The Australian government has condemned Japan's "regrettable" decision to withdraw from the International Whaling Commission and resume commercial whaling. The Japanese government's withdrawal from the global body, announced on Wednesday, will see commercial hunts in the country's territorial and economic waters start in July 2019. Announcing the decision, Chief Cabinet …
As gray whales face new threats along the Baja Californian coast in the US, their rarer cousins in the Western Pacific are facing greater peril, owing to a consortium of profit-hungry Japanese and western oil companies, in collusion with the Russian government. The Western Pacific's 200 surviving gray whales migrate …
ALASKA is going through a lot of changes. Few months back, global warming caused the region's ice caps to melt and now, the Alaska's marine ecology is being altered. But this time, its not human induced. It seems that killer orca whales have developed an appetite for Alaskan sea otters. …
THE whale shark is one of the biggest, mysterious and until recently, least loved of all marine creatures. They are the world's largest fish, growing up to 12 metres long and weighing up to 11 tonne. But the size does not neccesarily mean that they are easily visible. Until 10 …
Many environmental groups and a number of cetacean scientists are campaigning strongly against the US navy's use of its Low Frequency Active Sonar. The groups fear that using the sonar will harm all marine mammals. They also say that there is a distinct possibility that tests similar to those just …
In Sri Lanka, a whale died even as army troops tried to rescue it. The whale was spotted in shallow waters near Colombo's Galle Face Hotel and volunteers swam in to push the animal into deeper waters when it appeared to have lost its bearings. Environmentalists who were at the …
international environmental groups and those who defend the right to sustainable use of marine mammals have been debating the issue of banning whale hunting. Those who oppose whale hunting argue that the species is on the verge of extinction. However, for 30 Norwegian families, who are involved in hunting the …
whales might be suffering hearing loss due to noise generated by engines of tourist boats, ships, and large tankers, according to Peter M Scheifele, a bioacoustic researcher at the University of Connecticut, usa . Whale-watching has become a popular tourist attraction across the world. Tourists are taken in boats to …
international resistance to Norway's whaling operations has been conspicuous by its absence in 1997. The current season has already proven to be the most productive for Norwegian whalers since 1992, the year in which Norway resumed commercial whaling defying the ban imposed by the International Whaling Commission ( iwc ) …
The war of whales goes on. With the whaling season about to begin in the north Atlantic and the north Pacific, leading conservation groups recently urged US President Bill Clinton to take immediate action to protect the worlds endangered whales. The groups including Greenpeace and tW World Wide Fund for …
John Heyning and James Mead from the American National Museum of Natural History in Washington, US, have analysed the eating habits of whales. They found that the female beaked whales or Ziphiidae are toothless, while the males have just one or two pairs of teeth. These whales can barely open …
at the annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission (iwc) held in Aberdeen recently, the us was forced to eat humble pie. Its suggestion that the Makah tribe of Washington state be allowed to catch five grey whales in the coming year, met with a decisive veto. Under iwc rules, …
A 29ft rubber whale, Molly the Minke, is being paraded on the back of a truck in the UK. The float will go through 38 towns and cities before it gets shipped to Dublin for the International Whaling Commission (IWC), which is meeting at the end of May. Greenpeace, the …
"RESFARCH whaling" is malignantly alive in Japan. In mid-April, a Japanese factory ship, the Nisshin Maru, returned to Tokyo with 330 minke whales harpooned in the Antarctic during this year's "research mission". Japan has earned worldwide notoriety for sickeningly indiscriminate whale slaughter. It has killed since 1987 about 300 minke …
A GIANT question mark casts a shadow over Norway's whale census, Recent revelations in a confidential document from the Norwegian Computing Centre and the University of Oslo disclose errors in the software used to estimate the North Atlantic minke whale population. Norway is in favour of a resumption of whale …
The resumption of commercial whaling is a longstanding Japanese demand. Even so, environmentalists were aghast when Japan's official Fisheries Agency announced its intention to sell whale meat at half its normal price. "The number of children who have never eaten whale meat is growing," blandly explained an agency official. To …
With Russia's approval, the much-awaited Antarctic whale sanctuary will come into effect on December 6. Russia's agreement is a defeat for Japan's campaign to resume commercial whaling using Russian whalers. Now, Japan is also expected to give up its opposition to whale-saving campaigns. Russia's decision followed a fierce struggle between …
WHAT do whales have in common with pigs, deer and hippos? All of them share the same ancestors, say evolutionary biologists. This belief has been held for a long time, but now, two groups of palaeontologists working in Pakistan have discovered fossils that are up to 52-million-year-old to support the …
THE BATTLE of wits between the hunter and the hunted calls for increasingly ingenious strategies on the part of each. Recently, two Danish scientists reported that certain species of fish may be evolving the ability to detect sonars -- high-frequency sound signals -- used by whales, dolphins and humans alike …
THE US has let Norway off the hook. US President Bill Clinton informed Congress, in the first week of October, that he does not intend to impose trade sanctions against Norway for violating an international ban on commercial whaling, but would instead persuade it to halt killing of minke whales. …
