Over 80 nations have gathered in Slovenia for the biennial International Whaling Commission meeting. Japan's controversial return to its "scientific" whale hunts and a possible whale sanctuary will likely top the docket.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
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The International Whaling Commission (IWC) convened in Portoroz, Slovenia on Monday to discuss a multitude of threats facing the world's remaining whale populations.
The talks are likely to be contentious, as the IWC's members from 88 nations are divided along pro- and anti-hunting lines. Pro-whaling nations Japan, Norway and Iceland are typically pitted against a majority of the other countries at the IWC meetings.
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Currently, the commission allows nations to catch whales with an aboriginal subsistence whaling license. Japan launches whale hunts for scientific purposes - setting its own quotas - while Norway and Iceland conduct commercial hunts under legal loopholes.
In 2014, the United Nations' International Court of Justice ruled that Japan was abusing the scientific exemption. Tokyo cancelled its 2014/15 whale hunt, but resumed it the following year - catching over 300 animals.
The IWC meetings attempt to balance issues of national sovereignty, culture, and subsistence rights with nature conservation and issues of animal cruelty.
"Whaling has no place in the 21st century. It's outdated, it's thoroughly inhumane," Claire Bass of Humane Society International told news agency AFP ahead of the IWC meeting.
Bass pointed out that a lack of humane ways to kill whales at sea leads to long, drawn-out deaths from wounds inflicted by harpoons and explosive tips.
The nations are also likely to debate a proposal from Brazil, Argentina, Gabon, South Africa and Uruguay to create a large South Atlantic whale sanctuary. The nations rake in a great deal of money from whale-watching tourism and the bid has failed at several previous meetings.
The biennial meeting will run for five days and marks the 70th anniversary of the commission's founding. The summit also marks the 30th anniversary of a whaling moratorium which is estimated to have saved tens of thousands of whales.
rs/kl (AFP, dpa)
Fathoming a whale's death
Twelve sperm whales became stranded on the North Sea coast last week. Now, an autopsy is providing some insight into their cause of death. Whales around the world are always beaching - but why?
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/I.Wagner
Unfortunate news
Why did 12 sperm whales end up on German and Dutch beaches last week? What caused them to die? An autopsy of the more than 10-meter-long (33-foot-long) carcasses is supposed to reveal answers.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/I.Wagner
Heavy burden
For the autopsy, the whales were transported from the beach to mainland Germany. "Difficult and fascinating at the same time," Almut Kottwitz - the deputy environment minister of the German state of Lower Saxony - told DW. A female sperm whale weighs 15 metric tons (16.5 tons), a male up to 60 tonnes. Even though the beached whales were still quite young, they had to be moved with cranes.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/I.Wagner
Getting to the skeleton
First, the whale's skin is cut into strips and peeled from the body. Preparers removed its muscles and ligaments, and gathered up the innards. "It cut me to the quick to see how these beautiful animals were being skinned and torn apart," an observer of the procedure told DW.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/C. Jaspersen
Museum as final resting place
One of the skeletons was brought to Giessen University. Visible here is the whale's jaw - the bones will be treated for display. Another skeleton will be exhibited at a marine museum in Stralsund.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/F. Rumpenhorst
Lack of food
Some of the beached whales seem to have been undernourished, the atopsies found. No wonder: sperm whales feed on giant squids. And these don't live in the North Sea. "Their stomachs and their bowels were entirely empty," Almut Kottwitz told DW, adding that undernourishment seems to be "at least one of the reasons why they died." When whales are hungry and weak, they can get more easily lost.
Image: Reuters
Too heavy for land
Others among the sperm whales, however, seem to have been well-fed before they ended up on the beach, Ursula Siebert of the University of Veterinary Medicine in Hannover told DW: "They still had undigested beaks of giant squids in their stomachs, and feces in their bowels." Once on the beach, their weight compresses their blood vessels and lungs, causing them to die.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/A. van Elten
Champions in deep-sea diving
Sperm whales are not made to live in the shallow North Sea. They mostly live thousands of meters under water. In the North Sea, their echolocation doesn't work correctly. "When they arrive at the North Sea, they don't have muchof a chance of finding their way out of it again," vet and zoologist Siebert said. Ultimately, they beach and die.
Image: picture-alliance/Wildlife
Mass beachings
A week ago, more than 80 short-finned pilot whales got stranded on the beach of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Conservationists managed to push some animals back into the sea, but most of them died. Fabian Ritter of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation estimates that thousands of whales beach every year.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/Str
You beach, I beach
The more socially minded a whale species is, the higher the number of whales that beach from that group. The long-finned pilot whale is one of these species, Fabian Ritter says. These whales have a very strong connection within their family group, or pod. "When the leader is ill or out of sorts, and swims onto the beach, the other group members follow - out of loyalty."
Image: Getty Images/J. J. Mitchell
Too much noise
Conservationists warn that underwater noise is dangerous for marine mammals. "Whales have a very sensitive sense of hearing and communicate via sound with each other," Fabian Ritter says. "Loud noise such as from military exercises disorients them." Especially beaked whales are known to beach more often when there is too much noise underwater, Rittter says.
Image: AFP/Getty Images/J. Kriswanto
Is the sun at fault?
Solar winds disturb the Earth's magnetic field. Whales might get confused and beach more frequently, researchers found. At the end of December 2015 were three major solar winds, physicist Klaus Vanselow of Kiel University told DW. This might have led the 12 sperm whales to take a wrong turn into the North Sea - and end in death on its beaches.
