Whale-human-conflict: is it real?
In response to the global fisheries crisis, characterized by falling abundances of resource species, declining catches, habitat destruction and high subsidies, there have been claims that marine mammals, particularly the great whales, compete with humans for fish resources; that efforts to protect these whales from extinction have led marine ecosystems to be “out of balance;” and that such balance can only be re-established by large-scale culling.
This argument flies in the face of numerous observations on the widely different ecological impacts of fisheries (which tend at first to concentrate on large fishes wherever these can be caught) and marine mammals (which, if they feed on fish, tend to consume smaller individuals).
Where good data are available, there is no evidence to support the claim that marine mammal predation presents an ecological issue for fisheries. The research programs that support culling use antiquated field techniques, which tend not to generate data useful for addressing questions on the ecological role of marine mammals.
The appropriate framework for understanding why developing countries experience diminishing supplies of fish is competition from the international market. The rapid development of the world fisheries market, combined with the expansion of the subsidized distant-water fisheries, has resulted in the acceleration of the trend wherein fish caught along the coast of less affluent countries gravitate toward the markets of affluent countries. Blaming the whales for this development diverts scarce resources and media attention away from the real issue.
What is becoming abundantly clear, through efforts of countless fisheries biologists and economists, is that the world’s fish stocks are being decimated by subsidized industrial fleets, aided by huge numbers of small scale fishers for whom fishing is often the only possible mean of livelihood. This is the policy challenge that must be addressed. The science to do so exists, and the solutions proposed range from addressing the subsidy issues at the level of the World Trade Organization to creating marine protected areas facilitating some resource recovery in local settings and training people for jobs outside of the fisheries sector.
Fisheries problems are mostly manmade (e.g. Pauly et al. 2005). Suggestions that fisheries problems can be attributed to whales consuming huge quantities of fish distract attention from the root cause of these problems: fisheries mismanagement. The challenge posed by declining fisheries resources cannot be addressed by making whales the scapegoats for this dangerous development.
