Minke whale extinction fear of Project Jonah

Press, 29 January 1986, Page 26

Minke whale extinction fear of Project Jonah

PA Wellington Project Jonah, the organisation concerned with protection of marine mammals, says minke whale being surveyed in the Ross Sea face extinction. The organisation objected to the International Whaling Commission scientific expedition which is making the survey from converted whaling boats. It said the trip was funded largely by the Japanese whaling and fishing industry. The expedition’s leader, an American scientist, Mr Jerry Joyce, has denied that information from the survey will be used by the Japanese to help with their minke whale hunting.

He also says the number of minke whales

being hunted has declined.

A Project Jonah spokesman in Wellington, Mr Bill Wieban, said yesterday the organisation had evidence that the minke whale would become extinct if the Japanese continued to hunt them.

He has previously asked that an I.W.C. scientific expedition not be associated with Japanese funding. Japan should not stay in the I.W.C. if it continued whaling this year, he said. A world moratorium on commercial whale hunting began at the end of last year. Seven of the 10 main whaling countries have agreed to it Japan, Norway and the Soviet Union have refused. ■ Mr Wieban said the Japanese began hunting

the smaller minke whale after larger more profitable whales became scarce. Between 3000 and 7000 minke whales had been killed each year by the Japanese since 1979. An optimistic figure for the minke whale put the total population at 300,000. Taking the lowest annual minke kill and adding it over the years showed it could not breed fast enough to cope with being hunted, he said. It was hard to resist the Japanese. They funded expeditions such as the one to the Ross Sea to placate the I.W.C. and to make Japan seem like -a responsible country, Mr Wieban said. * The expedition is due back in Wellington later next month.