THE CASE AGAINST WHALING

The history of modern commercial whaling is one of repeated over- exploitation, as whaling companies strove to maximise their short-term profits despite the longer-term implications for the very species on which their livelihood depended.

Now, past mistakes are being acknowledged by the modern-day whaling lobby in their campaign to convince the world that whaling today will be different and will be done in a sustainable manner for the first time. In fact nothing has changed.

The relatively few whales that remain are highly vulnerable, and the factors that led to their over-exploitation in the past have not changed. Here are the key arguments against whaling.

WHALES ARE NOT FISH

Whales are mammals, not fish, but they have historically been treated as fish by the whaling industry.

The vast majority of fish species reproduce by releasing huge quantities of eggs into the water for fertilisation by the male, although under normal conditions only a small percentage of these will develop into mature adults. Whales on the other hand have a long gestation period and usually give birth only every one or two year, to a single calf that requires more than a year of maternal care before it can survive on its own. Even then, whale calves take many years to reach maturity. For these reasons whales can never recover quickly from exploitation.

These factors are compounded by our lack of knowledge about many aspects of whale biology. Even after decades of research, the growth rate of whale populations is unknown because of the difficulty of studying these highly migratory, long-lived, slow- reproducing animals. Nor are there reliable estimates of live birth rates or of the natural mortality rates of calves and juveniles.

Fishing industry representatives who stir up concern that a ban on whaling would lead to a ban on fishing are deliberately confusing the public and disregarding the vastly different characteristics of two entirely unrelated groups of species.

WE CAN'T COUNT WHALES ACCURATELY

Modern scientific methods cannot count whales accurately. Determining how many animals exist in a population is crucial for any calculation of kill quotas. The size of most populations of whales is known no more accurately than plus or minus 50 percent. Since populations change so slowly, it is impossible to tell if a population is growing or shrinking in the course of a few year's study.

All population estimates are based on a count of the whales sighted on each side of a survey vessel as it zig-zags its way through a designated stretch of water. Since only a small percentage of the whales in any given population will be visible on the surface as the vessel passes, extrapolations must be made from the number sighted to give an estimate for the entire region under study. Thus all population estimates are based on sightings of a tiny fraction of the population.

In 1995 a Norwegia minke whale survey sighted 29 minke whales in the eastern Barents Sea. Based on this they calculated a population estimate of 16101 - over 500 times greater than the number of whales seen.

Mathematical formulas are used to calculate the total number of whales from the small number of actual sightings. These formulas attempt to take into account numerous variables. It is in these formulas that an enormous potential for compounded error exists.

For example, in the method used by Norway the final population estimate is very sensitive to the accuracy of the observers estimate of how far the whale was from the ship when it was seen. If the distance estimat ei s half the true distance, then the population estimate will be four times the true population. So if observers thought the whales which were 800 meters from the ship were 400 meters away, the calculations would estimate a population of 30,000 not 120,000.

The weakness of these estimates is well documented. In 1986 a joint Japanese/Soviet survey of one area of the Antarctic estimated 2,800 minke whales ; a Japanese survey of the same area 5 years later estimated just 56,000. This does not mean that the whales had declined; it simply illustrates how uncertain these numbers are.

Whale counts are not censuses. They are estimates based on extrapolation and highly uncertain.

SUSTAINABLE WHALING IS ECONOMICALLY UNSOUND

Common sense would seen to suggest that because whale populations grow very slowly, it would be in the long-term interests of the whaling industry to maintain whale populations at a healthy level, and to avoid over-exploitation that might lead to a terminal decline.

But mathematician Colin Clark showed, in a classic paper called "The Economics of Overexploitation" published in the journal Science in the early 1970s, that exploitation of slow-growing populations will naturally lead to their severe depletion and even to their extinction. This is because if the profit to be had from catching the entire population of animals at once is greater than the profit that could be made by conserving the population and taking only a certain quantity each year, then it is good business to catch as many animals as possible, as quickly as possible - even though it is bad management from the biological point of view.

Economic logic, divorced from the realities of the living world, dictates that high levels of short-term exploitation will bring the best financial return. In other words, sustainable whaling is economically unsound.

KILLING MORE WHALES WON'T RESTORE THE ECOLOGICAL BALANCE

There is little doubt that overfishing has devastated fish stocks in many parts of the world. The whaling lobby is now arguing that this means that whales should be killed to protect the remaining fish.

In fact, whales are far from being the only consumers of fish, huge quantities are eaten by other fish and by seabirds. In any case, killing a whale does not release the fish that it would have eaten to a commercially valuable fish. It is just as lightly to be eaten by another species altogether. There is not a single case world wide where it has been demonstrated that a catch of whales has increased the take of commercially valuable fish.

WHALES LIVE IN A CHANGED OCEAN

Whales evolved over tens of millions of years and are superbly adapted to the marine environment. But this environment is now under a sustained threat from the consequences of human activities, including climate change, increased UV-B radiation from a diminishing ozone layer, pollution by organochlorine compounds and increasingly intensive fisheries.

Organochlorines have been shown to cause reproductive failure in marine mammals and to be potent suppressors of mammal's immune systems. Whales and other marine mammals concentrate these artificial compounds through the food chain so concentrations in the animals may be a million times higher than in the surrounding seawater. Recent work suggests that some classes of compounds, called endrocine disrupters, exert very powerful negative effects on reproduction at extremely low concentrations.

UV-B can affect the plankton which are at the base of the ocean food chain. Some species are extremely sensitive and others are more resistant, so species composition may change. In some species UV-B damages the sensory cells that respond to light and gravity, causing them to swim randomly and lose their optimum position in the water column.

Even the most oceanic of whales no longer live in a pristine environment. Anything less than a precautionary approach is unacceptable in the effort to conserve whales. The benefit of the doubt must be given to the environment. A failure to do so my extinguish any hope of long-term protection for the world's whale populations.