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.
Research from America suggests South Korean fishermen are catching many more whales than they declare, possibly breaking an international moratorium on whaling.
A team of international legal experts says Australia could stop Japan's scientific whaling program if it went 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.
Grey whales in the eastern Pacific appear to be in some trouble, with the cause far from clear, scientists say.
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.
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.
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.
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.
By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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