Lost leviathans: Hunting the world's missing whales

[n2doc]

09 February 2010 by Fred Pearce

THEY are enigmatic sea creatures - rare, magnificent beasts patrolling the ocean depths. Yet old chronicles tell of populations of whales hundreds of times greater than today. Such tales have long been dismissed as exaggerations, but could they be true? Have humans killed such a staggering number of whales?

New genetic techniques for analysing whale populations, alongside a growing archive of fresh historical analysis, suggest so. Taken together, they indicate that we have got our ideas about marine ecology completely upside down: whales may once have been the dominant species in the world's oceans.

This is not simply an academic question. It matters now more than ever before. Whale numbers have been recovering slowly since the end of large-scale hunting in 1986, but this global moratorium is only temporary. The International Whaling Commission, the club of mostly former whaling nations which maintains the ban, has rules that say it can reconsider hunting a given whale species if its population climbs back to more than 54 per cent of its pre-hunting levels. Right now, according to IWC estimates, Atlantic humpbacks and Pacific minkes may have recovered sufficiently to put them back in whalers' sights. But, crucially, such decisions rest on the veracity of the IWC's estimates of historical whale populations - 54 per cent of what, exactly? If the old salts' tales of whale abundance are true, it is way too early to be dusting off those harpoons.

snip:
The IWC believed that before large-scale whaling began, the North Atlantic was home to about 20,000 humpback whales. With a current population of about 10,000 and rising, this meant that under the 54-per-cent rule hunting could soon resume. But Roman and Palumbi estimated the pre-exploitation population was more than 20 times as great, at 240,000. Globally, they suggested, there may have once been 1.5 million humpbacks, rather than the 100,000 estimated by the IWC.

more:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527461.200-lost-leviathans-hunting-the-worlds-missing-whales.html

[catbyte]

1. I have a problem with the article calling whales "monsters"

One of the most intense experiences of my life occurred 15 years ago almost to the day off the coast of Maui. We were in a zodiac whalewatching, when we saw a female humpback whale barreling towards us. The captain immediately cut the motor and we drifted in the Au Au Channel between Maui & Lanai. As the female got closer to us, all of a sudden the sea erupted about 50 yards away. Two males began fighting--tail thrashing, pec slapping, breaching, huffing & puffing. It was unbelievable. We forgot all about the female until we looked over the side of the zodiac and there she was--a 40 ft. female about 10' directly below, completely dwarfing us. She hung out with us until one of the males drove the other one off, then the female slowly sank and moved about 20 yards away, then surfaced to breathe. She then moved another 10 yards or so, performed an amazing fluke-up dive, then broke the surface with a MASSIVE breach. She catapulted her entire body out of the water. It was the most amazing things I've ever experienced. She and her companion hung around for a few more minutes, then turned their flukes toward us, dove, then they were gone.

I'll never forget the sight of that huge humpback underneath our tiny boat--she could have obliterated us with one flick of her tail, yet she chose to hang out with us until the boys finished with the machismo.

I get goosebumps just thinking about it...I'm horrified that anyone would even consider hunting them. They deserve so much better than having to deal with us shitty humans. Every time I think of my whale (and dolphin) encounters, I'm reminded of this quote from The Outermost House by Henry Beston:

“We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature, and living by a complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge, seeing thereby a feather magnified, the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man.

In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear.

They are not brethren. They are not underlings. They are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.”

Sigh, :cry:

Diane

Anishnabe in MI