Next month, the Norwegian government is planning to capture up to a dozen Minke Whales and one by one, place them into a cage, sedate them and begin tests to expose them to loud noises such as naval sonar – noise that has been known to kill other species of marine mammal. Apart from the obvious immorality of doing this, the Norway Minke Whale experiments experiments won’t yield any useful information and at best, are an ill-conceived plan by biologists, to use invasive experiments that bear no relation to the important ecological issues being considered.
If you’d like to write to the Norwegian government, objecting to the Norway Minke Whale experiments there is some advice here on Whale and Dolphin Conservation’s website.
If you are in Australia, the embassy email address is emb.canberra@mfa.no.
Here is a copy of what I sent.
Re: Norway Minke Whale experiments
Dear Ingunn Midttun Godal, Cc His Excellency the Ambassador to the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Australia, Mr. Paul Gulleik Larsen I am an ecologist and consultant with nearly 30 years experience working for industry, governments and NGOs in Mozambique, US, New Zealand and Australia. A principle part of my expertise has been on ocean noise impacts on marine mammals. The capture and exposure of Minke Whales to ocean noise will not provide the Norwegian government with any meaningful information with which to create robust policy decisions. At worst, it may create more problems for your government, because the questions that are being asked, may not be the right ones. Such studies, only ever proposed by biologists, seek to understand the direct impact of noise on an animal's hearing but fail to appreciate that this is an ecological matter. There is no relationship between what you want to know, and the experiment being proposed ... that fact has been known for decades. For starters, Minke Whales and other marine mammals, are critical to the ecosystem processes that, for example, create commercial herring abundance in the region. Noise impacts flow through the food chain via a complex web of direct and indirect impacts that cannot be understood by studying the hearing profile of a Minke Whale. Second, the behavioural (often referred to as indirect) effects of noise on cetaceans are considered to be more significant than the direct effects. The results of this experiment will not provide you with any robust or useful advice about behaviour, because captured animals are not feeding, breeding, resting or socialising. The context in which any observations are made is so unnatural, there is nothing you will gain from the work. This would be like if I proposed to you, studying the behaviour of goldfish by putting one in a bowl on a table. If I asked you to represent that work publicly, you'd be right to say no ... and I would be wrong to expect you to listen to anything I have to say. The study being proposed will provide you with no clarity on any important ecological issues and risks exposing you to criticism for something that isn't even relevant to what you want to know. My advice, were it to be considered, would be to abandon the Minke Whale capture and noise experimentation proposal altogether. It cannot possibly provide you with any closure on the issue. It's not even a question of scientific rigour. The experiment is completely inappropriate. Yours sincerely, Simon Mustoe.
Read more about whales and dolphins on our Oceans page
https://simonmustoe.blog/why-are-the-oceans-important-climate-change-wildlife-and-ecosystems/
