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Minke whale hunt and animal welfare

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 January 2023

SK Knudsen ,
EO Øen  and
L Walløe
SK Knudsen*
Affiliation:
The Animal Department, Faculty of Medicine, University of Tromsø, NO-9037 Tromsø, Norway Section of Arctic Veterinary Medicine, Department of Food Safety and Infection Biology, Norwegian School of Veterinary Science, PO Box 6204, NO-9292 Tromsø, Norway
EO Øen
Affiliation:
The Animal Department, Faculty of Medicine, University of Tromsø, NO-9037 Tromsø, Norway
L Walløe
Affiliation:
Department of Physiology, University of Oslo, PO Box 1103 Blindern, 0317 Oslo, Norway
*
* Contact for correspondence and requests for reprints: [email protected]
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Over the last twenty-five years, Norway has given priority to research to improve hunting methods for Minke whales. This has resulted in an increase in the instantaneous death rate (IDR) from about 17% in the early 1980s to about 80% today, and, thus, in a considerable decrease in the time to death (TTD) (Øen 2003). TTD data have been collected by official veterinary inspectors on board Norwegian whaling vessels and reported annually to the International Whaling Commission (IWC) since 1983. Estimates of TTD have been based, predominantly, on the ‘criteria of death in whales’ that were established at an IWC workshop in 1980 (IWC 1980). These criteria in principle require complete immobility, ie a whale can only be pronounced dead if it has stopped moving, the jaw and flippers have slackened, and it is sinking passively. However, as early as 1995 the IWC agreed (IWC 1995) that the criteria were incomplete and sometimes misleading, as they did not allow for reflex movements and seizures that occur in the unconscious state after an animal is stunned. This phenomenon is well-known from the slaughter of domestic animals (for review, see eg Knudsen 2005). The IWC identified a need for a more reliable method of determining the time of onset of permanent insensibility in whales (IWC 1995) and in particular asked for research investigating in detail the trauma, and its consequences, caused by hunting methods.

Type
Letters
Information
Animal Welfare , Volume 16 , Issue 3 , August 2007 , pp. 405 - 406
Copyright
© 2007 Universities Federation for Animal Welfare

References

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