science

At this year’s meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC), Japan and Norway were able to block proposed new bans on “research” whaling in the South Pacific and the waters around Antarctica, and came just a few votes short of a limited resumption of commercial whaling. Much to the dismay of Panama’s environmentalists, the Moscoso administration voted with the Japanese. It’s not that we have or ever had a whaling industry, but this country does get a lot of foreign aid from Japan.

In the IWC the argument is not about these magnificent and smart mammals who ought to be saved for tourists to gawk at rather than to be harvested for meat and cosmetics. It’s about maintaining a threatened natural resource, and since 1985 the commission’s stated goal has been to restore whale populations to 54 percent of what they were before commercial whaling began in the 1600s before the whale hunt can begin again. Based on the traditionally accepted figures, the world population of minke whales, which the Japanese and Norwegians want to hunt, is now at or close to the previously agreed threshhold.

Now, however, a Stanford biologist and a Harvard graduate student in the field of genetics have released the results of a study of mitochondrial DNA in North Atlantic whales that casts serious doubt on the traditional estimates of how many whales there once were. Mitochondrial DNA is passed on through mothers and has a lower rate of mutations than nuclear DNA, which is inherited through both parents. Because this is so, it becomes possible to test a current population and estimate how many female ancestors it had at a given time based on the number of genetic differences now found. If you know the ratio of males to females in a given species, it becomes a matter of simple arithmetic to expand the estimate of the female population to get a figure for the entire species.

Stanford professor Stephen R. Palumbi and Harvard student Joe Roman analyzed tissue samples from humpback, fin and minke whales in the North Atlantic, and recently published their findings in the prestigious Science magazine. They estimate that before commercial whaling began, there were 240,000 humpback whales, as compared to 10,000 now. The traditional pre-whaling population estimate, based on current whale censuses and records of how many were caught by whalers, is that there were only 20,000 humpbacks before the hunt began. Similarly, the scientists estimate that there were 360,000, as compared with the traditional estimate of 40,000, and 265,000 minke whales, as compared to the previous estimate of 100,000.

The differences between the traditional and genetic population estimates are so vast that any serious argument would be about the basics of mitochondrial DNA population estimates rather than these particular researchers’ methods. But look for such arguments to take place, because there is too much at stake for those whose political agenda would be set back not to hire experts of their own.

If experience is any guide, a few scientists will ruin their professional reputations with fraudulent studies designed to support one or the other side of the political argument, the findings of Palumbi and Roman will be subjected to minute examination and heavy questioning by their peers, new studies will be undertaken, new discoveries will be made and the science of mitochondrial DNA sequencing will advance on the back of the whaling debate. The political showdown over whaling is likely to be influenced but not ruled by the scientific discourse.

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