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Killing Whales by Design and Default

While countries such as Japan, Norway, and Iceland often are criticized for their commercial whaling practices, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) marine biologist Michael Moore points out how the majority of nations are also complicit in killing whales by deploying commercial fishing gear.

Moore cites scientific literature, necropsy reports, and individual case studies in an editorial essay addressing the ethics of whale entanglement and commercial whaling published in ICES Journal of Marine Science. (more…)

Critically Endangered Whales Sing Like Birds; New Recordings Hint At Rebound

By Guest PostAugust 1, 2012Natureacoustics, alaskan beaufort sea, Arctic, Arctic sea ice, birds, bowhead whales, breeding ground, catherine berchok, christian lydersen, commercial whaling, declines, endangered whales, fram strait, greenland, hydrophone, islands of norway, kate stafford, microphones, migration path, population, sing, skull, sue moore, university of washington, variety of tunes, whale song

When a University of Washington researcher listened to the audio picked up by a recording device that spent a year in the icy waters off the east coast of Greenland, she was stunned at what she heard: whales singing a remarkable variety of songs nearly constantly for five wintertime months.

Kate Stafford, an oceanographer with UW’s Applied Physics Lab, set out to find if any endangered bowhead whales passed through the Fram Strait, an inhospitable, ice-covered stretch of sea between Greenland and the northern islands of Norway. Only around 40 sightings of bowhead whales, which were hunted almost to extinction, have been reported there since the 1970s. (more…)

Tag Archives: commercial whaling

Killing Whales by Design and Default

Critically Endangered Whales Sing Like Birds; New Recordings Hint At Rebound