さあ！諸君！捕鯨問題だ！

http://www.iwcoffice.org/_documents/sci_com/SCRepFiles2005/AnnexOsq.pdf


1. Objectives:

a. Under the RMP, the management procedure currently accepted by the IWC, most of the data requested in the JARPA II proposal are not required.


b. The objectives in the proposal are based on several unsubstantiated or incorrect assumptions:

i. That whales are directly competing with each other. Whilst overlap of prey (Antarctic krill) is well established for most of the Antarctic baleen whales, there are no accepted models to indicate any level of competition between whales, nor, indeed, that krill production is controlled by top-down influences.

ii. That the reduction of one species (minke whales) will result in an increase of another species (blue whales). Current evidence refutes this.

iii. That minke whales are top predators. While minke whales are a high predator, they are a component of a wide clade of predators at the same level which include whales, seals, birds and fish.

iv. That blue whale low abundance and recovery is due to minke and humpback whale populations. This hypothesis fails to include the other major biomass krill predator species such as seals and sea birds.


c. The proposal is open ended and has no time limit by which it can be assessed.


d. CCAMLR expertise is necessary to evaluate ecosystem interactions such as competition assumptions.


e. Even if the IWC decided to move to a multi-species management procedure, the proposal does not have well- defined hypotheses and performance criteria.