Viewpoint

In an open letter published lastyear in the New York Times 21 dis-

tinguished scientists (including threeNobel laureates) criticized Japanrsquos pro-gram of scientific research whalingnoting its poor design and unjustifiedreliance upon lethal sampling In a re-cent Forum article in BioScience AronBurke and Freeman (2002) castigatethe letterrsquos signers and accuse them ofmeddling in political issues withoutsufficient knowledge of the science in-volved in those issues

As members of the Scientific Com-mittee (SC) of the International Whal-ing Commission (IWC) we can attestthat the signers of the open letter cor-rectly summarized criticisms made byresearchers very familiar with Japanesescientific whaling One such critique(Clapham et al 2002) was presentedand discussed last year at a meeting ofthe SC It was authored by SC membersrepresenting a broad range of countriesyet mention of this paper and otherslike it was absent from Aron and hiscolleaguesrsquo commentary betraying a se-lectiveness that pervades their articleThe authors quote lines from SC re-ports to support their contention thatthe IWC regards scientific whaling asvaluable but they fail to acknowledgemany other sections that are highly crit-ical of the Japanese program (IWC1998 2001 2003)

Japanrsquos scientific whaling program inthe North Pacific (JARPN) was origi-nally described as a feasibility study butit included no performance measuresby which to judge its success or failureTo no onersquos surprise it was judged ldquosuc-

cessfulrdquo by Japan and the full program(JARPN II) began in 2002 JARPN II in-volves annual catches of 150 minkewhales 50 Brydersquos whales 10 spermwhales and 50 sei whales It is describedas a ldquolong-term research programme ofundetermined durationrdquo and gives as itsprimary objective studies of ldquofeedingecologyrdquo and secondarily investiga-tions of ldquoenvironmental pollutantsand stock structurerdquo (Government ofJapan 2002)

Regarding the primary objective wenote that while the IWC has developeda revised management procedure(RMP) for future management of com-mercial whaling it is not ecosystembased IWC does not employ ecosystem-based management consequently noneof the information derived from thefeeding ecology study is relevant to themanner in which IWC assesses andmanages whale populations

Other fundamental problems of theJARPN II study include a lack oftestable hypotheses or performancemeasures inappropriate use of ecosys-tem models and failure to include sensi-tivity analyses and key data on other

ecosystem components selective or in-appropriate use of data or methods inestimating whale abundance unneces-sary reliance on lethal sampling inap-propriate geographic sampling for pop-ulation structure analysis andunrealistic assessments of the effect ofthe proposed catches on the popula-tions concerned (some of which may bedepleted and for which no adequate assessment of current status has beenundertaken) For full details seeClapham and colleagues (2002) avail-able at wwwnefscnoaagovpsbpubsjarpn2pdf

Overall JARPN II presumes on analmost a priori basis that whales (nothumans) are primarily responsible forworldwide declines in fish stocks andignores the immense complexities in-herent in marine ecosystems In short itis difficult to escape the conclusion thatJARPN II exists to ldquodemonstraterdquomdashalldata to the contrary notwithstandingmdashthat whales eat too much fish andtherefore should be culled by morewhaling Significantly when the IWCheld a workshop last year to discussmodeling approaches to this issue theGovernment of Japan refused to sendany of its scientists

This obstructiveness is not uncom-mon Japan has also refusedmdashcontraryto common practice in other interna-tional management contextsmdashto allowindependent analysis of its raw dataDespite repeated formal requestsobtaining anything more than datasummaries which are unsuitable foranalysis has to date been impossibleFurthermore Japan has refused to

Whaling as Science

PHILLIP J CLAPHAM PER BERGGREN SIMON CHILDERHOUSE NANCY A FRIDAY TOSHIO KASUYALAURENCE KELL KARL-HERMANN KOCK SILVIA MANZANILLA-NAIM GIUSEPPE NOTABARTOLO DI SCIARAWILLIAM F PERRIN ANDREW J READ RANDALL R REEVES EMER ROGAN LORENZO ROJAS-BRACHOTIM D SMITH MICHAEL STACHOWITSCH BARBARA L TAYLOR DEBORAH THIELE PAUL R WADE ANDROBERT L BROWNELL JR

JARPN II exists to ldquodemonstraterdquomdash

all data to the contrary

notwithstandingmdashthat whales eat too

much fish and therefore should be

culled by more whaling

210 BioScience March 2003 Vol 53 No 3

participate in an IWC working group established to investigate illegal Japan-ese whaling catches that are known tohave occurred in the North Pacific asrecently as 1987 (ie after the IWCpassed a moratorium on whaling)

The Japanese program in the Antarc-tic (JARPA) has similar problemsJARPA has been conducted for 16 yearsand has to date killed over 5900 minkewhales Yet as was noted in last yearrsquos SCdiscussions the value of JARPArsquos workto management is certainly not appar-ent in its publication record which isremarkably poor for a scientific efforton this scale Aron and colleaguesrsquopointing to ldquoover 150 articlesrdquo resultingfrom JARPA is highly misleadingThe list to which they refer readers (see wwwwhalesciorgcontribution) in-cludes only a single paper (Kishino etal 1991) that concerns IWC assessmentneeds and that is published in an inter-national peer-reviewed journal 19 sim-ilar papers were published by IWC Theremaining 137 ldquopublicationsrdquo consist ofcruise or progress reports (7) unpub-

lished IWC papers (58) SC meeting re-ports (14) Japanese theses (6) confer-ence presentations (40 many of whichrepeat the same unrefereed and irrele-vant results in multiple forums) andpeer-reviewed articles (12) on topics ofno value to management (eg ldquopost-thawing viability of frozen spermatozoaof male minke whalesrdquo) JARPArsquos failureto publish in international refereedjournals says much about the qualityand motives of its science

The unnecessary reliance on lethalsampling is a major issue in this debateThe point is not that lethal sampling

cannot contribute anything to knowl-edge of whale populations or even thatthere are no data which cannot be ob-tained by other means one can alwaysfind scientific value in carcasses Ratherthe issue is that lethal methods are notrequired to obtain information neededfor population assessment Today so lit-tle of any significance to IWC manage-ment can be obtained only from whal-ing catches that it is impossible tojustify killing animals on this basis par-ticularly given the many thousands ofwhaling catch samples already analyzedor archived Moreover nonlethal tech-niques often provide better data at lesscost to both budget and animals Forexample population structure is mostreliably studied with genetic analysiswhich is routinely conducted using tis-sue from skin biopsies (Palsboslashll et al1997) lethal sampling is not requiredfor this work Furthermore becausebiopsies can be taken and processedquickly (unlike catches) a biopsy pro-gram would substantially increase sam-ple size and analytical power Aron and

Viewpoint

Today so little of any significance to

IWC management can be obtained

only from whaling catches that it is

impossible to justify killing animals on

this basis particularly given the many

thousands of whaling catch samples

already analyzed or archived

March 2003 Vol 53 No 3 BioScience 211

212 BioScience March 2003 Vol 53 No 3

Viewpoint

colleaguesrsquo claim that logistical difficul-ties preclude such sampling is baselessif a whale can be hit with a harpoon thesame target can just as easily be struckwith a biopsy dart

The provision in the InternationalConvention for the Regulation ofWhaling that allows member countriesto kill whales for research was formu-lated at a time (the 1940s) when few viable alternatives to lethal samplingexisted Catches under scientific permitprovided a means to obtain limitedsample sizes that might be used to ad-dress specific management issues Incontrast JARPA and JARPN II appearto be long-term open-ended whalingprograms that keep an industry operat-ing (note also that Japanrsquos Institute ofCetacean Research is primarily fundedby sales of whale products from scien-tific catches)

A key point here is that the scientificwhaling provision does not specify amethod for calculating sample sizesnor does it impose any upper limit oncatches As was noted by Clapham andcolleagues (2002) it is unlikely thatJapan would be authorized to kill thenumber of whales currently being takenif these ldquoresearchrdquo catches were calcu-lated under the RMP (the acceptedIWC method for specifying catch quo-tas) With scientific whaling Japan hasthe best of both worlds While waitingfor the IWC to implement a scheme al-lowing commercial whaling to resumeJapan can continue to kill whales and itcan do so at levels that would not bepermitted using IWC methods

In his editorial Timothy Beardsleyparaphrases Aron and colleaguesrsquo ad-monitions and suggests that scientistsshould ldquotake extraordinary care to ac-knowledge differences of opinion onsciencerdquo It is worth asking just how badscience has to be before its qualityceases to be a matter of opinion by anyreasonable standard of independentjudgment Many SC members havecontended that Japanrsquos scientific whal-ing program is so poor that it wouldnot survive review by any major inde-pendent funding agency (eg the Euro-pean Commission) We repeat here aprevious challenge to the Government

of Japan to submit its research whalingproposals to such third-party reviewin whichmdashunlike at the IWC ScientificCommitteemdasha proposalrsquos authors donot play a major role in the writing ofthe resulting evaluation

Beardsleyrsquos editorial notes that re-searchers ldquoare right to speak out if theybelieve commercial activities are beingmisrepresented as sciencerdquo In our viewthere has rarely been a more egregiousexample of this misrepresentation thanJapanrsquos scientific whaling program andthe article by Aron and colleagues thatseeks to defend it

The authors are all members of the International

Whaling Commissionrsquos Scientific Committee

Phillip J Clapham Northeast Fisheries Science

Center 166 Water Street Woods Hole MA 02543

USA Per Berggren Department of Zoology

Stockholm University S-106 91 Stockholm

Sweden Simon Childerhouse Science and

Research Unit Department of Conservation PO

Box 10-420 Wellington New Zealand Nancy A

Friday National Marine Mammal Laboratory

7600 Sand Point Way NE Seattle WA 98115

USA Toshio Kasuya Teikyo University of Science

and Technology Uenohara Yamanashi 409-0193

Japan Laurence Kell CEFAS Lowestoft

Laboratory Pakefield Road Lowestoft NR33 HT

United Kingdom Karl-Hermann Kock Federal

Research Centre for Fisheries Institute of Sea

Fisheries Hamburg Germany Silvia Manzanilla-

Naim SEMARNAT Blvd Adolfo Ruiz Cortiacutenes

4209 Jatdine4s en la Montantildea Tlalpan Cp

14210 Meacutexico Giuseppe Notabartolo di Sciara

Istituto Centrale per la Ricerca Applicata al Mare

Via di Casalotti 300 00166 Rome Italy William

F Perrin Southwest Fisheries Science Center

8604 La Jolla Shores Drive La Jolla CA 92037

USA Andrew J Read Duke University Marine

Laboratory 135 Duke Marine Lab Road

Beaufort NC 28516 USA Randall R Reeves 27

Chandler Lane Hudson Quebec J0P 1H0

Canada Emer Rogan Department of Zoology

and Animal Ecology University College Cork

Ireland Lorenzo Rojas-Bracho Instituto Nacional

de Ecologiacutea co CICESE Apto Postal 2732

Ensenada Baja California 22860 Meacutexico Tim D

Smith Northeast Fisheries Science Center 166

Water Street Woods Hole MA 02543 USA

Michael Stachowitsch Institute of Ecology and

Conservation Biology Department of Marine

Biology University of Vienna Althanstrasse 14

Vienna A-1090 Austria Barbara L Taylor

Southwest Fisheries Science Center 8604 La Jolla

Shores Drive La Jolla CA 92037 USA Deborah

Thiele School of Ecology and Environment

Deakin University PO Box 423 Warrnambool

Victoria 3280 Australia Paul R Wade National

Marine Mammal Laboratory 7600 Sand Point

Way NE Seattle WA 98115 USA and Robert L

Brownell Jr Southwest Fisheries Science Center

1352 Lighthouse Avenue Pacific Grove

CA 93950 USA

References citedAron W Burke W Freeman M 2002 Scientists

versus whaling Science advocacy and errors

of judgment BioScience 52 1137ndash1140

Clapham PJ et al 2002 The JARPN II program

A critique Paper SC54O26 presented to the

IWC Scientific Committee Available from

IWC The Red House 135 Station Road Imp-

ington Cambridge CB4 9NP United King-

dom and from wwwnefscnoaagovpsbpubs

jarpn2pdf

Government of Japan 2002 Research plan for

cetacean studies in the western North Pacific

under special permit (JARPN II) Paper

SC54O2 presented to the IWC Scientific

Committee Available from IWC The Red

House 135 Station Road Impington Cam-

bridge CB4 9NP United Kingdom

[IWC] International Whaling Commission 1998

Report of the intersessional working group to

review data and results from special permit

research on minke whales in the Antarctic

12ndash16 May 1997 Tokyo Reports of the Inter-

national Whaling Commission 48 377ndash412

mdashmdashmdash 2001 Report of the workshop to review

the Japanese whale research programme

under special permit for North Pacific minke

whales (JARPN) Journal of Cetacean

Research and Management 3 (suppl) 375ndash

413

mdashmdashmdash 2003 Report of the scientific committee

Journal of Cetacean Research and Manage-

ment 5 (suppl) Forthcoming

Kishino H Kato H Kasamatsu F Fujise Y 1991

Detection of heterogeneity and estimation of

population characteristics from the field sur-

vey data 198788 Japanese feasibility study of

the Southern Hemisphere minke whales

Annals of the Institute of Statistical Mathe-

matics 43 435ndash453

Palsboslashll PJ et al 1997 Genetic tagging of hump-

back whales Nature 388 767ndash769