Genetic Study Provides Estimate of Whale Populations

ChopsMIDI writes "Many more whales were hunted in the 18th century than thought, a genetic study of the North Atlantic animals suggests. U.S. researchers say the International Whaling Commission may be underestimating by tenfold the number of whales in the seas before hunting began."

Comments

Why hunt whales?

[Tailhook]

Why, in this day-in-age, would whale hunting be useful? What can be produced from a dead whale that doesn't have a better alternative in-use already? My limited knowledge of the history of whaling tells me the most important product was whale oil. It's really hard to believe that other forms of oil are more expensive to produce than what it must cost to hunt whales. The hide, perhaps?

As far as the study goes, it is easy to have suspicions about the motives of the researchers. If the motive is to determine long-ago whale populations so that someone can either justify or prevent future whaling, a study coming from university is likely to be shifted toward the latter. In this case it's Stanford and one of the main researchers (Prof. Palumbi) is a "protected marine reserves" advocate.

If this is junk science I don't really care if it prevents whaling; I'm fairly certain the world will survive without the practice. But extrapolating the history of species through genetic analysis is a young field and it would suck to have it be generally discounted before we see what is possible. The moment the political class decides that the results of research might actually matter politically, the who-what-when-where-why of research gets politicized too.