TROUBLED WATERS - Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society

Table 1. The criteria applied by gunners to judge
the death of whales
Criteria Number
Motionless 514
Slackened jaw 6
Slackened pectoral fins 8
No reaction to stimulation 1
Tensionless harpoon line 9
Motionless AND slackened jaw 24
Motionless AND slackened pectoral fins 3
Motionless and tensionless harpoon line 1
Table 1. The criteria that gunners applied to judge the death of whales during the 2000/2001 and
2001/2002 Japanese Whale Research Program in Antarctica (JARPA). (All cases of immediate
death are not included. Ishikawa 2003a).
In a further study carried out on captive orcas, pilot whales, beluga and three species of dolphin
(Butterworth 2003c), measures adapted from those used to establish the point of death in human
patients (Pallis 1983, Schlotzhauer et al 2002, Wijdicks 2002) and from those used to assess the
efficiency of stunning procedures at slaughter (Kestin et al, 2002), or depth of anaesthesia in surgical
patients were applied. The following were found to be reliable and reproducible measures of
physiological state in cetacea: jaw tone, palpebral response, menace response, corneal reflex, vestibuleocular
reflex, Ocular / Skin temperature differential, pupillary reflex, capillary refill time, heart rate
(with stethoscope). As emphasized in these two studies it can be unreliable to base judgements about
an animal’s sensibility on only one indicator. For this reason, it was proposed in this study, that as
many indicators as possible should be examined to allow judgments to be ‘broad based’, and
decisions made on the basis of presence (or absence) of a single measure should be avoided. Could
these methods be adapted to suit field conditions? This question will remain open until more robust
measures can be tested at sea, however, if reliable measures for time to death cannot be used in the
field, then it would appear that we cannot fully assess the true welfare implications of killing whales
by harpoon.
The ‘poor ‘control’ of the commercial killing of the world’s largest mammals must be placed in the
context of practical global efforts which are now being made by governments and others to introduce
practical solutions to the commercial slaughter of other species and, in so doing, to reduce the
potential for poor welfare at slaughter. Those conducting the killing should be required to
demonstrate that reliable methodologies are being used to calculate TTD. Only by doing so can the
global community be confident that cetacea are not subjected to unreasonable or unnecessary
suffering during their slaughter. Without robust terminology, biologically valid measures, and reliably
REVIEW OF CRITERIA FOR DETERMINING DEATH AND INSENSIBILITY IN CETACEA
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