of Japanese officials to appropriately investigate the threat of Mercury contamination in Taiji.

Hasegawa reports that this summer, ‘the National Institute for Minamata Disease (NIMD) which was established in Minamata city, Kumamoto Prefecture in 1978 [and is now part of the Ministry of Environment] took hair samples from the local residents in Taiji, a small town of 3530 (as of August) in the Higashimuro district of Wakayama Prefecture to determine mercury levels.’ This was the first time that NIMD has targeted a specific area outside of the Minamata region for such a large undertaking.

Whilst Hasegawa reports that MIMD did not diagnose ‘Minimata Disease’, the reporter is critical that ’the examination itself was outside standard neurologically based testing standards that take the brain deteriorating effects of methyl lmercury poisoning into account.’

The actual result were found to be ‘total mercury levels (90% of total mercury is methyl mercury) of the hair samples ranged from 3.60ppm to 86.30ppm, showing that all samples exceed average male and female mercury levels established by the aforementioned nationwide testing, in some cases extremely. Additionally, the total mercury level of toothed whale meat was a staggering 3.08 to 161.50 times the provisional regulation of “0.4ppm” set by the Ministry of Health and Welfare in 1973 regarding total mercury levels in seafood.’

The journalist states that when they questioned the authorities on why appropriate tests were not applied to detect the brain deteriorating effects of methyl mercury, ‘All those seated appeared to become tense’...with ‘no explanation given as to why the tests (e.g. the two point discrimination tests) in question were not carried out.’
The article concludes that ‘The Ministry for the Environment can’t be Trusted’. In a concluding paragraph of this extensive article, Hasegawa states ‘Judging from the unscientific examinations that continue to be carried out, I am inclined to believe that the Ministry for the Environment should not be trusted to handle the mercury problem faced by coastal whaling bases such as Taiji. I don’t believe that anything will be solved until the central government confronts the problem head-on from an independent standpoint.’

Whaling is just not that important that people’s lives should be at risk. When we helped get this ball rolling in 1999 we didn’t realize it would take so long for Governments to get to grips with the issue. We also never contemplated that the health of people would be potentially still be being used as pawns as Governments try to avoid taking action on whaling.

Wake up Japan and the other so-called 'whaling nations', - there is more at stake than your pride now!

Pollution has long been known to affect marine life with disasterous effects. The oil spill in the Timor Sea is a direct and current example. Algal blooms have been suspected of being linked to pollution by some scientists, but it would seem that algal blooms are having a very real affect on marine mammals.

It would seem now that the toxins produced in algal blooms have been shown to affect the hippocampus in sealions. The hippocampus is responsible for our animal's spatial awareness and it may be this impact on the hippocampus is causing sealions to get lost and stray into unusual places.

I wonder how much pollution is having an affect on cetaceans? Can we make the leap and suggest that pollution may be affecting the hippocampus of other marine mammals we see in strandings?

Strandings have a large number of causal factors but maybe this work takes us another step towards understanding the role pollution plays.

WDCS would like to join with colleagues all around the world and pay tribute to a hero of the whale conservation movement, Dr Robbins Barstow, who is 90 years young on October 24th 2009.

Aside from being a life-long amateur filmmaker and a social justice activist Robbins is best known for his dedication to the Save the Whales Movement.  In 1974, he co-founded what was then named the Connecticut Cetacean Society.

Robbins successfully lobbied the then Governor of Connecticut to proclaim May 2nd and 3rd, 1974 as “Connecticut Save the Whale Days” and he was instrumental in getting the sperm whale named as Connecticut’s state animal.

In the 1980s, Connecticut Cetacean Society changed its name to Cetacean Society International (CSI) to reflect the group’s growing impact on whale-related conservation issues around the world.  In recognition of CSI’s work, in 1988, the United Nations Environment Program named the group to its Global 500 Roll of Honor. (please see website http://csiwhalesalive.org)

Robbins served on four occasions as a member of the US delegation to the International Whaling Commission (IWC). He was present the year the IWC adopted the global moratorium on commercial whaling, and has had a huge influence on the conservation movement engaged with the Commission since. Robbins championed the issues of ethics with respect to whales and challenged the conservation community to become protectionist in their stance. His compassion for whales was only matched by his compassion for people.

In 1983, he helped organized the Whales Alive! Conference, which was co-sponsored by CSI, the US government and the IWC. The conference, held in Boston, was the first global meeting to address whale watching and its economic benefits.  While many people only see the Save the Whales movement as “anti-whaling”, Robbins has always sought to promote the positive aspects of whales, and to offer former whaling countries an alternative that could help offset any socio-economic losses due to the whaling ban.  He was a visionary leader on the issues

In addition to his film-making, Robbins is also an author.  His book Meet the Great Ones, co-authored with artist Don Sineti, has been used by schools across the state of Connecticut to educate children about whales and dolphins, and was also translated into Spanish.

Robbins still serves as Director Emeritus of the Cetacean Society International. He remains a friend to many in WDCS and a mentor to the whole community of cetacean advocates including our own Kate O’Connell and our colleague Mick McIntyre of Whales Alive.org

His courage, wit, warmth and hard-work ethic are cherished by all those fortunate enough to know him or just to have met him.

Robbins we salute you.

Update: Robbins many contributions to the State of Connecticut are being recognized by Governor Rell and she has proclaimed October 24, 2009, Dr.
Robbins Barstow day.  Read the complete proclamation here.

Seriously, they are! I was just doing some work on Japanese and Russian whaling history and came across this fact.

You see Japan obtained a lot of its early whaling fleet as captured vessels from disputes with Russia. The development of the Japanese industrial whaling fleet is also integrally linked to the imperialist expansion of its military conquests and invasion of China (Manchuria) when it required whale oil to obtain foreign currency and then only later whale meat to feed its troops as they suppressed parts of occupied China. Up until then, the Japanese dumped most of the meat at sea and only landed the oil.

The Soviet Union, realizing that Japan was actually going to lose the Second World War decided they wanted a piece of the peace dividend and declared war on Japan on the 8th August 1945.

However, I never realized it but it seems that the old Soviet Union and Japan never actually signed a peace accord after the second world war.

The Soviet Union (as the Russian Federation was then) seized the four islands (the Northern Territories) just before the end of  World War II. After occupying them, the Soviet Union declared they were part of its territories in February 1946 and all Japanese residents were forced to leave by 1949. The Russian’s now call them the Southern Kurils.The dispute has prevented Japan and Russia from concluding a peace treaty to formally end the war. Here ends the digression.

Save the whale, save the planet. It seems that whales might be helping to slow down climate change. Science News reports that 'Sperm whales in the Southern Ocean deserve credit for their fine work pumping iron for climate change.

'Of course the whales breathe, but earlier calculations overlooked the potential for whales to offset their emissions by introducing extra iron into the upper zone of water, Lavery said October 13 at the Biennial Conference on the Biology of Marine Mammals in Quebec City, Canada. The extra iron that whales bring up from their deep feeding encourages plankton growth. That growth traps carbon, much as human-run iron-enrichment experiments in the ocean might, Lavery and her colleagues contend.

According to the team’s calculations, sperm whales in the Southern Ocean should rank as carbon neutral at least. The animals may even be capturing a net 5 million metric tons of carbon from the atmosphere per year, Lavery says.'

So every time the whalers kill a whale they may well be contributing to climate change.

I hope Sweden, who appears to be abusing its position as President of the EU at the moment to help force through Denmark's demands to kill more whales in Greenland, takes note and steps back from its crusade to have more whales die.

It would seem that Sweden is whale enemy no 1 at the moment.

As an Arsenal supporter, and therefore one that can appreciate quality football (my colleague Andy Bool tried to convince me that Nottingham Forest are still a quality team today - a misguided man) I thought this film was fascinating.

A marine survey team off the north Wales coast discovered dolphins, playing 'football' with jellyfish lying on the water's surface.

The bottlenose dolphins were spotted tossing the jellyfish off Tremadog
Bay. Jonathan Easter, one of the team said the "incredible images...present more questions than answers!" Smart mammals I say, maybe one could play for Nottingham Forest one day.

Radio Five also covered the story and one of the many public contributors texted in to say 'you cannot trust dolphin footballers, they are always diving' I am sorry but that made me laugh out loud.

A massive pod of up to 50 killer whales has been filmed for the first time off the coast of Scotland by a BBC crew.

The BBC reports that Gordon Buchanan, presenter of BBC Autumnwatch, filmed the group from a fishing boat in the North Sea.

As the largest member of the dolphin family, killer whales are known for their intelligence and range of hunting behaviours.

The pod of killer whales caught on camera belong to a family group that has developed a particular hunting strategy; following mackerel fishermen and feeding on fish that escape their nets.

The killer whales pick of any escaping mackerel and also feed off scraps as the nets are later lowered back into the water to be washed clean.

The BBC notes that 'Scientists first documented this behaviour in the 1980s and fishermen in Scotland have seen the behaviour develop since.

"They are pretty quick to cotton on, and it's something they are doing all
around the world where there is a big fishery," says Mr Andy Foote of
the University of Aberdeen, a marine scientist advising the BBC
Autumnwatch team.

"But what's great about this one, is they aren't viewed as a pest, they are just going after mackerel that are stuck in the nets or escaping and they don't take any of the fishermen's catch," he says.

"They don't damage the nets or get stuck in the nets, there is a benefit for both parties and the fishermen are really fond of the killer whales."'

I first saw this behaviour in the mid 1990's when I travelled to Iceland for WDCS. I had the luck to travel with the Icelandic fishing fleet to observe orcas south of Iceland. Having convinced them I was not there to cause them problems, the fishermen opened up and explained that they regarded the orca as 'colleagues'. This was at a time, like now, when politicians and whalers back in Iceland were agitating to kill whales, and orcas were portrayed as 'evil fish-eating vermin'

The truth was that the fishermen would use their sonar to identify where the orca were at sea and the fishermen would then target that bit of ocean. Setting their nets (purse seine) where the orca were feeding, the fishermen stated that they would get a higher catch if they relied on the orca.

What was fascinating was that the orca would sit back and wait for the net to be partly pulled in. In what appeared to be a well planned process that the orca were fully cognizant of, the fishermen would pause to allow 'stunned' fish to fall out of the top of the net and then the orca would come into feed. The most wonderful sight was seeing a female bringing in a calf and nudging the cal towards the net to catch its first (or nearly first fish). Repeated passes were observed until the calf had successfully taken a fish, to which I could swear the mother was 'smiling'.

The rest of the pod would then come into feed. All the while, the fishermen would watch and wait until they felt the whales had had enough and then pulled their nets in. The whales would then, as one, head off to the next Icelandic fishing vessel on the horizon - a bit like finishing at one feeding station and now onto the next.

The boat I was on collected their fish and then moved on again towards where the whales were to be found to set their nets again and the whole process was repeated.

On the return trip I asked the fishermen what they felt about the political arguments that 'whales were eating all the fish', an argument that the Icelandic Government still makes. I remember one fisherman dismissing it as 'Reykjavik politics' and that the whales were 'their friends'.

I remember the evening ending with me watching the stunning sight of a male orca, with a six foot fin, swimming slowly past the boat, its fin so tall that it appeared to cut out the light from the moon as it passed.

Most probably one of the best nights of my career in cetacean protection.

Sylvia Earle is one of those special people that have made a real impact for ocean conservation.

'In an interview with Yale Environment 360, Earle discusses how humanity needs to begin looking at fish in the same way we view wild creatures on land, how the current system of aquaculture... is folly, and how the massive influx of carbon dioxide into the world’s oceans is altering a precious balance that has existed for millions of years.'

In the interview Earle advocates 'we should have learned with whales. We should have learned with wildlife on the land that we have the power — through both our numbers and our technologies — to be able to find, kill, extract and market, to decimate, anything that swims in the ocean.'

She goes on to say 'Amazingly, we haven’t come to the realization that, like the whales, if you want them to recover from severe depletion, stop killing them. Just stop!'

Can't argue with that. Told you she was a hero.

If you are in the UK, or have access to the BBC output online, you can see our colleague Sarah Dolman on the BBC One Show (9th October) talking about dolphins and the threats from oil and gas exploration. Have a look at about 9minutes 30 seconds into the program.