I was able to find an article that was published last week in the online version of the UK newspaper, The Guardian, which answered another one of my research questions:
Besides whaling, in what other ways are whales threatened?
The article discussed possible causes of the recent stranding of whales, particularly pilot whales. These whales, like most whale species, are highly social and travel around in "pods." When one individual is sick and is too weak to swim anymore, it sometimes goes toward a beach and becomes stranded. Its fellow pod members will often follow the ill whale and die together with the leader.
It is speculated in the article that seismic surveys which are done for oil exploration, that use sonar (high frequency waves), might be to blame for some of the strandings. Confusion caused by changes in the earth's electromagnetic field before serious earthquakes might also cause some whales to get disoriented and head toward beaches.
So, there are many threats to whales besides whaling and the collisions that they sometimes make with ships, which I wrote about in a previous blog entry. Therefore, it's difficult to talk about "safe levels" of "harvesting" of whales by whaling nations. Whaling isn't the only thing that decreases their numbers and makes them vulnerable.
Hoare, P. "Are humans to blame for mass whale strandings?." Guardian 20 May 2011: Web. 26 May 2011. <http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/may/20/humans-to-blame-whale-strandings>.
UK Cetacean Strandings Investigation Programme. (n.d.). Retrieved June 30, 2018, from http://ukstrandings.org/
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