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I am reading John Keegan's tome on 'The First World War'. Not only is a great piece of history (maybe all political scholars of European history should seek to understand how this conflict and the fifty years preceding that helped shape Europe - but that's an aside).

What struck me was the fact that the similarities of the democratic deficit that led to this awful conflict is in some ways similar to the democratic deficit in Japan with respect to public access to the whaling debate.

The new Japanese Government has instigated a review of publicly funded science in Japan, but I'd not see the Japanese commercial whaling (sorry, I mean 'scientific whaling') falling under this purview.

Maybe because very little science actually takes place, or that the very little that can be claimed is simply about increasing whaling activity, - or maybe because its not an area that the Government of Japan want the public to get involved in assessing.

Keegan notes that in 1913 Europe, the plans of Schlieffen, Moltke and colleagues, for war were not subject to scrutiny by elected or even regal authorities. Without checks and balances the very fact that these officers and civil servants continued to develop war plans that predecessors had started years before meant that war became an inevitability.

In the Japanese whaling debate we are unable to see where the elected officialdom of Japan ends and the power of unelected civil servants begins - who takes responsibility? As recently discussed here and in the media the civil servants in Japan who have continued the long planned assault on whales are increasingly being challenged on the issue of their webs of involvement with commercial companies that benefit from whaling.

When Japan decides to continue whaling who is actually making that decision and who benefits? Is it the people of Japan and their elected officials, or an unelected grouping that straddle the world of commerce and 'government'.

The result of a democratic deficit in Europe was four years of hell for millions of people. The results on the high seas has been a savagery and suffering for thousands of animals. And before anyone attacks me, of course its not the same thing, but suffering when it should not have happened is still suffering and a bloody legacy that should have been avoided.

I could have hoped that humanity would have learned the lesson that we know very little about the marine environment.

Over the last twelve months we have realized that a species of river dolphins is in fact two (see our section on river dolphins). When politicians tell us that there is 'X amount of cetaceans', often latter evidence is that we actually had 'B', 'C' and 'D' populations making up 'X-Y' of a total for the species. The whaling debate is littered with these issues.

The BBC now reports that a species of skate could become the first marine fish driven to extinction by commercial fishing. The BBC goes onto say 'A
study reveals that an error in the classification of the species has
meant researchers have failed to see just how close to the brink it is'.

'The research team, led by Samuel Iglesias from the Marine Biology
Station in Concarneau on the west coast of France, paints a very bleak
picture for the future of the flapper skate..

Dr Iglesias said: "The threat of extinction for European Dipturus together with mislabelling in fishery statistics highlight the need for a huge reassessment of population for the different Dipturus species in European waters.

"Without revision and recognition of its distinct status the world's largest skate, D. intermedia, could soon be rendered extinct."'

Years ago I visited the Japanese Far Seas Fisheries team in Tokyo Japan. This is the same department that has responsibility for whaling. The visit started well enough as the civil servant I was visiting, on noting that I was wearing a tie (and that he himself was not) made a colleague take off his tie so that there was an 'equality in our appearance'.
 
I should have realized early on that such an approach was an indicator of how Japanese Government negotiators view the world. Sometimes it’s not the logic of the situation that guides their positioning on the issue of whaling, but often some deeper reasoning that steers them and sometimes something that can be quite superficial.
 
I remember that after 2 hours of interviews the senior civil servant concerned was just building up to a crescendo of argument, claiming that whaling was ‘going to feed the third world’, was ‘going to be a source of a cure for many of the worlds major diseases’, - when I stopped him and asked him what his personal view of whaling was.
 
Pausing for a few seconds, and dropping the rhetorical stance of his previous pontification, the gentlemen said that, actually, he thought whaling was a distraction from the real issues that Japan faced in fisheries management.
 
When I pressed him why Japan would pursue such a policy that did not really serve its interests he pointed out that the system found it inherently impossible to change its set direction. I gathered from what he was saying that too many elements of the Japanese Government, civil servants and the fisheries industry, were locked into this self-destructive cycle of pride and annual whale killing, and no one element was placed to break out the cycle.
 
I asked him why he didn’t try and change things and his response was most probably the most damning indictment of the whole sorry tale.
 
He noted that his predecessor at the Ministry was now employed in one of the major fisheries companies (also involved in whaling) and that he owed not just his past allegiance to this individual, but that when he himself retired from the Ministry (I believe there was compulsory retirement at 55 in those days, but my memory may deceive me) he was relying on getting a job with his previous colleague.
 
It seemed that his continued support for whaling was his pension fund. A continuation of whaling meant that he and other civil servants would have a future job.
 
I now read that The Australian newspaper notes in a report on the Japanese whaling operation that a Japanese ‘parliamentary waste-cutting panel, convened by the new Hatoyama government, has recommended the [whaling] program's main source of loan funding, the Overseas Fisheries Co-operation Fund (OFCF), be effectively shut down’. The Australian also notes that ‘four of the OFCF's 12 directors are Fisheries Agency amakudari -- senior bureaucrats parachuted into companies and agencies that have relationships with their former ministries.’
 
As the Japanese whaling fleet sets sail it seems that in Japan dead whales still pave the way for ‘dead [retired] men's shoes’.

The New Scientist raises an interesting question in its 11th November edition. The article notes that 'Sounds thought to cause only temporary hearing loss have destroyed nerve cells in the ears of mice.' It would appear that '... noises that aren't loud enough to affect hearing thresholds can still cause permanent damage to ear cells.'                   

The article goes onto note that when mice were exposed to a 100-decibel noise source, roughly equivalent to a motorcycle engine, several tests indicated that this noise level caused no long-lasting changes in hearing threshold. 'Under the gaze of a microscope, however, damage was seen to the part of hair cells that transmits sound via chemical interactions with nearby nerves. A year later, the damage had seemingly spread to nerves that
transmit sound to the brain (Journal of Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1523/jneurosci.2845-09.2009). 

But what is the importance of this  study for cetacean research? It would appear that a lot of research on ocean noise appears to concentrate on minimizing loud underwater noises to estimated thresholds. But what is really happening to whales and dolphins exposed to such noise? We may not be able to make such a leap from specially bred mice that have similar hearing characteristics as humans as used in this study to extrapolate to cetaceans, but lets also not dismiss our questions simply because we are talking of mice and men.

If long term damage is being caused to cetaceans are we yet to see long term conservation impacts? For such creatures that rely on sound to communicate, feed and generally 'exist' in a world of sound we may be storing up problems for the future.

WDCS has always called for a precautionary approach when it comes to noise pollution, yet we are often told mitigation methods employed by the extractive industries and the world's navies are 'appropriate'. Well it may be that there is not always an immediately evident impact, but this study may make us wonder what legacy we are leaving in our oceans.       

There is  a new feature film on Noise pollution just launching in Germany                                                                                                                                                                             

This is by our own Mark Simmonds. If you are thinking about how some government's are approaching the issue of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) for cetaceans this picture says it all. Maybe the UK should be thinking a little harder about what type and size of MPAs are really required -its going to get pretty crowded out there if some people have it all their own way.

Further to our comments on the pollution issue in whale products we note that Mattilsynet, the Norwegian Food Safety Authority has continued the advisory for pregnant and nursing women against eating whale meat “due to high levels of mercury that the meat can contain”.  The same is true for seal meat “from the Vestisen area”.  (see http://matportalen.no/Emner/Gravide )

 

The Health Directorate has also produced a brochure (http://www.helsedirektoratet.no/vp/multimedia/archive/00118/Gravid_118459a.pdf

Seems that the issue is hopefully getting through to the public - lets see what the reaction will be

Every now and again emergent sciences will challenge preconceived ideas. Many environmentalists are rushing to support rapid development of offshore windfarms, but maybe without fully thinking about all the negative impacts on the marine environment. I am not against wind power, but I do believe it should be pursued responsibly and be subject to all relevant and appropriate assessments.

Now it seems that science brings GM and ocean conservation into a similar debate.

New Scientist Magazine reports this week that ...'a genetically modified soybean that produces oil containing omega-3 fatty acids - recommended for heart and brain health - could supplement fish as a source of these nutrients.

New Scientist goes onto say that Daniel Pauly, a fisheries specialist at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, has welcomed the move. "Our stressed marine ecosystem would benefit from an alternative to fish oil as a source of omega-3s," he says.'

So at a time when the world's oceans are being subjected to massive over exploitation is the time right to accept GM modified soya that would mean a potential future for the world's fish, and in turn for many species of whale and dolphin? Your thoughts and views would be welcome on this complex subject.

I am sorry, but I had to laugh out loud when I read what Veterinarian Rene Varela, one of six candidates in Lake Worth, Florida,  mayoral elections (and who is reported to be a partner in Ocean Embassy Inc., which provides dolphins captured in the wild for aquariums) had to say about dolphin captures in the Solomon Islands.  Dr. Varela is reported to maintain 'that his work rescues dolphins from places - he cites the Solomon Islands - where they traditionally have been abused and
slaughtered.'

However, WDCS believes that the drive hunts and the live captures occur separately in the Solomon Islands. The live captures do not use drive hunts to obtain dolphins and indeed, the species targeted tend to be different. It tends to be Common dolphins killed in the dirve hunt and bottlenose dolphins in the live capture for the dolphinaria industry.

The Palm Beach Post quotes Varela as saying 'Ocean Embassy intervened in the Solomon Islands to help distressed dolphins and people who were being exploited.'

There is a documentary available on the issue of the captures here

There were further captures in the islands in January 2009