According to three new reports presented by Humane Society International WWF and Lenfest Ocean Programme fish decline is not caused by the ‘whales-eat-fish’ emanating from Japan, Norway and Iceland. Fisheries biologist Daniel Pauly, director of the University of British Columbia Fisheries Centre said that it is not the whales, it is over-fishing and excess fishing capacity that are responsible for diminishing supplies of fish in developing countries. He also added that making whales into scapegoats serves only to benefit wealthy whaling nations while harming developing nations by distracting any debate on the real causes of the declines of their fisheries.
The report revealed that the widely different impacts of fisheries and marine mammals” with fisheries targeting larger fish where available and marine mammals consuming mainly smaller fish and organisms. It also says with less than half the catch going to domestic markets and the majority “gravitating toward the markets of affluent developed countries, one can speak of fish migrating from the more needy to the less needy.
As per the report the whales spend only a few months in the area during their vast seasonal migrations, eat relatively little while breeding and tend to consume fundamentally different types of food resources than the marine species targeted by both local and foreign fisheries. Susan Lieberman of WWF said the report is concrete evidence that whales are not responsible for the degraded state of the world’s fisheries.
