Pollution 'poses new threat to whales'

A right whale off New England: New hazards face the great whales

By BBC News Online's environment correspondent Alex Kirby

The world's surviving whales face new threats, especially pollution, according to conservationists.

WWF, the global environment network, says research shows that chemicals accumulating in the animals' blubber are affecting their milk.

Despite the international moratorium on commercial whaling in force since 1986, WWF says, several species are still at risk. And it accuses Japan of abusing international rules on killing whales for scientific research.

In a report, WWF says more than a thousand whales are hunted annually for the commercial market.

Traditional culture

Since the moratorium took effect 15 years ago, 21,573 whales have been killed.

The moratorium was agreed by the International Whaling Commission (IWC), which starts its annual meeting on 23 July in London.

Coastal communities in the Arctic and the Caribbean are allowed by the IWC to catch some whales as part of their traditional culture.

Two other IWC members also continue whaling - Japan for what it calls scientific research, and Norway in a commercial hunt.

Still at risk

IWC rules allow any species to be killed for research, and Norway is not bound by the moratorium because it objected to it.

Iceland, which rejoined the IWC this year, says it also intends to resume the hunt.

Humpbacks are listed as vulnerable

Seven of the 13 species of great whale are still listed on the World Conservation Union's Red List of Threatened Species as either endangered or vulnerable.

The seven are the blue, fin, sei, humpback and sperm whales, and the northern Atlantic and north Pacific right whales. But apart from the ravages of commercial whaling, WWF says, other hazards are now causing alarm.

Stuart Chapman, head of WWF-UK's species unit, said: "Whales are falling prey to new and ever-increasing dangers.

"They are killed or maimed during ship collisions and menaced by toxic contamination, entanglement in fishing gear, and intensive oil and gas development in feeding grounds, as well as the effects of climate change and habitat degradation."

Death by stealth

The report says there is growing evidence that industrial chemicals and pesticide run-off from the land are potentially the gravest threats to the whales' survival.

It says research shows that baleen whales (species without teeth, which filter their food through sieves in their mouths) are increasingly affected by chemicals building up in their blubber.

This slowly releases the chemicals into the females' milk when they migrate to their winter calving grounds.

Many whale species are still not secure

Stuart Chapman told BBC News Online: "It's almost a case of death by stealth.

"The main threat is no longer the man with the harpoon gun. Species that have been taken to the brink are not recovering because of other threats, sometimes invisible ones."

WWF says whale watching can earn countries more than they could hope to make from commercial whaling. The industry's income has doubled in six years, with numbers of whale watchers in Iceland growing from 100 in 1991 to 44,000 in 2000.

Japan accused

WWF says protection measures should include cutting marine pollution, maintaining the ban on the international whalemeat trade, and creating more whale sanctuaries.

It wants hunting strictly controlled by the IWC, and an end to "the abuse of scientific whaling".

Stuart Chapman told BBC News Online: "Japan is certainly abusing the spirit of the moratorium by using the legal loophole of research.

"We denounce the way it has escalated its scientific hunt, catching minkes in the southern ocean sanctuary, and now going after Bryde's and sperm whales as well."

Photos courtesy of NOAA