by Patrick Appel
A reader writes:
Evan Soltas’ article make a decent argument for “catch share” in whaling, though I find it curious he neither quotes nor links to any opponents of the idea (instead choosing to summarize their ideas, which strikes me as lazy and uncharitable). I generally support catch share and other conservation solutions that take human activity into account. But had Soltas done more research, he might have realized another problem–whalers break the rules now, and they will break the rules under any catch share system so long as their home countries don’t care to enforce the rules. The International Whaling Commission (IWC) has no enforcement powers. If you hauled a dead humpback whale (actually not that endangered any more) into San Diego harbor, Federal and State authorities would swiftly descend. The same is not true in Japan. Though they’re allowed to take Minke and other smaller whales for “research” purposes, other explicitly protected whales have always been illegally killed by Japanese whaling fleets without consequence.
Years back, my father (Dr. Stephen R. Palumbi) and his colleague Dr. Scott Baker purchased whale meat from Japanese fish markets and used genetic testing to prove that illegal whales were being taken. Blue, fin, sei and other severely endangered great whales were clearly present in the meat supply. A minor furor erupted, with Japan and various useful idiots denying the incontrovertible evidence in front of their faces. Our family home got a number of threatening calls from Japanese-accented men over the next few years (organized crime is involved in the trade). Baker has since repeated the experiment; the illegal species can still be bought without much trouble in Japanese fish markets.
So, catch share is generally a fine conservation strategy. Given proper enforcement mechanisms, which Soltas simply assumes with a wave of his hand at the end of his piece, it might work for whales. But the problem remains: the rules that exist are not being followed. Do whatever you like with the Minke market, but nobody is seriously proposing that blue whales should be hunted. And yet, they are. Until all parties to the IWC are operating in good faith, the rules shouldn’t budge.
And Evan Soltas could have figured all this out if he’d done his homework.
Another reader adds:
Let’s set aside the argument about whales’ intelligence being a reason not to kill or eat them. Instead, I want to address the notion of establishing a “properly regulated market” in whaling as a way to allow their populations to increase.
The history of attempts to manage fisheries makes it clear that “sustainable” management is extremely difficult to pull off. It takes well-crafted regulations, requires strict enforcement and compliance, and relies on fisheries science which is notoriously difficult to get right. The majority of attempts to regulate fisheries for the sake of increasing fish populations have failed or have been so eroded over time by the interests of those who want fish to maximize yield (which typically leads to overexploitation) that the regulations and systems themselves become meaningless.
The assumption that such a system could be put in place for whales is foolhardly. It runs in the face of fisheries management history and fails to take into account the fact that whales are, like many shark species, slow to regenerate. Their feed sources and habitats have been radically reduced. In some kind of ideal scenario, perhaps one could determine some “sustainable worldwide quota” that, as long as it was adhered to, whale populations would increase. But, this sort of paper plan rarely works out in the real world. The idea lacks credibility when factors like human nature, degraded habitats, food sources and more are taken into account.
(Photo by Charlie Stinchcomb)
The Dish 