Survival Questioned : Some Whale Species Said to Be Depleted More Than Expected

The International Whaling Commission’s scientific committee released a grim report Monday in San Diego, indicating that the populations of some whale species are much smaller than previously thought.

The most seriously depleted is the blue whale, the Earth’s largest animal, whose number is estimated at 453, but could be as low as 200. Before the advent of widespread commercial whaling, there were an estimated 250,000 blue whales in Antarctic waters. Recent estimates had put their numbers at 6,000 to 11,000.

“Where we are is far, far worse than any of us had foreseen,” said Roger Payne, a research scientist with the World Wildlife Fund. “I now think that the question of whether blue whales will actually survive . . . has suddenly come open again.”

Ban Up for Review

The report is the result of eight years of research on whale populations in the Southern Hemisphere. It was made public as the commission began its annual meeting, which is being held in the United States for the first time since 1971. The session is the commission’s last before its worldwide ban on commercial whaling comes up for review next year.

During the weeklong meeting, delegates will determine the number of whales that may be killed in the next year under controversial research programs and will vote on a proposal by Japan that commercial whaling be permitted off four of that nation’s coastal villages. The commission also will consider whether to extend the sanctuary status of an area in the Indian Ocean.

Rally Staged Across the Street

As the delegates met in closed session Monday morning at the Hyatt Islandia Hotel, several animal protection groups, including Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund, staged a rally across the street to protest the killing of whales. About 200 activists from around the country turned out for the event.

Before the session began Monday, Iceland announced that it will halt its research whaling program after this year. Iceland has complied with the worldwide ban on commercial whaling that took effect in 1986, but has been killing about 90 whales each year since then, under an exception for scientific research. The whale meat from those catches is sold commercially.

Norway also conducts a research whaling program, but kills only a small number each year.

Japan, which complies with the commercial ban under protest and kills several hundred whales each year for “research,” took a tougher stand Monday.

“Regretfully, there is a seemingly irreparable split in the commission, with one culture seeking only to destroy the other,” Kazuo Shima, the Japanese delegate, said in his opening statement.

“What has developed here is the dominance of the meat-eating culture over the fish-eating culture. Despite our great sacrifices, and our efforts to ensure conservation, we continue to be vilified by the meat-eating cultures because we hope some day to restore whale meat to our diets.”

A spokesman for the Japanese delegation said Monday that Japanese representatives disagree with the scientific committee’s estimates of the whale population. The research was conducted on Japanese vessels and largely at Japanese expense, but was done by scientists from many countries.

Last year, Japanese whalers killed 241 minke whales under the research exception and the country’s representative to this year’s meeting said the research will continue.

The commission has ruled at past meetings that the research programs are not scientifically valid and has recommended that they be halted. However, the commission has no real authority to enforce any of its decisions.

Icelandic Fish Boycott

Iceland’s announcement was greeted with skepticism by representatives of Greenpeace, which has been conducting a boycott against the sale of Icelandic fish for the last 18 months in an attempt to force an end to the research program.

Campbell Plowden, whale campaign coordinator for Greenpeace, said Monday that Iceland and Japan are moving toward a return to commercial whaling in 1990. “What they’re obviously trying to do is take the pressure off from the boycott, because the boycott has been hurting them,” he said.

“They’ve phased commercial whaling into research whaling, now they’re trying to phase research whaling into commercial whaling. There’s only a change in name.”

Besides problems with the blue whale, the scientific committee’s report noted a seriously depleted population of fin whales, which now are estimated at 2,096 to 4,000. Both species are now “only a very small fraction” of their pre-whaling levels, the committee concluded.

The fin whale population was estimated at 500,000 before widespread whaling, according to World Wildlife Fund figures, and in recent years had been thought to number about 100,000.

The research also showed an unexpectedly low 4,047 humpback whales and 3,059 sperm whales, but noted that the survey area south of 60 degrees latitude excluded much of the normal habitat for those species.

Payne, who is a member of the scientific committee, said Monday that he now fears for the welfare of the minke whales, one of the smaller varieties, because of Japan’s research killing each year, which he termed a “scam.” The larger species are now off-limits even for research because their populations have been so depleted.

“What the Japanese whaling industry has really done is fought as far as they can and knocked down, slowly, through all the species,” he said.

He said the Japanese have begun to kill thousands of porpoises, smaller relatives of whales, as a substitute. In the last two years, he said, the Japanese caught about 50,000 of a species of porpoise that numbers 105,000. “It’s plain and simply a disgrace,” he said.