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Whales and Dolphins
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Whales and Dolphins |
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Species at risk
Find out more about life on the edge.
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What can you do?
Get involved in conservation efforts and tell your friends!
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Saving Planet Earth |
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| Introduction - What are the threats?
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|  | Hunting
Whales have been hunted by humans throughout history for their meat, bones and blubber. Commercial whaling during the 19th century wiped out most of the world's whale populations. Because whales mature and breed slowly, numbers will take a long time to recover, if they do at all.
The International Whaling Commission (IWC) banned commercial whaling completely in 1986. There is, however, a clause in the rules which allows countries to issue permits to kill whales for research. Japan uses this loophole to hunt whales and the meat from their research ends up for sale on the domestic market. The Japanese whaling fleet left for the Antarctic in December 2006, with the intention of killing 850 minke whales and 10 fin whales.
Despite the declaration of virtually the entire Southern Ocean as a whale sanctuary, more than two thousand whales are killed annually.
Norway is not bound by the 21-year-old commercial moratorium administered by the IWC because it objected to the ban's introduction.
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| | Noise Pollution
Cetaceans use echolocation (a highly sophisticated means of sensing the world around them that works like sonar in submarines), so they are particularly vulnerable to noise pollution.
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| | Climate change
Climate change could have a marked impact on the ocean environment as a whole. Because cetaceans are at the top of the food chain, they may be at risk. The amount of sea ice in Antarctica, for example, is a vital factor in krill production (a major part of many whale diets).
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| | Fishing nets
Smaller cetaceans can drown when tangled in fishing nets. The fact that dolphins were being accidentally caught in tuna nets made headline news.
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| | Other environmental factors
Other threats include oil and gas development, toxic contamination, habitat degradation, collision with ships and chemical pollution.
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