A FORENSIC study of whale meat bought from Japanese markets suggests that either Japan鈥檚 scientific whaling programme is taking more animals from a vulnerable population than previously estimated, or accidental 鈥渂y-catch鈥� of the whales in fishing nets is larger than officially reported.
of the University of California, Irvine, and colleagues bought samples of whale meat in Japan and used DNA analysis to determine in each case not only the species of whale, but also which population it came from. The team found that 250 of the samples came from 201 north Pacific minke whales, 46 per cent of which seemed to be from a population that lives mostly in the Sea of Japan and was selected for protection by the International Whaling Commission in the 1980s.
That鈥檚 worrying, says Scott Baker of Oregon State University in Newport, because a previous study showed that this population is also being depleted by heavy by-catch from South Korean fishing.
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