Skip to content
All articles
  • All articles
  • About whales & dolphins
  • Create healthy seas
  • End captivity
  • Green Whale
  • Prevent deaths in nets
  • Scottish Dolphin Centre
  • Stop whaling
Dolphins captured for captivity in Taiji. Image: Hans Peter Roth

Loved and killed – whales and dolphins in Japan

Protests and criticism from outside Japan in response to the slaughter of whales and dolphins...
Irrawaddy dolphin

Helping fishers protect dolphins in Sarawak, Borneo

Fishing nets are bad news for dolphins and porpoises, so we're working with local fishers...
Dolphin watching from Chanonry Point, Scotland. Image: WDC/Charlie Phillips

Discovering inner peace – whale and dolphin watching and mental wellbeing

Guest blog If you've ever seen whales or dolphins in the wild, you'll know that...
Whale tail

An ocean of hope

In a monumental, jaw-dropping demonstration of global community, the nations of the world made history...
The infamous killing cove at Taiji, Japan

Why the Taiji dolphin hunt can never be justified

Supporters of the dolphin slaughter in Japan argue that killing a few hundred dolphins every...
Image: Peter Linforth

Tracking whales from space will help us save them

Satellite technology holds one of the keys to 21st century whale conservation, so we're exploring...
Fishers' involvement is crucial. Image: WDC/JTF

When porpoises and people overlap

We're funding a project in Hong Kong that's working with fishing communities to help save...

Mindful conservation – why we need a new respect for nature

'We should look at whales and dolphins as the indigenous people of the seas -...
All policy news
  • All policy news
  • Create healthy seas
  • End captivity
  • Prevent deaths in nets
  • Stop whaling
  • Strandings
Port River dolphins

New report reveals 100,000 dolphins and small whales hunted every year

When you hear the words ‘dolphin hunts’ it’s likely that you think of Japan or...

Minke whale hunts stop in Iceland

Iceland’s commercial hunt of minke whales has ended for this year. The common minke whale is the...

Australian Government to block Japanese whaling proposal

Japanese Government officials have reportedly confirmed that they will propose the resumption of commercial whaling...

Did Icelandic whalers really kill a blue whale?

*Warning - this blog contains an image that you may find upsetting* They say a...

Icelandic whalers breach international law and kill iconic, protected whale by mistake

Icelandic whalers out hunting fin whales for the first time in three years appear to...

Pregnant whales once again a target for Japanese whalers

Figures from Japan's whaling expedition to Antarctica during the 2017/18 austral summer have revealed that...

Doubts remain after Icelandic Marine Institute claims slaughtered whale was a hybrid not a blue

Experts remain sceptical of initial test results issued by the Icelandic Marine Institute, which indicate...

Japan set to resume commercial whaling

Reports from Japan suggest that the government they will formally propose plans to resume commercial...

End the whale hunts! Icelandic fin whaler isolated as public mood shifts

Here’s a sight I hoped never again to witness. A boat being scrubbed and repainted...

Norway increases whaling quota despite declining demand

Norway's government has announced an increase in the number of minke whales that can be...

Norway's whaling season begins

April 1st saw the start of the whaling season in Norway. Despite a widely-accepted international moratorium...

SOS alert for whales off Norway!

I have to admit to bitter disappointment when I arrived in Tromsø, northern Norway, a...

Whales could help save Arctic Seed Vault

Recently, Norway announced that the entrance to the Global Seed Vault in the Arctic was flooded after very high temperatures caused the permafrost to melt. 

The vault, a storage facility deep inside a mountain on the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, is designed to preserve the world’s crops from future disasters. The store holds seeds from c.5,000 crop species from around the world. Dried and frozen, it is believed they can be preserved for hundreds of years.

To help reduce the risk of this happening again, Norway has plans to protect the seed vault from further impacts of climate change, including waterproof walls, and drainage ditches. Whilst these measures are needed to protect the vault from further flooding, they don’t help to tackle the cause of the flooding: climate change.

The Norwegian government could take a significant step to mitigate climate change – and therefore protect the seed vault – by stopping whaling. It sounds strange, I know, but scientific studies are showing how important whales are in combatting climate change.

The contribution made by trees in removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and producing oxygen is widely recognised; however, less well known is the fact that our oceans are by far the largest carbon sink, absorbing 25% of carbon dioxide.

In the ocean, the ‘plants’ that remove carbon dioxide and produce oxygen are microscopic phytoplankton producing at least half of the world’s oxygen. Just as in land-based plants, they need carbon dioxide, sunlight and nutrients. This is where the whales come in!

Phytoplankton live in the sunlit surface waters, which provides them with an essential light source (the sun), but nutrients in the ocean don’t remain free-floating, instead, they sink back to the sea floor where they can’t be recycled back into the water column. Whales feed at depth and return to the surface to breathe, which is also where they defecate. Through this ‘whale pump’, the whales release huge amounts of nutrients at the surface of the water. 

Whale poo is rich in nutrients, including iron and nitrogen, that phytoplankton need to survive. Because whales migrate across oceans, travelling thousands of miles to feed and give birth, they create a mass transit system for nutrients across oceans.

Researchers estimate that as a direct result of whale hunting, large whales now store approximately nine million tons less carbon than before large-scale whaling.

Norway has increased its  quota for minke whales this year, allowing 999 whales to be killed during  the 2017 season. However, as the majority of the minke whales killed by Norwegian whaling vessels are females, many of which are pregnant, the whalers endanger the next generation of whales.

If Norwegian whalers  were to stop their whaling programme, they would be helping to make a significant contribution to mitigating climate change, as well as protecting whales and dolphins.