Plants and Animals

They’ve been described as the rabbits of the sea. I’m referring to minke whales.

How much money does Greenpeace spend sending boats to the Antarctic to ‘save’ them?

I’m more concerned about the species that are really threatened with extinction like the freshwater dolphins of Asia.

After posting earlier today on the baniji in China, I was sent a link to the Mekong Dolphin Conservation Project.

[from the Mekong Dolphin Conservation Project website]

This project to save the Mekong River Dolphins appears to have been initiated by one dedicated PhD Student, Isabel Beasley.

I wonder how her budget compares to the Greenpeace budget for minke whales?

Where are our priorities?

I was a little confused by a recent article at ABC Online about the Baiji, the rare river dolphins in the Yangtze River in China.

I was confused because the news article titled ‘Plan hatched to save Yangtze dolphins’ suggested the dolphin would be saved because they could be relocated to a nearby lake. But this is not a new plan, I understood from the IUCN that a reserve was created for the dolphins back in 1992, but conservationists had been unsuccessful at moving individual animals.

Is this a new initiative? Since about 2004 the baiji.org Foundation has been working for the conservation of the river dolphins.

[picture from CITES]

The banji (Lipotes vexillifer) is considered the most endangered of all the worlds dophins, porpoises and whales and it is thought to only occur in China’s heavily polluted Yangtze River. There are two other closely related river dolphins one in the Indus (Platanista gangetica minor) and one in the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna and Karnaphuli-Sangu (Platanista gangetica gangetica), and also freshwater populations of Irrawaddy dolphins (Orcaella brevirostris) in the Mekong, Mahakam, and Irrawaddy Rivers, and populations in the brackish waters of Sonkhla (Thailand) and Chilka (India) lakes.

Update 4.30 pm

It seems the story at ABC Online was a summary of a story at the BBC Online which ends with comment that:

“The plan is to set up a reserve in an oxbow lake 21km long which was part of the Yangtze until the 1970s.”

Tian-e-Zhou lake already houses another freshwater cetacean, the Yangtze finless porpoise, so conditions are likely to suit the baiji.

There are fish in the lake to provide food for the dolphins; and although there may be some human fishing, it is likely to be on a much smaller scale than in the Yangtze itself.

…Costs could amount to between £200,000 and £300,000 ($365,000 and $545,000) for the first year’s operations.

Boats are needed to catch the dolphins, helicopters to transfer them to Tian-e-Zhou. Holding pens need to be constructed, veterinary staff provided, and an inventory made of fish stocks.

The rescue plan speaks of conducting five dolphin capture operations in the Yangtze within the next three years “…in order to establish a viable ex-situ breeding population of baiji at Tian-e-Zhou before the Yangtze population undergoes a further decline or becomes extinct”.

The long-term plan would be to re-introduce them to the Yangtze, but only when the prospects of them thriving there have risen.”

And I’ve just been emailed an article from Nature Vol 44 0/27 (April 2006) which states that during a nine day pilot search for the dolphins in March not a single dolphin was found. The same article talks about catching and releasing the dolphins into the Shishou reserve. There will be another ‘survey’ along the river in November.

So we have a species right on the verge of extinction and the IUCN came out just a month or two ago banging on about polar bears and global warming. Where are our priorities?

There has been a lot of interest in the International Whaling Commission (IWC) meeting this week in St Kitts in the Caribbean. Japan has tried to focus the world on the original objective of the IWC which it claims is to “to provide for the proper conservation of whale stocks and thus make possible the orderly development of the whaling industry”.

Australia’s Environment Minister Ian Campbell has been leading the anti-whaling lobby, which wants a total ban on whaling. Almost every vote has bee reported here in Australia as either a win for us and the whales, or a win for Japan and the baddies.

There has been some discussion at my last blog post about who gets to attend the IWC and who gets to vote. There has been some discussion about the inclusion of many small island nations and also questions as to why Switzerland and Israel get a vote.

Clearly the IWC has members who have no real understanding of whaling and who could not usefully contribute to the conservation or sustainable harvest of whales.

I suggest the IWC be completely reformed and membership be limited to whaling nations, perhaps members of the World Council of Whalers.

The International Community perhaps through CITES would ask the IWC to present its whale ‘management plan’ each year showing how the agreed quotas are based on the best science and are sustainable.

In this way the whalers might be held accountable for their activities.

The world community would still need organisations like Greenpeace. They could bring to the attention of the international media nations operating outside of agreed management plans and quotas. They could name and shame nations condoning or ‘turning a blind eye’ to the harvest of marine mammal without a quota system in place.

The Australian government, for example, condones the harvest of about 1,000 dugongs each year. There is no quota system in place and this is estimated to be about ten times the sustainable harvest (click here to read a my OLO article on the issue).

This is the sort of unsustainable, and some say inhumane harvest, that should be brought to the world’s attention by organisations like Greenpeace and Australia’s Environment Minister Ian Campbell should be asked what monitoring and management plan Australia is going to put in place for the conservation or sustainable management of dugongs .

The Japanese Government made the following opening statement on the first day of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) meeting:

“The Government of Japan expresses its appreciation to the Government of St.
Kitts and Nevis for hosting the 58th Annual Meeting of the IWC and for the hospitality we have received. We are pleased to be here on your beautiful island of St. Kitts.

This 58th Annual Meeting marks a serious turning point for the IWC. The IWC has been dysfunctional because of fundamental differences in the position of its members. It has become a mere stage for emotional and political conflicts at the sacrifice of the original mission of the organization: conservation and sustainable use of whale resources.

Japan, together with other members supporting the sustainable use of whale resources, has great concerns about this situation and is to express its commitment to normalizing and saving the IWC as a resource management organization. We are convinced that the IWC can only be saved from its current crisis by respecting and interpreting in good faith the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (ICRW). This means protecting endangered and depleted species while allowing the sustainable utilization of abundant species under a controlled, transparent and science-based management regime.

Since the adoption of the moratorium in 1982, the IWC has failed to meet its main objective as mandated by the ICRW; that is, “to provide for the proper conservation of whale stocks and thus make possible the orderly development of the whaling industry”. Now, after 14 years of discussions and negotiations to complete a Revised Management Scheme (RMS), this failure has been confirmed by the decision to postpone further discussions on the completion of RMS. We sincerely regret this decision.

The IWC Scientific Committee’s reports have clearly shown that many species of whales have recovered – others are recovering. It also shows that science allows sustainable harvest of abundant species of whales without depleting their stocks. Modern enforcement and monitoring measures can prevent the repetition of the past over-harvesting.

Use of cetaceans, like other fishery resources, contributes to sustainable coastal communities, sustainable livelihoods, food security and poverty reduction. Whales should be treated as any other marine living resources available for harvesting subject to conservation and science-based management. Scientifically and legally, there is no reason to treat cetaceans differently.

At this IWC meeting in St. Kitts, Japan will initiate a consultation process to bring the IWC back on the right track. We encourage those members that support the ICRW and the principle of sustainable use to join this normalization process. Failure of this initiative would mean that the IWC will lose its raison d’etre as an intergovernmental organization for resource management.”

… And all I heard on radio this morning in Australia, was that Australia “won” and Japan “lost” both votes including on whether or not there should be secret ballots. Australia’s Environment Minister Ian Campbell is telling us that so far it has been a “win for the whales”.

There is never anything very subtle or civil in Australia’s approach to whaling. As a rich nation with politicians used to pandering to ‘Greens’ we are quite prepared to threaten and cajole to make our point on this issue which is simply that it is wrong to kill whales.

As a nation we never bother to explain why we believe it is wrong to kill whales or really attempt to understand why Japan, Iceland and Norway see things a bit differently.

Our media simply reports the rantings of our Environment Minister. Just today he was reported in our national daily newspaper, The Australian, telling the world that:

“countries that supported Japan would be outed and shamed”, and

Pacific Island nations that support whaling should expect tourist boycotts, and

Japan’s plan to expand its scientific program to include humpback was a “disgraceful tactic”.

There was no comment from the Japanese government in the article. I am sure it would have been forthcoming if only the journalist had asked.

Japan’s position is rarely reported in the Australian media and there is rarely any analysis of why Australia and Japan hold such different positions.

I’ve ponder why Japan, Norway and Iceland are so determined to continue whaling. On the eve of the 58th Annual Meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) I will float one idea.

Japan and Iceland, in particular, are nations that have traditionally looked to the sea for their food. They are nations with research institutions that study whales and how many fish they eat. They have scientists who recognise that whales are potentially competition for food.

Consider the following statistics from the chapter by Tsutoma Tamura in ‘Responsible Fisheries in the Marine Ecosystem’ published by CABI in 2003:

“Total annual prey consumption by the cetaceans of the world (whales, porpoises and dolphins) was estimated to be at least 249-434 million tonnes … fish consumption by cetaceans in the southern hemisphere including the Indian Ocean was estimated to be 18-23 million tonnes and equated to 66-120 percent of the commercial fisheries catches in 1996. In the North Pacific, fish consumption was estimated to be 21-31 million tonnes, equivalent to 67-99 percent of commercial fisheries catches in 1996. In the North Atlantic, the fish consumption by cetaceans was 15-25 million tonnes, equivalent to 87-144 percent of commercial fisheries catches in 1996.

There was probably direct competition between cetaceans and commercial fisheries in the North Pacific and the North Atlantic.”

Here’s part of one of the many tables from the same report:

The numbers refer to millions of tonne per year based on estimates of daily prey consumption from average body weight (method 1). This is the most conservative of the three methods for estimating “prey consumption”.

I am not suggesting that Japan or Iceland should be able to slaughter whales because they eat fish nor that the main reason that Iceland and Japan undertake ‘scientific’ whaling is because they see whales as competition for fish.

But let’s try and understand the potential impact that whales have within marine ecosystems and lets also try and understand how this might influence how some of our neighbours and some of our friends see whales.

The 58th Annual Meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) is being held from 16 to 20 June 2006 at the St. Kitts Marriott Resort and the Royal Beach Casino in Frigate Bay, St. Kitts, West Indies. The website “Kujira Portal” will broadcast the IWC meeting’s highlights and press conferences starting from this Friday, 16 June 2006.

So if you live somewhere like Australia you have a choice, you can stay up all night watching the soccer (World Cup in Germany) or the ‘wailing’ at the IWC.

The scientific papers underpinning the discussion are available at the Scientific Committee home page of the IWC website under the section titled ‘In-depth Assessments’ (http://www.iwcoffice.org/_documents/sci_com/SC58docs/sc58docs.htm).

David@Tokyo will no doubt be blogging on the event from Tokyo.