Plants and Animals

Earlier this year, Japanese whalers in the Antarctic were accused of ramming a Greenpeace boat. The evidence suggested it was the other way around, that Greenpeace had rammed the Japanese.

Nevermind, when Greenpeace returned to Australia they were given a pat on the back by the Environment Minister Ian Campbell. He said in Parliament:

“Over summer, we as a nation have witnessed the Greenpeace ship not only visiting the Southern Ocean and running a policy of harassment against the whalers but also, very constructively, sending photographic images of the whale slaughter by the Japanese in the Southern Ocean all around the world. I had the great pleasure of meeting Shane Rattenbury and the Greenpeace team in my office [at Parliament House in Canberra] just before question time. I think other members and senators will have the chance to meet them. I must say that the work they did over the summer was in distinct contrast to the actions of Paul Watson on the Sea Shepherd, who I think set back the cause of whaling by unnecessarily taking potentially illegal action, causing collisions and potentially putting life at risk at sea.”

While the Minister may have preferred the footage from Greenpeace, the Sea Sheperds were also their with cameras rolling.

According to a recent Media Watch program, the Sea Shepherd was paid $70,000 “a decent chunk of money” to send video footage back to Channel Seven. In fact a deal was done before they had even got to the Antarctic.

Media Watch concluded that:

“Whatever you think about cheque book journalism or whaling – it’s not Seven’s job to help Sea Shepherd stage the news events that Seven is buying exclusive access to!”

Perhaps both Greenpeace and the Sea Sheperd were providing us with a form of reality television dressed-up as news?

There has been much discussion about whaling at his blog and some discussion about why the Japanese continue to hunt whales in the name of research.

It is a very foreign and offensive concept to many of us in countries like Australia even though, we had our own whaling fleets not so many years ago.

Yesterday I was sent a link to a recent story in the Japan Times explaining that despite efforts from surfers and local residents about 50 melon-headed whales were recent stranded and died in Chiba Prefecture.

The newspaper article goes on to explain that some of the dead mammals were examined by experts to try to learn the cause of death, while the remaining were to be buried in the town.

I have heard about whale cemeteries in Japan. And one reader of this blog has told me how he attended a buddhist ceremonies in Nagato where thanks was given to whales that had been killed through whaling, as well as those foetuses that have been found in pregnant females.

The ceremony also included the naming of these foetuses in a book.

Whales and whaling evidently has a deep cultural resonance in at least some parts of modern Japan.

There has been a fair interest at this blog in marine mammals, in particular whales. (If you are a new reader just do a search using the word ‘whale’ or ‘whaling’.)

But I actually think dugongs are more beautiful and probably more vulnerable as a species.

Dugongs are more closely related to elephants than to whales and dolphins.

Their closest living aquatic relatives are the manatees. Manatees live in rivers and also coastal waters of West Africa, the Caribbean, South America and the southern United States.

I was interested to read this morning that the also closely related Stellar’s Sea Cow was the first marine mammal recorded as becoming extinct, in recent times.

According to this website, the sea cow’s grew to 8 m long and weighed more than 6000 kg.

The last populations were found in the Bering Sea in 1741, but previous populations had occurred along the Pacific rim from Mexico to Japan.

Apparently the entire estimated population of 2000 became extinct by 1768 due to intensive hunting by seal hunters, taking them for their meat.

It got me thinking, which is the rarest species of marine mammal in the world today?

Marine ecologist Larry Crowder from Duke University in the US is reported at BBC News Online claiming that leatherback turtles face extinction within 30 years if there are not dramatic changes to fishing practices.

According to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species there has been a 70 percent decline in the global population of female Leatherbacks in one generation.

The IUCN attributes the dramatic decline to poaching of the turtle’s eggs as well as entanglement in fishing lines.

According to Professor Crowder:

“Globally, each day, there are around four million hooks in the world’s oceans fishing for tuna and swordfish.

Turtles will eat the bait and get caught on the hooks, or simply get entangled in the lines.

Because the range of leatherbacks is so great, national legislation on long lines will not be sufficient to save the animals.

“If you tag one with a satellite tag in Monterey bay, it will shoot straight across to Indonesia,” Professor Crowder explained.

“They are the most widely distributed sea turtle. They swim from 50 degrees south to 50 degrees north. Trying to regulate their interactions with fisheries out in international waters is really difficult.”

Professor Crowder told delegates [at a conference in Denver] that there was much that could be done to minimise the impact of long line fishing, such as changing the shape of hooks.”

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I have previously written that plastic bags can kill marine turtles particularly Leatherbacks, click here.

I have previously written that more effort should be put into “saving sun bears”, click here for that blog post.

The international organisation that regulates trade in endangered species, CITES, lists sun bear as threatened with extinction and notes that there is a trade in sun bear ‘body parts’ including for traditional medicines.

Several readers have commented they would like to know more about sun bears. I have no expertise and I don’t know anyone with expertise, but here goes …

An adult male Malayan sun bear grows to about 1.2 m tall when standing on its hind legs and can weigh up to 65 kg making them the smallest bear species.

They live in the forests of south-east Asian and eat a varied diet of fruit, vegetables, meat and honey.

A study of the ecology of the bears in Sabah, Borneo, by S.T. Wong from 1999 to 2001 concluded that the low density of bears in lowland rainforests was a consequence of food shortages during “non-mass fruiting years”.

The picture of this sun bear is from Indonesianfauna.com. There is some general information on the ecology of sun bears at the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology website, click here.

Many conservation groups claim that the greatest threat to the long term survival of sun bears in the wild is poaching of bears for the traditional Asian medicine trade which prescribes sun bear fat, gall, meat, paws, spinal cord, blood, and bones for complaints ranging from baldness to rheumatism.

Bears are also caught for food, with sun bear paw soup considered a delicacy in Taiwan.

According to the Bagheera website:

“The Chinese have developed a way to extract bile from the gallbladders of live bears. An estimated 5,000 bears are now farmed for their bile. Descended from wild-caught individuals, the farm bears are now captive-bred. This effort is driven more by economics than concern for the animals. More than 100 times the bile can be obtained by milking a live bear than by killing one. Government officials claim that farming has slowed the killing of wild bears, but critics contend it actually promotes the use of bear products and makes them available to more people.”

A 2004 CITES report indicated that some bladders traded [I assume illegally] as sun bear gall bladders were actually from pigs.

The same report noted that some laboratories can distinguish between bile from wild sun bears and bile from captive-bred bears. I assume trade in the wild sun bear bile is illegal while trade in bile from captive-bred bears is legal?

The report included the following snippets of information on trade in sun bears and conservation efforts:

“Indonesia reported that its wildlife law enforcement staff had established good working relations with the country’s Drugs and Food Administration Authority and that they organize joint inspections of relevant shops. The Secretariat has previously reported that working with such agencies seems highly effective.

Malaysia reported undertaking enforcement campaigns that specifically targeted trade in bear specimens. This had resulted in early 2003 in the seizure of 43 alleged bear gall bladders from shops. Six cases involving illicit trade in Malayan sun bear specimens had been prosecuted in 2003. Five of the cases involved bear parts, whilst the sixth involved a live bear.

The Republic of Korea confirmed that the use of a sniffer dog to detect illicit trade at border control points was highly successful, with such a dog in their country detecting 85 cases in just over two years. The Secretariat notes that a survey conducted by TRAFFIC, published in July 2003, found that the use of tiger, rhinoceros and bear specimens in traditional medicine in the Republic of Korea was decreasing, although further work remained to be done on this issue.

Singapore reported that it had produced a leaflet in Chinese, explaining CITES and the use of specimens of endangered species (including bears) in medicine, which it was using to build on work it has done with traditional medicine associations in Singapore.

Viet Nam reported that it is working with non-governmental organizations and captivebreeders of bears to address the issue of bear farms. It has found this issue to be complicated by the fact that bear farms have been established with animals taken from the wild prior to Viet Nam introducing legislation protecting the species. It recognizes that this has adversely affected wild populations.”

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Some information on CITES:

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, known as CITES, is an international treaty designed to control and regulate international trade in certain animal and plant species that are now or potentially may become threatened with extinction.

Appendix I includes species threatened with extinction that are or may be affected by trade. Appendix II includes species that, although not necessarily now threatened with extinction, may become so unless trade in them is strictly controlled. Appendix III includes species that any Party country identifies as being subject to regulation within its jurisdiction for purposes of preventing or restricting exploitation and for which it needs the cooperation of other Parties to control trade.

There have been reports, including from the BBC, that there is a glut of whale meat in Japan and that whale meat is being fed to dogs.

Dr. Hiroshi Hatanaka from Japan’s Institute of Cetacean Research (ICR) responded yesterday with a media release:

“The way in which this story has been spun by anti-whaling lobbyists through naive journalists who didn’t check their facts demonstrates the lack of objectivity that some media have when it comes to whaling,” the ICR’s Director General Dr. Hiroshi Hatanaka said today.

This is an indictment on western media who do not question the information they receive on whaling and instead further reinforce falsehoods and wrong assumptions. It is the public that loses through receiving false information,” he said.

The particular sale of whale meat for pet food referred by the journalists was carried out by a company near one of the traditional small-type whaling bases on the Boso Peninsula, south east of Tokyo. This was sold as a jerky-type product and was made from less than 100kg of a batch of Baird’s Beaked whale, which the processor received from a local whaling company.

Baird’s Beaked whale is not one of the species regulated by the International Whaling Commission and is not included in the ICR’s research programs. The sustainable management of this particular species of whale is regulated by the Government of Japan’s Fisheries Agency.

“The whale meat used for the pet food was ‘hyakuhiro’ – the small intestine of the whale commonly referred to as tripe – and other cheaper cuts that are not utilized for human consumption,” Dr. Hatanaka said. Similarly, a small percentage of whale by-products from the research programs, ie some leavings after processing, that are not utilized for human consumption are also processed for the pet food market. This accords with the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (ICRW) where it states that whales taken under the research provisions “shall so far as practicable be processed”.

“As with other meat industries, such as cattle and sheep slaughtering for instance, not every part of the whale – intestines, some organs, etc – is appropriate for human consumption and these parts are processed for the pet food market.”

“To suggest, as these groups have done, that fine cuts of whale meat from Japan’s research programs is being turned into pet food because Japan has a glut of it is not true,” Dr. Hatanaka said.

The distribution of frozen whale meat from the research programs is highly regulated. The price range that Japanese consumers are expected to pay is set by the Government and the supply to the market is kept under tight control and drip fed to ensure that whale meat is available in selected areas throughout the entire year.

“Demand always exceeds supply. At any given time, there will be an amount of whale meat in storage to ensure supply is always available. Japanese are not losing their taste for whale, and if left to market forces, the price of whale meat would increase considerably and reach consumers at unaffordable prices,” Dr. Hatanaka said.

“The fact that the price of whale meat is well regulated by the Government means it is also affordable for some schools to reintroduce it as a protein-rich lunch option for pupils.”

The wholesale price of minke whale red meat is set at a fixed price of 1950 Yen per kilogram. The whale meat from the western North Pacific research is available to the public from mid-December onwards.

Dr. Hatanaka said anti-whaling lobbyists are told when the catch reaches storage and coincide their public relations campaign to falsely allege the augmented supplies mean whale meat is not in demand because there is a large amount of it.

“Obviously our stocks of whale meat increase when we start selling the by-products from the North Pacific after Government approval in December and again when selling by-products from the Antarctic in July. It is at these times that supplies of whale meat are at their highest,” Dr. Hatanaka said.

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*The original BBC News story has been updated and changed. If anyone has a copy of the original story quoting the conservation groups could they please email it to me.

And I should have checked ‘my facts’ before posting last Saturday.