Exploitation Week 5

Question 1

Intended learning outcomes

Answer 1

• Describe the history, background and effects of sealing (seal hunting)
• Describe the history, background and effects of whaling (whale hunting)
• Describe and discuss current types of exploitation and international legislation

Question 2

Seal products and use

Answer 2

Fur
Blubber
Raw materials and tools
Meat
Walrus ivory (tusk)

Consumption
Oil from blubber used for lighting major cities
Sperm whale oil used as lubricant in machinery
Oil lamps for private household
Soap
Perfume
Baleen used in corsets, umbrellas and lamps
Blubber, meat and grinder bones used as fertiliser in agriculture

Question 3

Important to realise with sealing/whaling products

Answer 3

• Whaling/sealing/hunting constitute(d) the largest of all
  human impacts on marine mammals!
• Commercial sealing and whaling for oil (blubber) boosted the industrial revolution and the foundation for our western society…!

Question 4

Prehistoric seal hunting

Answer 4

• Virtually any coastal prehistoric society hunted seals
• Great variation in specialization
• Meat, hide/fur, blubber and tusks/bones
• Impacts were likely local, but may have been substantial
• ”Pristine” abundance unknown, but zoo archaeological records can give a hint…

Question 5

Example: Norse walrus hunting

Answer 5

• Walrus tusks were highly valued (”ivory”)
• Hunting in Iceland led to collapse of population
• …one of the reasons the Norse colonised Greeland?

Extinct Icelandic walrus was its own evolutionary lineage

Question 6

The danish seal culling program 1889-1927

Answer 6

Background
* Development and “professionalization” of fishery
* Establishment of fishery organisations in the 1860s
* Increasing pressure to regulate seal stocks
* Similar programmes in Sweden, Finland, Germany, etc

The bounty system
* 1889-1890: skull sent to Zoological Museum
* 1890-1912: tail sent to ZM (fraud + no species ID)
* 1913-1927: tail and jaw sent to ZM
* 3 DKK per seal + value of meat, skin and blubber = approx. 20 DKK (equivalent to a week’s salary)
* “The War Ministry” to supplied riffles and ammo

Question 7

Danish seal hunting (1889-1974)

Answer 7

1889-1927: Bounty hunt to exterminate seals
1940s-1974: Food, skin, sport and regulation

Question 8

Harp seal hunt

Answer 8

• Harp seal hunt in New Foundland
• 1830s-70s: 400,000-500,000 seals/year
• Steam ships with thick hull could go far into the ice
• Use of airplanes (when invented) to spot seals
• British, Scottish, Norwegian, and Canadian

Harp seals haul-out on fast ice in very large numbers

Question 9

Sealing summary

Answer 9

Subsistence hunting going on for millennia

Commercial sealing in the North Atlantic
* Norse (Viking) exploitation of walrus for the tusks
* 1500s-present: Harp and hooded seals in the Arctic
* 1600s-1800s: Baltic ringed seals (100.000s each year)

Commercial sealing in the South Atlantic
* 1770s: 40,000 fur seal skins; 2,800 tons of elephant seal oil
* 1790s: 102 vessels engaged in sealing

South and North Pacific sealing
* 1700s-1900 fur seal hunting in North Pacific
* 1790s fur seal/sea lion hunting in Australia and New
Zealand

Unprofitable in the 1800s due to whaling and depleted seal stocks
* Extinction: Japaneese sea lion
* Brink of extinction: elephant seal, fur seal and sea lion stocks

Question 10

Current seal hunt

Answer 10

• Subsistence
• Fur trade
• Sport/trophy hunting
• Regulation to minimize seal-fishery conflicts

Question 11

Examples of current sealing countries

Answer 11

• Canada: harp and hooded (subsistence)
• Greenland: all species (subsistence)
• Iceland: grey and harbour seal (regulation, sport)
• Norway: harp, harbour and grey seals (regulation, sport)
• Sweden: grey, harbour and ringed seals (regulation, sport)
• Finland: grey and ringed seals (regulation, sport)
• Denmark: harbour and grey seals (regulation)
• Namibia: Cape fur seals (fur and regulation)

Question 12

Prehistoric whaling

Answer 12

• Techniques
  – Scavenging/utilisation of occasional stranded animals
  – Deliberate and accidental catch of smaller odontocetes in nets
  – Drive hunt, herding whales towards shore
  – Harpoon and drogue (“float”) to exhaust whales
• Some prehistoric/historic societies had organised whaling activities of larger baleen whales
  – Bangudae (8000 BP); earliest evidence of organised whaling
  – Palaeo-Inuit (4000 BP); bowhead harpoon hunt
  – Roman whaling (2000 BP); grey and right whales
  – Japan 8th century; Basque 11th century; etc…

Question 13

Roman whaling in the Mediterranean

Answer 13

Early whaling and depletion of grey and right whales?
…and perhaps small toothed whales?
(wait for Magie’s talk on the Black Sea!)

The North Atlantic right whale only occur in the NW Atlantic, but previously occurred in the NE Atlantic and has been found at many archaeological sites in the Mediterranean

Question 14

Historic commercial whaling

Answer 14

• 1100: Basque “commercial” whaling in Bay of Biscay
• 1550: Basque whalers reach Labrador coast
• “Whaling wars” between UK and the Netherlands
• Right, bowhead and grey whales harpooned, dragged to land and butchered/boiled at shore stations
• Arctic explored in search for lucrative whaling grounds

Question 15

Catching the “right” whales

Answer 15

… called right whales bc they were slow and floated when killed

North Atlantic grey whale: extinct 18th century North Atlantic right whale: 300-400 animals Bowhead whale: recovering?
Southern right whale: recovering?

Question 16

Yankee (American) whaling

Answer 16

• Massive industrial scale whaling; particular of sperm whales
• 1650: Start of Yankee (American) whaling industry
• 1750: Blubber now boiled onboard the ships, so possible to whale far out at sea without access to shore station
• 1789: First whaling ship in the Pacific Ocean
• 1813: USA destroys 50% of the UK’s Pacific whaling fleet
• 1847: 900 ships in global whaling fleet; USA dominates
  (but also New Zealand, Australia, UK, Norway, Denmark, etc)

Question 17

Sperm whale catches, 1760-1920

Answer 17

Sperm whales “easy” to catch, because they need to recover at the surface after their long deep dives…

Question 18

“Modern” whaling

Answer 18

• 1860s: Norwegian Sven Foyn combines ship design, steam engine and explosive harpoon => modern whaling
• 1904: Whaling at South Georgia, Antarctica
• 1925: First factory ship with stern slipway (to haul whales in from the smaller, quicker whaling vessels)

Now it’s possible to catch the fast whales

Question 19

Soviet illegal whaling, 1946-1986

Answer 19

Reported far less kills than actual

Question 20

Whaling management

Answer 20

• 1929: Norwegian Whaling Act
• 1931: Geneva Convention for Regulation of Whaling
• 1946: International Whaling Commission (IWC) “…proper conservation of whale stocks and thus make
  possible the orderly development of the whaling industry”
• 1972: IWC introduces “New Management Procedure” arguing for scientific management of whaling
• 1975: Greenpeace campaigns against whaling
• 1982: IWC introduces a 10-year moratorium on whaling taking affect from 1986

Question 21

Whaling under IWC

Answer 21

• IWC membership is voluntary
• Three types of whaling currently carried out
  – 1. Commercial whaling under objection/reservation
  – 2. Aboriginal subsistence whaling
  – 3. Special permit (scientific) whaling
• Focus on baleen whales and sperm whales
• Management of small cetaceans covered by other organizations (NAMMCO, ASCOBAMS, ACCOBAMS, HELCOM), national legislation, or not at all…

Small whales not covered by IWC

Question 22

1. Whaling under objection/reservation

Answer 22

• Japan: 1985-1987
• Russia: 1985-present (no active catch)
• Current status
  – Iceland: 2006-present (with breaks)
  – Norway: 1986-present
  – Whaling within their own maritime territory
  – Target minke whales (and some fin whales), which are not endangered…
  – Own use, and export to Japan

Question 23

2. Subsistence hunt objectives

Answer 23

• Ensure that hunts do not seriously increase risks of extinction and that hunted whale populations move to (if they are not already there), and are then maintained at, healthy, relatively high levels
• Enable native people to hunt whales at levels appropriate to cultural, social and nutritional right and requirements
• Food sovereignty (not needing to rely on food import)

Question 24

Japanese whaling

Answer 24

• Coastal whaling at least since 8th century
• Industrial scale whaling since 1890s
• Special permit (scientific) whaling since 1988
• Japan leaving the IWC in 2019
  – Stop whaling in international waters (Antarctica)
  – Whaling of minke whales (and others?) in national waters
• Conservationissues?
  – The minke whale catch removes only 0.2% of the population and is considered sustainable
• Other issues
  – Japan’s whaling relies on government subsidies
  – High levels of mercury and PCBs in whale meat
  – Import of whale meat from Norway and Iceland
  – The strongest opponents are the major historic whaling nations (USA, Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, etc)

Question 25

Japanese scientific whaling

Answer 25

• Scientific aims
  – Stock structure
  – Food preferences and ecosystem effects
  – Mortality rates and interspecific competition
  – 120 publications; only 2 publications since 2005
• Scientific whaling programs
  – JARPN: western North Pacific; 1994-1999
  – JARPN II: western North Pacific; 2000-2001
  – JARPA: Antarctica; 1988-2005
  – JARPA II: Antarctica; 2005-2014

Question 26

International court of justice (ICJ)

Answer 26

• Australia (and New Zealand) press charges in 2010
• March 2014 the ICJ ruled that “Japan’s whaling program was not for scientific purpose”
• ICJ requirements of Japan
  – Improvement of both biological and ecological data on Antarctic minke whales
  – Investigation of the structure and dynamics of the Antarctic marine ecosystem through the development of ecosystem models
• Japan momentarily stopped whaling in 2014, but…
• …new program ”NEWREP-A” in December 2015

Question 27

Danish porpoise hunt

Answer 27

• Lillebælt (Gamborg and Kolling Fjord)
• 1357: First description of hunt
• 1492: The king requires his share of the hunt
• 1593: Organization of hunters into ”Porpoise Guild”
• 1822-92: 301-2200 porpoises per year (total 3000 in DK)
• 1889: Norwegian whale oil take over the market
• 1898: The “Porpoise Guild” is dissolved after 300 years
• 1941-44: 1011 porpoises caught during WW2
• 1957-58: Last catch; all transported to Holland alive
• 1967: The harbour porpoise become protected in DK

Question 28

Whaling summary

Answer 28

• Large impact on (some) whale species and populations
• Extinct
  – North Atlantic grey whale
• Critically endangered
  – Antarctic blue whale (2000?)
  – NW Pacific gray whale (100?)
• Endangered
  – North Atlantic right whale (100-200?)
  – North Pacific right whale (500?)
  – Blue whale (10,000-25,000 world wide)
  – Fin whale (25,000 in North Atlantic; 70,000 worldwide?)
  – Sei whale (30,000 worldwide?)
• What do the loss of baleen whales mean for the function of the marine ecosystem and ocean ecosystem services?

Pre-whaling populations consumed 430 million tonnes of Antarctic krill; >3 times more than previously thought!!

• Pre-whaling populations supported 10-fold higher nutrient cycling, water mixing and primary productivity

Could recovery of whale populations restore ocean nutrient and carbon cycling…. and perhaps mitigate the climate crisis?