Because of oil and dog food, more species of pinnipeds may disappear

We were all rooting for Timmy recently in his fight for survival. He did not survive, but the humpback whales are fortunately relatively numerous and not endangered. However, not all animals are in this situation. Later this year, another species of fin whale may become extinct. An exceedingly unique one, because it does not undertake migrations, found only in one place on Earth: the Rice’s fin Balaenoptera ricei of the Gulf of Mexico.

The extermination of a relatively easy-to-save, vulnerable and harmless defense endemic is outraging world public opinion. All the more so since President Trump himself has called for protecting cetaceans from windmills, and portrayed his sanctions and tariffs as support for marine megafauna as well [8]. Are Rice’s closest fin whale relatives also in danger of extinction?

To answer this question you need to know how many species we are talking about and how vulnerable each is. Although whales are large and few in number, and thus seemingly easy to count, the answer can be surprisingly difficult. The ripples from different bodies of water and different habitats of the same body of water (shelf vs. high seas) are very similar, but not identical. Do they therefore deserve the status of separate species? Scientists have been debating this for at least two centuries. The second problem is the boundaries of the genus Balaenoptera. According to modern genetic and anatomical analyses, the genus Balaenoptera should also include the gray swimmer Eschrichtius robustus and the humpback whale Megaptera novaeangliae [4].

How endangered are the fins?

The probability of extinction of individual population management units (whether we consider them as separate species, subspecies or ecotypes, or just populations, separated from the rest of the widely distributed species only in the 19th-20th centuries) of whales is assessed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the International Whaling Commission (IWC) and non-governmental and international cetacean working groups relatively infrequently. They were last estimated in 2003, 2008 and 2016, according to the latest red lists:

• Critically Endangered (CR) is Rice’s fin whale;
• endangered (EN) remain the largest animals of all time – blue fins B. musculus and the slightly smaller seals B. borealis;
• exposed (VU) is the finwal B. physalis;
• Near Threatened (NT) Antarctic fin whales B. bonaerensis remain;
• Not threatened (LC) are humpback whales, gray swimmers, dwarf fins B. acutorsotrata and tropical B. edenii.

The (NE) Bryde’s fin B. brydei was not assessed, and the (DD) probability of disappearance of the secretive fin B. omurai could not be estimated [5, 6]. Although some species as a whole remain relatively safe, their isolated populations may be at risk despite the introduction of formal protection. This is perfectly illustrated by the example of Timmy’s pobrats. Although the humpback whale is classified as a species of least concern, its populations from the Arabian Sea and Oceania are already endangered (EN), as are purse seals and blue whales.

A separate issue is the activities of the North Atlantic Marine Mammal Commission (NAMMCO), whose assessments are much more optimistic. Its reports provide scientific justification for the official return of commercial whaling in Japan and increases in the fishing quotas of Norway, the Faroe Islands and Greenland [5, 6].

Czym jest zanieczyszczenie hałasem i jak wpływa na wieloryby?

What was and is not, however, is written in the register

The numbers of most whales remain low, e.g.: about 1 percent of what they were before the mass hunting of the Antarctic blue whale in the 19th century. The most serious threats to most now are collisions with ships and injuries from fishing gear. There is growing concern about underwater noise, as well as new stressors: climate change, ocean acidification, offshore mining, invasions by alien species, and the development of wind, tidal, marethermal or drone power. The impact of these as yet unknown threats will only be reliably assessed by future generations [5, 6].

Developments in technology, wars and the domestic policies of individual countries have affected the harvesting of cetaceans for centuries. In the mid-19th century, it seemed that whaling would disappear on its own as soon as petrochemicals began to provide substitutes for oil, olbrot, ambergris and other products derived from the bodies of marine mammals. Contributing to the renaissance of hunting was the invention of Svend Foyn’s harpoon cannon, as well as the development of refrigeration and marine steam and later internal combustion engines.

Between 1939 and 1940, the German-Norwegian hunts to obtain fish oil for making margarine ceased. Instead, Basque whalers returned to the deserted fishing grounds, but only those who survived the Spanish Civil War. It is no coincidence that rapeseed oil for humans (not just industry) began to be produced first in those countries that had previously led the way in obtaining fats from fins or sperm whales, such as Canada and Denmark.

Rice’s flippant sentence is all the more outrageous given that the United States has, after all, gained access to Venezuela’s vast oil fields, as well as is set to unlock the Ormuz any day now. Nevertheless, the ultra-heavy, super-sour crude from the Orinoco Basin is being extracted with difficulty, including by diluting it with ordinary, much lighter crude oil. And they can be used not only to make asphalt, but also to fuel special boilers in the precision and defense industries [5, 6].

Whaling supports jobs, climate and biodiversity?

Modern whaling by the Japanese, Scandinavians and Greenlanders is justified both by tradition and by considerations of rational food economy. In the 19th and 20th centuries, whaleboats were thought to compete with fishermen in two ways:

1. directly – draining eggs and fry, sometimes even spawning fish important to the economy;
2. Indirectly – by eating plant and animal plankton, which is the food base of commercially fished fish.

Icelandic scientists more than 20 years ago began studying changes in the diet of the dwarf fin Balaenoptera acutorostrata caused by climate change, ocean acidification and overfishing of certain fish species. An analysis of the contents of the stomachs of fins hunted between 2003 and 2007 showed that their diet increased in the proportion of warm-water, yet economically crucial species, such as herring and haddock. Instead, cold-water fish and seafood, including economically important krill,sand eels (sand eels) and capelin, declined. Hence, the authorities’ conclusion that limited fishing for fin and grindworm not only preserves jobs for fishermen, but will also compensate marine ecosystems for the effects of global warming. They should therefore be continued, even if the meat of cetaceans as apex predators accumulates so much mercury and parasites that it’s a little scary to give it to dogs to eat, let alone serve it to humans [1, 7].

Whalers from the north (Japan, Russia, Faroe Islands, Iceland) also do not forgive the tropical, stealth and Bryde’s whales in the southern hemisphere. Reportedly, these species are not globally endangered. However, the same has been said of the migratory pigeon. Fleets that have competed with cetaceans for anchovies, anchovies and herring for two centuries are now sharpening their teeth on small, deep-sea fish, such as the mauryk Maurolicus muelleri. Mauritius and similar mesopelagial species have long been considered worthless to humans. However, something has to feed salmon from aquaculture, which are slowly being joined by cod and tuna [2].

Whale sperm whale of a fisherman?

There is no shortage of studies questioning the theory of the detrimental effects of whalebones on fisheries. Attention is being paid to the role of fins and other whalebones in the circulation of iron in marine ecosystems. While pregnant and lactating mothers and their young retain Fe in their bodies for longer, the rest of the cetaceans excrete huge amounts of this biogen. What’s more, it excretes it in forms that are easily assimilated by photosynthesizing algae. Thus, it raises the primary production of omniocean waters, which are inherently quite poor (except on continental shelves and upwelling zones). Primary production, in turn, determines the biomass of higher up the food chain, including fish and krill of interest to fishermen and their governments. From the modeling of Lavery et al. [3] shows that if blue whales were again as numerous as they were in the 18th century, there would be as much or more of the Southern Ocean’s resources for humans as there are today.

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pic. main: fisheries.noaa.gov

In writing the article, I used, among other things. z:

1. Cawthorn, M. W. (1997). Meat consumption from stranded whales and marine mammals in New Zealand: Public health and other issues. Department of Conservation, Wellington.
2. Grimaldo, E., Grimsmo, L., Alvarez, P., Herrmann, B., Møen Tveit, G., Tiller, R. …Selnes, M. (2020). Investigating the potential for a commercial fishery in the Northeast Atlantic utilizing mesopelagic species. ICES Journal of Marine Science, 77(7-8), 2541-2556.
3. Lavery, T., Roudnew, B., Seymour, J., Mitchell, J. G., Smetacek, V., & Nicol, S. (2014). Whales sustain fisheries: blue whales stimulate primary production in the Southern Ocean. Marine Mammal Science, 30(3), 888-904.
4. McGowen, M., Tsagkogeorga, G., Álvarez-Carretero, S., dos Reis, M., Struebig, M…& Rossiter, S. (2020). Phylogenomic Resolution of the Cetacean Tree of Life Using Target Sequence Capture. Systematic Biology, 69(3), 479-501.
5. Reeves, R., Smith, B., Crespo, E. & Notarbartolo di Sciara, G. (2003). Dolphins, Whales and Porpoises: 2002-2010 Conservation Action Plan for the World’s Cetaceans. IUCN/SSC. Cetacean Specialist Group. IUCN, Gland, Switzerland and Cambridge.
6. Thomas, P., Reeves, R., & Brownell, J., (2016). Status of the world’s baleen whales. Marine Mammal Science, 32(2), 682-734.
7. Víkingsson, G. A., Elvarsson, B. Þ., Ólafsdóttir, D., Sigurjónsson, J., Chosson, V., & Galan, A. (2014). Recent changes in the diet composition of common minke whales (Balaenoptera acutorostrata) in Icelandic waters. A consequence of climate change? Marine Biology Research, 10(2), 138-152.
8. https://zielona.interia.pl/wiadomosci/swiat/news-donald-trump-wprowadza-nowy-zakaz-to-wielkie-zwyciestwo,nId,22418813 [accessed 9.05.2026].