Bycatch Kills Three Times As Many Whales And Dolphins As Hunting Does

 

     The movement to save the whales was and is one of the most effective in conservation history. Perú, Chile, Australia, Spain, and South Africa, now among the most vocal defenders of whales, hunted them as recently as the late 1970s and early 1980s. More than 3 million whales were killed in the 20th century; even if the current rate held steady for the rest of the century, 150,000 would be killed in the 21st century, meaning that 95 percent of the industry has disappeared since 1970. 

     Japan once slaughtered nearly 1,500 whales a year: their quota is now only 383. Norway is now the largest killer of whales each year: although they have a quota for nearly 1,300, they take less than half of that number each year. Their fleet of 60 ships now numbers less than a dozen. Iceland last hunted whales in 2018, and the COVID-19 pandemic is likely to strike the final blow for an industry owned by only one old man facing investigation for corrupt business practices. Whaling has entirely ended in the Southern Hemisphere, where the brunt of whaling took place. It now exists in only the territorial waters of Japan, Norway, Iceland, and Denmark, kept alive by countless tens of millions of dollars in subsidies.

     In terms of dolphin hunting, a landmark WDC report in 2018 revealed that 100,000 were being killed every year by hunting. There's a catch, though. The largest slaughters are in places like Perú and Brazil, where dolphins are being killed for bait in catching prized sharks or by impoverished local fishermen put out of work by industrial fishing. Even the Taiji dolphin hunters are off-season fishermen who see dolphins as competition better off dead or fetching a huge profit to lock up in aquariums.

     That's not even the worst of it. It is estimated that 300,000 whales and dolphins are killed as bycatch by commercial fishing every year. This alone would be three times as many killed by direct hunting, but this estimate is likely too conservative. In France's Bay of Biscay, 10,000 dolphins are killed by French fishing trawlers every year, more than all the dolphin drive hunts in the world (the Faroe Islands, Taiji, and the Solomon Islands). In Mexico, China, and Germany, the Baltic Sea harbor porpoise, the vaquita porpoise, the baiji, and other species of cetaceans are being driven or have been suspected to be extinct because of fishing nets.

     If we want to save whales and dolphins from death and enslavement, we have to systematically target and destroy the fishing industry.