An unsustainable harvest
Whales have been hunted since humans first learned to build boats, but because most whales are found in the open ocean and are fast swimmers, it was not until the development of equally fast boats that could travel long distances that whaling as an industry developed. The North Atlantic saw the first large-scale whaling enterprises, first from Europe and then from North America, and as more coastal stocks became depleted the fleets sought their prey further afield to supply the market that they had created.
Oswald Walters Brierly's watercolour painting 'Amateur whaling, or a tale of the Pacific', 1847. The painting depicts a dramatic nineteenth-century whaling scene in Australian waters. ANMM Collection. Purchased with USA Bicentennial Gift funds.
New colonies, such as Australia, became bases for whaling operations: first came inshore operations, and later, distant-water whaling fleets. There are oft-repeated tales of right whales being so plentiful in Hobart’s Derwent estuary that they were a hazard to navigation and kept the local residents awake with their noisy spoutings. A few years of whaling solved both of these problems and it was only in 2012 that a right whale with a calf was seen again in the Derwent.
Whaling in the South Pacific: operations on board an Australian whaler. Engraving by Albert Fullwood, 1893. ANMM Collection
Just as in the north, the whalers first depleted the coastal stocks of whales then used the new colony as a base for more distant forays – especially to the south. In Western Australia and Queensland, however, coastal whaling stations remained operational well into the 1970s, reliant on the seasonal migrations of humpbacks and sperm whales to and from Antarctic waters. The advent of large-scale industrial whaling in the early 20th century, with huge factories and factory ships being fed by fleets of catchers, led to some efforts to provide some certainty in supply to the companies that were engaged in whaling.
This was the beginning of the International Whaling Commission (IWC), which was established in 1946 to ‘provide for the proper conservation of whale stocks and thus make possible the orderly development of the whaling industry’. The initial focus of the IWC was on maintaining the whaling industry—there was still a misplaced view that ocean stocks were unlimited and could be exploited forever. Despite the disastrous collapse of most of the world’s whale stocks there was opposition from some countries to the establishment of the moratorium on commercial whaling that the IWC adopted in 1986.
Today, despite the moratorium, some countries such as Norway and Iceland hunt large whales within their territorial waters, and Japan, notoriously, has exploited a loophole in the convention to undertake ‘scientific whaling’ in the Southern Ocean. Scientific whaling is allowed under the convention where it is necessary to obtain data that can be used in the management of whale stocks.
The Japanese ship Yushin Maru capturing a minke whale. Exploiting a loophole in the law, Japan has controversially continued to kill whales in the name of research despite the International Whaling Commission's ban on commercial whaling. CREDIT: MARIANNA BALDO/SEA SHEPHERD
Despite the Japanese ‘research’ program’s killing of more than 10,000 minke whales over the last 25 years, there has been no attempt to use any of the data collected for management purposes. Instead, the whale meat is sold for human consumption, although this is allowed under the convention. It is hugely expensive to hunt whales and the economic returns are small. Now that the worldwide whale-watching industry is worth over two billion dollars a year, and growing fast, living whales are worth far more than dead ones.
Minke whales aboard the Nisshin Maru, a vessel of the Institute of Cetacean Research, a Japanese organisation that engages in whaling. CREDIT: TIM WATTERS/SEA SHEPHERD
Progress and protection; conflict and threats
Many stocks of whales are making a recovery now because they have been protected from hunting since 1986. Some, such as the humpbacks that migrate along the coast of Australia between the feeding grounds in the Antarctic and the breeding grounds in the tropics, are undergoing a population boom and could not reproduce any faster—but their numbers are still below historical levels. The recovery of others, like the blue whales, is less certain and numbers are still critically low. Monitoring the recovery of whale stocks is extremely difficult—particularly in the open ocean—and when the stock is already very small it is harder still. But we are in the middle of a grand ecological experiment, because if we allow whales to recover to anything like their former numbers this will have a major impact on the marine ecosystem. Will this result in the whales eating all the fish, as proponents of whaling insist, or will it result in richer more productive ecosystems, as recent research is suggesting?
Young whales, such as this humpback calf, start life with a cocktail of toxins inherited from their mothers, who tend to accumulate a burden of toxins and pollutants that are passed up the food chain, increasing in concentration with each step along the way. Image: SHUTTERSTOCK
As whales recover, and under the protection of the moratorium, other threats to whales are emerging. Whales are at the top end of the ecosystem and they tend to accumulate a burden of toxins and pollutants that are passed up the food chain, increasing in concentration with each step along the way. Mothers pass these pollutants on to their offspring so they start life with a cocktail of toxins including organochlorines, heavy metals and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. It is thought that these toxic substances may be responsible for the development of tumours and reproductive and immune system failures later in life. We can measure the toxic load through non-lethal approaches, but understanding the long-term effect of these man-made chemicals is more difficult.
A greater abundance of whales also results in increased encounters with humans, and this can be positive—the massive growth in whale-based tourism, worth over $300 million to Australia every year—or negative, through interactions with infrastructure or shipping. Migrating whales get entangled with fishing gear, and vessels, large and small, can damage or be damaged by collision with whales. Perhaps most insidious is the increasing, though invisible, noise pollution in the ocean from sonar, sea traffic, military activities and oil and gas exploration. Whales rely on sound for communication, navigation and finding food, and increasing noise levels may well interfere with these critical activities. All of these conflicts need to be managed to ensure healthy whale populations as well as healthy maritime industries.
Noise pollution from oil and gas exploration can interfere with whales' biosonar.
The changing climate will also affect whales directly—but mostly indirectly through their food supplies. Most projections suggest that a warming, more acidic ocean will not be good for either krill or fish, which is bad news for whales.
It is difficult not to be slightly concerned for the fate of whales in a future ocean. There is a range of factors that seem stacked against them: over-fishing, resumption of commercial whaling, pollution, entanglements, ship strikes and ultimately climate change. Yet at the same time, many populations of great whales are demonstrating their resilience by returning from the massive over-exploitation of earlier centuries. We are learning more about the extraordinary ecology of whales every year and are coming to understand their critical role in the ecosystem. Hopefully with the realisation that whales are not merely of value as blubber, meat and bone, we will come to treasure these giants of the ocean because they add value to the marine ecosystems—and to the lives of those privileged enough to observe them.
About
Stephen Nicol is a marine scientist who has spent nearly 30 years working on Antarctic issues, particularly in relation to krill, the krill fishery and Southern Ocean ecosystems. He worked for the Australian Antarctic Division as a scientist and Program Leader for 25 years and is now Adjunct Professor at the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies at the University of Tasmania. He currently provides information and advice to organisations interested in Antarctic matters. He was awarded the Australian Antarctic medal in 2011 for his work on the biology, conservation and management of Antarctic krill.
Credits
Images sourced from Shutterstock, Getty and the Australian National Maritime Museum Collection.
