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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 -...
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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...

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...

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...

Icelandic fin whale hunting to resume

Iceland’s only fin whaling company, Hvalur hf,  announced today that it will resume fin whaling...

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...

Urgent step change needed to stop dolphins suffering in fishing nets

Does sustainably caught fish mean no harm has come to dolphins? The quick answer to that question is ‘no’. If you buy fish with a ‘sustainably caught’ or ‘dolphin safe’ eco-label, unless caught with a pole and line, you have no way of knowing whether dolphins, porpoises or whales suffered and died in the process of catching it.

When dolphins, porpoises and whales are accidentally caught in fishing nets and gear (known as ‘bycatch’), they can endure a slow and traumatic death. When fish from certain fisheries is labelled as ‘sustainable’ this suffering is not taken into account. There are huge welfare concerns associated with marine mammals getting caught in fishing gear and for that reason, there should be zero tolerance on whale and dolphin bycatch. We cannot say that any number of dolphins, porpoises or whales dying this way is acceptable. 

I’ve been examining this issue with my WDC colleague, Philippa Brakes, in a review which is published in Frontiers in Veterinary Science.

Yangtze River dolphins (baiji) have been declared ‘functionally extinct’. Mexican vaquitas, North Atlantic right whales, New Zealand Māui dolphins and Baltic and Iberian porpoises, are all endangered and headed for extinction, either wholly or largely because of fishing. They are the unwanted waste of the fishing industry. 

We imagine that these air-breathing mammals drown, but worse, the post-mortem evidence suggests that when trapped in a net, unable to get to the surface to breathe, they asphyxiate, voluntarily holding their breath until they suffocate.

These species on the brink are the poster children of the dolphin bycatch issue. It’s only a matter of time before inadequately managed fishing pushes another species to the same fate as the baiji, but it’s blinkered to see this as just a numbers game. Even if fishing wasn’t pushing entire species to extinction, the situation would still be unacceptable because of the large-scale suffering involved. The sustainability of some fisheries is only part of the story.

There are many, many thousands of bycaught dolphins who go unnoticed and unreported, despite the injuries suffered, the broken bones and fins, broken teeth, abrasions, cuts, bruising, and internal injuries, and the potential for panic associated with forced submersion. A dead mother with a dependant calf will likely mean the baby, if not also bycaught, will starve to death. A large whale trapped in fishing rope could die slowly, a prolonged death that can last weeks or months, due to reduced mobility and ability to feed, the line slowly severing her flesh and limbs.

Whales and dolphins are intelligent, self-aware and social and often live in family groups. Bycatch can have wide-reaching impacts across these social units and suffering cannot plausibly be reduced without preventing bycatch.

Commercial fishing is the last human activity targeting wildlife on a grand scale where death includes accidental killing of other species on such a regular basis. It is hard to envision a similar situation on land where the regular and inevitable incidental capture of large mammals would be tolerated for the commercial killing of other species. Fishing is unlike any other commercial activity when it comes to the suffering of large mammals but because it is under the sea, somehow it is easier to ignore and delay action.

How have we failed marine wildlife so badly that we continue to fish without adequate measures to protect dolphins, whales and porpoises?  We need a step change in our fisheries.  And it has to start with transparency in the fleet.

Governments, ‘eco-labels’ and the fishing industry have been complacent about bycatch for too long. We are close to wiping out one population after another because laws and consumer labelling are inadequate. But just as importantly, hundreds of thousands of dolphins from non-endangered populations are also dying horrible, painful deaths so that we can have fish on our plates. Laws and government regulations focus on maintaining populations, rather than considering the welfare of individuals, but clearly we are even failing at that. No fisherman wants to catch a dolphin and when we consider the welfare impacts, there is no doubt that we all need to do more, much more, to safeguard individuals. This can only happen when there is a level playing field for fishers, with much stricter regulation.

The only real way to tackle this worldwide problem is for robust and transparent, independent management systems to be installed on fishing vessels. We need to better document bycatch by monitoring it across all fleets and most importantly, we need to work toward eliminating dolphin, porpoise and whale bycatch altogether. 

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