Communities urged to ‘adopt’ a whale; warning on ’scientific’ whaling
Communities along the east coast of Australia, including Ballina, Evans Head and Lennox Head, have been ‘adopting’ humpback whales identified by Southern Cross University researchers, as part of a campaign to raise awareness of the threats facing the whale population, SCU said today.
Trish and Wally Franklin, who run The Oceania Project in Hervey Bay and are PhD students with the Southern Cross University Whale Research Centre, have linked with the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) and Surfers for Cetaceans to run the Humpback Whale Migration Icon Project.
The project forms part of the National Day of Action to Protect Whales, on Saturday, May 12, which is designed to raise awareness of the threats posed by ‘scientific’ whaling.
Wally Franklin said the Humpback Whale Migration Icon Project was a way for communities to celebrate the annual humpback whale migration.
He said councils and communities along the eastern seaboard were being encouraged to ‘adopt’ a known named whale, identified by Trish Franklin, as their local whale.
Since 1989 Trish has built a database of nearly 3000 photographs of individual whales, identified through unique markings on the whales’ flukes. Photos of these individual whales have been sent to communities from Hervey Bay, in Queensland, south to Wyong.
Byron Bay has adopted a whale, which has been named ‘Yumbalehla’ by the Arakwal Elders, meaning ‘always keeps moving’.
“This project provides councils and their communities the opportunity to work together to demonstrate how valuable these whales are and to acknowledge the ever-growing need to protect them,” Mr Franklin said.
“The humpback population that migrates along the east coast of Australia is growing at a rate of around 10 per cent a year and this year we anticipate seeing around 9000 whales.
“But recent work shows that the pre-whaling population was in the order of 30,000 to 40,000. Although the eastern Australian humpback whale population is starting to increase again, they need to be left to recover.”
Mr Franklin said one of the issues with ‘scientific’ whaling was that there was no way of knowing which area the targeted whales came from.
“Taking whales from some of the smaller Pacific populations could be devastating,” he said.
“One of the whales that have been adopted by communities along Australia’s east coast has been photographed in Antarctica by the Japanese whaling expeditions.”
Associate Professor Peter Harrison, director of the Southern Cross University Whale Research Centre, said that the ‘adopt a whale’ project was ‘a great initiative to highlight the importance of Australia’s humpback whales for Australians, and the imminent threat of Japanese whaling’.
He said the Japanese whaling program was due to start killing Australian humpback whales in Australian territorial waters in about six months.
“The whaling program will not provide any useful or credible scientific information,” Professor Harrison said.
“These humpback whales are born and bred in the Great Barrier Reef region and are therefore Australian whales that migrate into the Southern Ocean for feeding where they will be targeted by Japanese whalers.
“The National Day of Action in support of protecting our humpback whales will hopefully raise awareness of the problem and prevent our humpback whales from being killed.”
May 9th, 2007 at 4:29 pm
For those of you new to Ballina, or if you’re visiting, the best spots to view whales as they head north are the carpark at Lighthouse headland, North Wall or Black Head.
The carpark offers a better view than North Wall because of its elevation.
Black Head also offers great viewing because of its elevation, but it’s a bit of a hike up a bush track. However, the view is well worth the walk.
Further north at Lennox Head, Pat Morton Lookout at the headland also offers an elevated view.
May 10th, 2007 at 3:51 pm
Hi Barry,
I am wondering why it is that the federal government has failed to attempt to compromise with the Japanese over their whaling activity.
At least, the whales in Japan’s coastal waters are of no interest to Australians. Why does the Australian government not seek to compromise with the Japanese, for example by offering to support Japanese moves for hunting in the North Pacific if the Japanese give an assurance that they will give up their hopes of exploiting southern hemisphere humpbacks?
If it seems like a good idea, someone may like to contact Malcolm Turnbull about it.
May 11th, 2007 at 11:05 am
David, you seem to have misunderstood the sentiment of those Australians opposed to commercial whaling.
I think you’ll find that with most Australians, it’s not a matter of saving ‘our’ whales and not worrying about ‘their’ whales — it’s a matter of not wanting to see them become extinct. So you could assume that the majority of Australians opposed to whaling in Australian waters would also oppose whales being killed in foreign waters.
May 11th, 2007 at 12:48 pm
Barry,
Perhaps that majority of Australians then is unaware that the idea behind whaling is not to drive whales to extinction, but to harvest a certain number of them at such a rate that the long term conservation of the whale population being targeted is assured, while at the same time providing a source of animal protein for human consumption. Much in the same way as Australian fishermen target fish, and then export these product to overseas markets.
If more Australians were aware of the wonderful recovery of the humpback whales around Australia (a rate which even Australian scientists have estimated to be an annual 10%), more Australians would probably also feel comfortable with the general notion that killing some small number of whales (much less than the annual 10% increase that they appear to be capable of - say just 1%) would be unlikely to drive them to extinction.
Recently Australian argumentation at the political level has increasingly been referring to “our whales”, so I had the impression that the debate had moved past the one about extinction risk, and on to one of who has the right to benefit from their exploitation. It’s understandable that, if a whale population were only at say 80% of it’s natural limit (due to sustained hunting), whale watching operators may be at a disadvantage compared to if the population was at 100% of it’s natural limit.
I thought Australia might like to look at this argument in their negotiations with the Japanese over the southern hemisphere humpback populations that they are planning to hunt from next summer. After all, in Japan there are both whale watching and whale hunting operations. While Australia may today wish to pursue only one of these activities, it seems unfair to try to impose those values on people on the other side of the world.