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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."
If you can make it profitiable for companies to invest in breeding a speices, that speices will thrive. Horses would probably be extinct now if there weren't people intentionally breeding them for recreational use. I don't know enough about breeding whales to speak to this issue specifically, but I do know that there are probably a lot of creatures on this planet that thrive only because of economic motivation.
But really, in the end, why does it matter how many whales were hunted in the 18th century ...
It matters because international treaties were signed that banned whale hunting until whale populations returned to 54% of what they were before mass whaling in the 18th century.
So if this study is correct (and there are severe doubts on its accuracy) then no whaling will be allowed for at least another 50 - 100 years.
If this study is wrong and the current numbers based on the number of whales recorded as killed by whalers is correct then some whales like the humpback may be allowed to be hunted in less than 5 years.
The biggest reason this study's results are called into question is that it uses a new method with unknown accuracy to contradict by an order of magnitude the numbers that can be arrived at by the amount of whale oil sold. the amount of whale oil sold is considered to be a very reliable number.
previously, the population was estimated by using the logbooks from the whalers. these results were generally in line with the amount of whale oil sold.
Nature Science Update has a critical take: http://www.nature.com/nsu/030721/030721-14.html
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.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!