What's the catch? Validity of whaling data for Japanese catches of sperm whales in the North Pacific.

ABSTRACT: The failure of international efforts to manage commercial whaling was exemplified by revelations of large-scale illegal whale catches by the USSR over a 30 year period following World War II. Falsifications of catch data have also been reported for Japanese coastal whaling, but to date there has been no investigation of the reliability of catch statistics for Japanese pelagic (factory fleet) whaling operations. Here, we use data of known reliability from Soviet whaling industry reports to show that body lengths reported to the International Whaling Commission (IWC) by Japanese factory fleets for female sperm whales caught in the North Pacific are not credible. In 1968/1969, Japanese whaling fleets in the North Pacific killed 1568 females, of which 1525 (97.3%) were reported as being at or

SUBMITTER: Ivashchenko YV 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4632589 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature