2010 Mar 11

Non-lethal whale research promoted

 Whale-friendly international scientists are due to return to Wellington on Monday with data they hope will show the mammals can be comprehensively researched without being slaughtered.

New Zealand research ship Tangaroa sailed on February 2 with 17 scientists from New Zealand, Australia and France, to tag, collect tissue and faecal samples and record whales in the Southern Ocean as part of a collaborative research voyage.

The voyage was the first for the Southern Ocean Research Partnership (SORP) and was designed to show that through clever use of existing technologies scientists can learn a lot about whales without having to kill them.

Science Minister Wayne Mapp said when the ship sailed that it was important for New Zealand and Australia to prove and demonstrate research can be done in a non-lethal way.

The voyage concentrated mainly on humpback and Antarctic minke whales - species being targeted by Japanese whalers who claim they have to kill 1000 whales each year "for research".

A loophole in the 1986 ban on commercial whaling allows the mammals to be killed for research, but critics say the scientific grounds for the hunt are a facade, as meat ends up being sold to the public for consumption.

The Japanese government-sponsored Institute of Cetacean Research has already said the work done by SORP will have little impact on their annual slaughter.

"The only way you can get certain information, birthing data, how old a whale is when she gives birth, the number of times that a whale gives birth within its lifetime, this can only be obtained through killing them," New Zealand spokesman for the institute, Glen Inwood said last month.

"It's that simple... If you do want to hunt whales sustainably then the data Japan is collecting through its lethal research programme is invaluable," said Mr Inwood.

The expedition's findings will be presented to the International Whaling Commission in June.

Expedition leader Nick Gales told the ABC today that the voyage had been inspiring.

"At one point in the boat today we had thousands, literally thousands, of sooty shearwaters feeding around us and three humpback whales moving through that group feeding on surface krill. It is just quite extraordinary."

The scientists deployed satellite tags and took biopsy samples, and collected a lot of other valuable scientific data on at least nine species of whales and dolphins, including humpback, Antarctic minke, sei, sperm, fin, killer, southern bottlenose whales and hourglass dolphins.

The satellite transponders will send back important information on feeding behaviour and, later, as winter begins track the whales from the Southern Ocean to breeding grounds.

Biopsies and photo identification of humpback whales have also been collected to boost understanding of linkages between the southern feeding grounds and the breeding grounds of the south west Pacific and eastern Australia.

Dr Gales said the waters around the Balleny Islands in the Ross Sea region where the research was done were alive with the sounds of humpbacks and blue whales.

Buoys fitted with microphones to detect whale calls and transmit them back to the ship, successfully recorded humpback whales, along with sperm, blue and fin whales.

The ship is operated by the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research.

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