Whales lose blubber due to climate change
Jessica Salter
Whales are losing weight because of climate change, according to Japanese scientist.
The team for the Institute of Cetacean Research in Tokyo measured the bodies of more than 4,500 Minkes that had been killed since the late 1980s when Japan started its controversial whaling programme.
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They found that the whales are getting thinner at an alarming rate and evidence suggests global warming could be to blame because it restricts food supplies.
Lars Walloe, a Norwegian whale expert at the University of Oslo, who helped with the study, said: "This is a big change in blubber and if it continues it could make it more difficult for the whales to survive. It indicates there have been some big changes in their ecosystem."
Whales need blubber for insulation and energy and the reduction could be affecting their ability to reproduce. Professor Walloe said that he did not think that they could measure the amount of blubber on a whale by any other way than by killing them.
The study has been published in Polar Biology, a mainstream, western scientific journal, which campaigners worry could lead to a validation of Japan’s whale hunting programme.
The findings were rejected by two journals because of the unpopularity of the whaling programme among scientists.
Professor Walloe said the journals rejected the study for political, rather than scientific reasons.
However, Mark Simmonds, director of science at the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, said: "Scientific whaling is not about science, and there is no pressing conservation need that requires it."
www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml