Seeking answers to research questions

Among the list of questions I posted about whaling on May 7th were the following two:

* Is the claim of the Japanese government that whales are partly responsible for the falling catches of fish (because the whales are eating them) justified?

* Is whale meat fit for human consumption or is it contaminated with mercury, as some scientists claim?

I was able to find answers that I felt were trustworthy in a UK government publication, which I downloaded as a PDF from the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs' (Defra) archive. Although there's always a chance that they may be biased, government documents can be an excellent source for statistics and other detailed objective information.

Whales Policy team (Defra), United Kingdom. Questions and answers on whales and whaling. 2010. Web. 19 May 2011. <http://tinyurl.com/3cujmks>.

Humpback whales (yeimaya's photostream)

According to the document, the argument that whales eat too many fish and, therefore, should be killed in order to save fish stocks, is too simplistic. For one thing, the authors of the document point out that not all of the fish eaten by whales are caught commercially and consumed by humans. In addition, some of the fish that whales eat are predators of commercially targeted fish. Therefore, the whales may be helping fishermen by eating fish that eat another kind of fish which the fishermen are trying to catch. The ecosystem, which man is a part of, is very complicated, so it's inappropriate to conclude that whales hurt fishermen by competing with them, simply because the whales eat fish. This is one of the leading arguments that Japan and Iceland use in order to continue their whaling operations.

As for the question as to whether whale meat is safe for human consumption, the UK government document claims that it contains not only methylmercury, but also PCBs and DDT, chemicals that are known to cause nerve damage and cancer. In fact, the article claims that "Iceland's Directorate of Health [has] advised pregnant and nursing women to reduce, or stop eating whale meat because of high levels of contaminants" (pp. 4-5). The Minke whales caught in the North Atlantic have such high levels of PCBs that it would be illegal to import them into Japan due to food safety laws. Japan claims, through their The Institute of Cetacean Research (I.C.R.), that the Minke whales caught in the Southern Ocean are much less contaminated and safe for humans to eat.