TROUBLED WATERS - Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society

This is the time from the throwing of the first harpoon to the time at which the crew traditionallyprays for the whale, having monitored it from a distance for at least 5-10 minutes post strike, beforeapproaching to confirm its death. The US conceded that this is a very inaccurate measure.The Makah tribe of Washington State took a single gray whale in 1999. A steel harpoon was thrownfrom a traditional whaling canoe and, once struck, the whale was shot with a .577 calibre huntingrifle fired from a motorised chase boat. The whale was reported to have been killed within eightminutes, with two shots from the rifle. In 2002, a US court concluded that the US’s issuance of agray whale quota to the tribe violated federal law, and prohibited further hunting.Greenland huntsThree different hunts are conducted in Greenland. On the west coast, up to 19 fin whales may behunted annually. Here, a 50 mm mounted harpoon cannon fitted with a penthrite harpoonpurchased from Norway is both the primary and secondary killing method. These are mounted onboats measuring between 36 and 72 feet. For the first time in 2003, Greenland reported that aspecially constructed penthrite grenade with a longer trigger line is used for fin whales (Anon 2003c).Up to 175 minke whales may also be hunted annually on the west coast of Greenland, but the samehunting method is not used in each case. For some whales, the primary killing method is the boatmountedharpoon cannon using a penthrite grenade purchased from Norway. For others, however, arifle (mainly of calibre 30.06 (7.62 mm)) is used. The secondary killing method for all west coastminke whales is a rifle.COMMERCIAL AND ABORIGINAL SUBSISTENCE WHALING47On the east coast of Greenland, the whaling communities do not have vessels with mounted harpooncannons. Here, all minke whales are shot with rifles fired from small boats known as skiffs in a‘collective hunt’ comprising up to five boats. According to Denmark’s report to the IWC’s workshopon whale killing methods in 1999, the collective hunt “starts with shooting at the whale, then the handharpoon was used, and thereafter the rifle to kill the whale”. The main target area is the whale’s head.Greenland has historically reported its whale killing data to the IWC by species (or population) andnot by method used. This makes it impossible for the IWC to assess the relative efficiency of the twohunting methods used on minke whales in West Greenland, although the data provided from the eastcoast minke whale hunt (which only uses rifles) clearly demonstrates that the rifle results in longerTTDs, lower IDRs and higher SLRs. At the 2003 IWC meeting, in response to several requests,Greenland reported TTD data by method for the West Greenland minke hunt. This showed themaximum time to death for minke whales killed in the harpoon hunt in West Greenland was 30minutes, whereas the maximum for those killed during the collective hunt, where only rifles are used,was 300 minutes (five hours). Furthermore, the average TTD for those killed in the harpoon huntwas seven minutes, whereas the average for those killed in the collective hunt was 33 minutes (Anon2003d).For East Greenland minke whales the mean TTD was 21 minutes (maximum 90 minutes), and forfin whales it was nine minutes, with a maximum recorded TTD of 25 minutes. No East Greenlandminke whales died instantaneously in 2002 and none of the West Greenland minke whales killedduring the ‘collective’ hunts (also killed only with rifles) died instantaneously. Almost 8 per cent ofWest Greenland minke whales killed in the harpoon hunt and 7.6 per cent of fin whales were