As a child, I sat on a whale every day. Many years before I was born a 50-ton sperm whale had washed up on the Scottish coast near to where I grew up, and one of my relatives had cleverly fashioned a stool out of one of its enormous vertebrae. To a child, that bone-stool was a thing of wonder: a fraction of a creature of impossible vastness. I would scan the sea, imagining the great beast from which my seat had come, dreaming that another whale might one day burst the surface. It never did.


Read full article: 'A saga of cheating, bribery and greed'

Research from America suggests South Korean fishermen are catching many more whales than they declare, possibly breaking an international moratorium on whaling.

The researchers from Oregan university carried out DNA tests on whale meat bought in South Korea between 1999 and 2003 .

Their study suggests the total whale catch was nearly double the 450 creatures officially declared.

Whale meat can be sold legally in South Korea if the animals are accidentally caught in fishing nets, but the deaths must be reported.

The American scientists say the fishermen may be intentionally trying to catch whales.

Source - Newswire

A team of international legal experts says Australia could stop Japan's scientific whaling program if it went to court.

The team says Australia could take Japan to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea or the International Court of Justice to stop the controversial whale hunt.

The claim came as the latest International Whaling Commission meeting got under way in Anchorage, Alaska.

The panel found that Japan's so-called scientific whale cull breaches a number of key international conventions.

Read full article: 'Govt urged to take Japan to court'

AT LAST year's meeting of the International Whaling Commission, a report by 200 leading marine biologists revealed flame retardants, livestock growth hormones, pesticides, herbicides, cleaning chemicals, discarded fishing nets and plastics were killing the world's whales, dolphins and porpoises.

The annual State of the Cetacean Environment report compiled by the commission's scientific committee listed an alarming range of newly emerging environmental threats, including acidification of oceans and loss of food sources caused by climate change.

A substantial section of the report was devoted to the impacts of seismic surveys and ship collisions on whale migration routes. It suggested the world's oceans were becoming so noise-polluted by increased shipping traffic, naval military exercises and seabed gas exploration, whales could be experiencing difficulty using echo-location to navigate through a "fog of noise".


Read full article: 'Plight of the stinky whale'

Grey whales in the eastern Pacific appear to be in some trouble, with the cause far from clear, scientists say.

Researchers with the conservation group Earthwatch found that whales are arriving in their breeding grounds off the Mexican coast malnourished.


Read full article: 'Pacific whale decline 'a mystery''

Scientists have enlisted some supremely qualified recruits to retrieve important data on one of the most remote and inhospitable places on earth. And all these recruits want is a nice fish dinner.

That's because they are narwhals, a deep-diving arctic whale famous for the males' long, spiral tusk.


Read full article: 'Whales recruited as oceanographers'

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Fifty years ago, a whale hunter in Cook Inlet could count on spotting the bulbous white heads of a beluga pod after a half hour or less on the water. But with the whales' rapid and mysterious disappearance, local hunters can be out in the swirling currents and swift tides for three times as long before a pod swims into sight.

The population is now so low that Alaska Native whalers, who have chased belugas for generations, agreed Monday to cancel their annual hunt for the third time in nine years at the request of the National Marine Fisheries Service. The agency is expected to decide this week whether to declare the animals endangered.


Read full article: 'Alaska Whalers to Cancel Beluga Hunt'

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Map, News) - Fifty years ago, a whale hunter in Cook Inlet could count on spotting the bulbous white heads of a beluga pod after a half hour or less on the water. But with the whales' rapid and mysterious disappearance, local hunters can be out in the swirling currents and swift tides for three times as long before a pod swims into sight.


The population is now so low that Alaska Native whalers, who have chased belugas for generations, agreed Monday to cancel their annual hunt for the third time in nine years at the request of the National Marine Fisheries Service. The agency is expected to decide this week whether to declare the animals endangered.


Read full article: 'Alaska Whalers to Cancel Beluga Hunt'

JAPAN'S case to begin whaling of humpbacks that migrate along the Australian coast has been undermined by one of the world's leading fisheries scientists.

The claim by Japan that reviving humpbacks are outcompeting Antarctic minke whales for food was dismissed by Daniel Pauly, a specialist in global fish stocks.

Humpbacks that begin their annual winter migration along the Australian coast within weeks face Japanese harpoons next summer in Antarctica, where the whalers plan to take 50.


Read full article: 'Japanese case for whaling dismissed'

By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor
Published: 16 April 2007

Britain has led an anti-whaling fightback against Japan's attempts to take control of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) and scrap the international ban on commercial hunting of the great whales.

A British diplomatic campaign has led to six nations joining the IWC - countries who in May will vote with the anti-whalers and thus nullify the voting majority which Japan and its pro-whaling allies secured in the organisation for the first time last year, at the IWC meeting in St Kitts and Nevis in the West Indies. The six who will line up against Japan in Anchorage, Alaska, are Greece, Cyprus, Slovenia, Croatia, Peru and Costa Rica.


Read full article: ' Britain fights Japan's bid to control whaling commission'

REYKJAVIK: The fate of Iceland's commercial whale hunts, target of criticism from anti-whaling nations across the globe, may hinge on 100 tonnes of meat now lying in cold storage.

In October last year, Iceland broke a 1986 ban by giving whalers permission to catch 30 minke whales and nine larger and rarer fin whales. The step drew formal protests from two dozen anti-whaling nations from the United States to Australia.

Iceland's prime minister says his government has not decided if it will let the commercial hunts continue.


Read full article: 'Iceland undecided on commercial whale hunts'

IN AN attempt to bridge the deep international divide over whaling, a former senior US official has proposed the unthinkable: lift the moratorium on the commercial hunt.

A compromise to control whaling could mean that overall, fewer whales would die, said Rollie Schmitten, who was the US whaling commissioner for 10 years.

Read full article: 'Radical proposal to save the whales'

ROME: Italian researchers have excavated the skeleton of a 4 million-year-old whale in the Tuscan countryside, a discovery that could help reconstruct the prehistoric environment of the sea that once covered the region, officials said on Tuesday.

Read full article: 'Whale found in Italy could be key to life 5m years ago'

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) - A Juneau whale-watching tour operator has been fined $7,000 in connection with a collision between a humpback whale and jet boat that injured a Florida woman.

"This case clearly demonstrates that failure to observe the proper whale watching restrictions can result in harm to both whales and humans," Scott Allee, an investigator with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said alleged violation of the Endangered Species Act.

Read full article: 'Juneau tour operator fined for whale collision'

Washington, D.C. (Apr 2, 2007 14:32 EST) Around 30 boats are licensed to take part in the hunt which can kill more than a thousand minke whales during a five month season starting on 1st April. Despite an international ban on commercial whaling, Norway has continued to hunt minke whales in the North Atlantic since 1993 through a legal ‘objection' lodged against the ban and has increased its self allocated quota at an alarming rate in recent years, from 670 in 2004 to 796 in 2005 up to 1052 in 2007.

Read full article: 'Despite Ban, Norway Set to Begin Minke Whale Hunt'