Paul_Cunningham@TimesRecord.Com
BRUNSWICK — In June 2006, members of the International Whaling Commission, meeting at St. Kitts and Nevis, voted on a symbolic resolution that would end a 20-year-moratorium on commercial whaling.
Pro-whaling nations, including Japan and Iceland were able to pass the resolution by a single vote, 33-to-32, with one abstention.
Although a three-quarters majority is needed to overturn the IWC's 1986 ban on commercial whaling, the nonbinding "St. Kitts and Nevis Declaration" is seen by many as a move to return to commercial whaling.
According to marine scientist Nan Hauser, the vote is likely the first step in an environmental tragedy.
"For the first time, Japan and other pro-whaling nations have achieved a majority vote at the annual IWC meeting," she said recently at her Brunswick home.
While most people in the world today think that whales have been saved from extinction, many scientist believe such a claim to be premature.
Hauser has spent the last 16 years studying whales and other marine mammals throughout the world, working tirelessly for their preservation. Most of her studies are based in the Bahaman Islands of the Atlantic Ocean and the Cook Islands in the Pacific.
In the past 15 years, she has photographed whales, videotaped them, collected their DNA from skin samples and recorded their songs. She free-dives among the mighty creatures, studying their markings, antics and moods. "Whales don't scare me," she said. "But spiders do!"
At Rarotonga, the largest of the 15 islands that make up the Cook Islands, Hauser has established, with the help of relatives and friends, the Center for Cetacean Research and Conservation. She is president and director of the center, also chief investigator for the Cook Islands Whale Research Project.
Hauser also created the Cook Islands Whale Education Centre, on Rarotonga, where she teaches classes and seminars, displays artifacts from her research and has a large collection of audio and visual material.
She's worked with the government of the islands to establish a 1 million square mile ocean sanctuary in that area of the Pacific. Hauser was quoted at that time as saying, "It is a huge message to the world, and especially Japan, that the Cook Island people will not tolerate the killing of whales or dolphins."
Hauser, a registered nurse by training, has spent years diving and developing a desire to help cetaceans (ocean mammals). In 1990 she ventured to the Cook Islands to study humpback whales and immediately fell in love with the area, making it her home away from home.
Each July through October, she lives on Pacific island and documents whales as they migrate north from Antarctic waters through the Cook Island corridor. The waters around Rarotonga fall away sharply in depth just beyond the island's coral reef.
In these waters, Hauser and her research team study the migrating humpbacks. Free diving is the chosen method, because an aqualung emits air bubbles that can be viewed as a sign of aggression to the animals.
Because of her years of study and up-close dealings whales, Nan was particularly upset by the recent International Whaling Commission vote.
She hopes that factual arguments will help her and her colleagues prevent the future slaughter of many whale species.
Some research — such as the study of whale DNA by geneticists from Stanford and Harvard universities — indicates that whale populations today are too low to allow a resumption of commercial hunting. According to the IWC, for instance, the population of humpback whales in the North Atlantic today is approximately 10,000. According to old whaling records, the historic population high count was that of 20,000.
The IWC would allow a return to whaling if the current population is slightly more than half the historic figure.
Recent DNA studies, however, put the historic figure 10 times the original estimate, or 200,000 humpbacks.
Studies of other types of whales have yielded similar numbers — that is, past populations were at least 10 times higher than previously accepted estimates.
Other groups such as Whale Call Inc. and the Kucinski Wildlife Foundation have called upon countries such as Japan to stop the harvesting of whales as a food source, because of the unhealthy nature of the meat.
Whale meat has been called healthier than beef, but recent studies by scientists have found large amounts of mercury and other toxins present.
"Whales are particularly vulnerable to environmental contaminants," according to a Whale Call Inc. memo forwarded to Hauser in June.
Still other groups, such as the World Wildlife Fund) and the International Fund for Animal Welfare have suggested that pro-whaling countries, such as Japan, have recently recruited new members for the International Whaling Commission; countries that will help them attain a majority vote in future years and overturn the 1986 prohibition on commercial whaling.
Even today, several hundred whales are killed yearly under a provision, Article 8, in the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling. It allows the killing of whales by countries such Japan and Iceland for scientific research.
Wildlife experts estimate that 900 minke whales and 10 fin whales will be harvested this year by Japan in the name of research.
With commercial and environmental dangers still present, Hauser said, the future of the world's largest living creatures remains in doubt.
BRUNSWICK — In June 2006, members of the International Whaling Commission, meeting at St. Kitts and Nevis, voted on a symbolic resolution that would end a 20-year-moratorium on commercial whaling.
Pro-whaling nations, including Japan and Iceland were able to pass the resolution by a single vote, 33-to-32, with one abstention.
Although a three-quarters majority is needed to overturn the IWC's 1986 ban on commercial whaling, the nonbinding "St. Kitts and Nevis Declaration" is seen by many as a move to return to commercial whaling.
According to marine scientist Nan Hauser, the vote is likely the first step in an environmental tragedy.
"For the first time, Japan and other pro-whaling nations have achieved a majority vote at the annual IWC meeting," she said recently at her Brunswick home.
While most people in the world today think that whales have been saved from extinction, many scientist believe such a claim to be premature.
Hauser has spent the last 16 years studying whales and other marine mammals throughout the world, working tirelessly for their preservation. Most of her studies are based in the Bahaman Islands of the Atlantic Ocean and the Cook Islands in the Pacific.
In the past 15 years, she has photographed whales, videotaped them, collected their DNA from skin samples and recorded their songs. She free-dives among the mighty creatures, studying their markings, antics and moods. "Whales don't scare me," she said. "But spiders do!"
At Rarotonga, the largest of the 15 islands that make up the Cook Islands, Hauser has established, with the help of relatives and friends, the Center for Cetacean Research and Conservation. She is president and director of the center, also chief investigator for the Cook Islands Whale Research Project.
Hauser also created the Cook Islands Whale Education Centre, on Rarotonga, where she teaches classes and seminars, displays artifacts from her research and has a large collection of audio and visual material.
She's worked with the government of the islands to establish a 1 million square mile ocean sanctuary in that area of the Pacific. Hauser was quoted at that time as saying, "It is a huge message to the world, and especially Japan, that the Cook Island people will not tolerate the killing of whales or dolphins."
Hauser, a registered nurse by training, has spent years diving and developing a desire to help cetaceans (ocean mammals). In 1990 she ventured to the Cook Islands to study humpback whales and immediately fell in love with the area, making it her home away from home.
Each July through October, she lives on Pacific island and documents whales as they migrate north from Antarctic waters through the Cook Island corridor. The waters around Rarotonga fall away sharply in depth just beyond the island's coral reef.
In these waters, Hauser and her research team study the migrating humpbacks. Free diving is the chosen method, because an aqualung emits air bubbles that can be viewed as a sign of aggression to the animals.
Because of her years of study and up-close dealings whales, Nan was particularly upset by the recent International Whaling Commission vote.
She hopes that factual arguments will help her and her colleagues prevent the future slaughter of many whale species.
Some research — such as the study of whale DNA by geneticists from Stanford and Harvard universities — indicates that whale populations today are too low to allow a resumption of commercial hunting. According to the IWC, for instance, the population of humpback whales in the North Atlantic today is approximately 10,000. According to old whaling records, the historic population high count was that of 20,000.
The IWC would allow a return to whaling if the current population is slightly more than half the historic figure.
Recent DNA studies, however, put the historic figure 10 times the original estimate, or 200,000 humpbacks.
Studies of other types of whales have yielded similar numbers — that is, past populations were at least 10 times higher than previously accepted estimates.
Other groups such as Whale Call Inc. and the Kucinski Wildlife Foundation have called upon countries such as Japan to stop the harvesting of whales as a food source, because of the unhealthy nature of the meat.
Whale meat has been called healthier than beef, but recent studies by scientists have found large amounts of mercury and other toxins present.
"Whales are particularly vulnerable to environmental contaminants," according to a Whale Call Inc. memo forwarded to Hauser in June.
Still other groups, such as the World Wildlife Fund) and the International Fund for Animal Welfare have suggested that pro-whaling countries, such as Japan, have recently recruited new members for the International Whaling Commission; countries that will help them attain a majority vote in future years and overturn the 1986 prohibition on commercial whaling.
Even today, several hundred whales are killed yearly under a provision, Article 8, in the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling. It allows the killing of whales by countries such Japan and Iceland for scientific research.
Wildlife experts estimate that 900 minke whales and 10 fin whales will be harvested this year by Japan in the name of research.
With commercial and environmental dangers still present, Hauser said, the future of the world's largest living creatures remains in doubt.