Studying Whales w/o Killing Them

[The.Greenbase@gb.greenpeace.org]

    STUDYING WHALES WITHOUT KILLING THEM -- SCIENTISTS REPORT

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                   GREENPEACE PRESS RELEASE
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    STUDYING WHALES WITHOUT KILLING THEM -- SCIENTISTS REPORT

Dublin,  May 8, 1995 (GP) A group of 25 whale specialists from
14 different  countries  met in Galway, Ireland from 2 to 5
May  to draw up a plan for whale research in the new Southern
Ocean whale sanctuary.   The  workshop  report  will  be
presented  to   the International  Whaling Commision (IWC) at
its meeting later  this month in Dublin.

"Last year's decision to create a sanctuary provides an
unrivaled opportunity for research on whale populations no
longer disturbed by  whaling," said Dr. Sidney Holt of the
International Fund  for Animal Welfare.

"All of this research can be done without killing a single
whale  - a far cry from current programs which take hundreds
of whales a  year  for thinly disgused commercial purposes,"
said John  Bowler  of Greenpeace.

The  current Japanese whale research programme kills  330
whales  within  the Sanctuary area each year. The meat from
these  whales  is sold on the open market in Japan.

The  workshop  was  jointly  sponsored  by  three
international  conservation organisations - Greenpeace, IFAW
(International Fund  for Animal Welfare) and WWF - World Wide
Fund for Nature, and was  supported  by  the Government of
Ireland. The  scientists  taking  part came from all the
countries bordering the Southern Ocean, as  well as from
Japan, USA, and Europe.

"Past  research was aimed at counting whales and determining
how  many  can  be  killed;  future research  in  the
Southern  Ocean  Sanctuary  will be aimed at understanding the
role of  whales  in  the  ecosystem and monitoring their
recovery from hunting,"  said  Cassandra Phillips of WWF -
World Wide Fund for Nature.

Non  lethal  methods  can be used to study  everything  from
how  whales evolved to their behavior and social structure and
can  be  used to shed light on the threats to whales from
entanglement  in  fishing nets, pollutants and depletion of
the ozone layer.

Scientists  associated with non-governmental  organisations
have  already  started  non-lethal research within the  new
sanctuary.  Mr.  C. Pierpoint of IFAW, conducted acoustic
studies  on  whales  from  the MV Greenpeace within a month of
the sanctuary's  coming  into force. He demonstrated that
underwater listening devices can  reliably detect whales
invisible to observers on a ship.


For further information please contact:
Dr Sidney Holt, Jury's Christchurch Inn, Dublin, 01-4750111 --
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ENDS