Published in the current Molecular Ecology journal, the study led by Kristen Ruegg of Stanford University looked at 52 whale meat samples from Japanese markets for gene diversity that would indicate the size of the minke population. Japanese whalers kill as many as 1,000 minke whales every year, in the guise of scientific research.
Some international observers, such as scientists from Japan's Institute of Cetacean Research, had suggested that killing minkes allows larger blue, humpback and related whales to recover from past decimation by whalers. That's because all those species feast on small crustaceans called krill. However, the minke population isn't growing, the gene analysis shows, and the minke whales don't seem to be eating the extra krill left available by the absence of the larger species.
"The research suggests that direct competition for food is not keeping the large whale populations from recovering," Ruegg says, in a Pew Environment Group statement.
By Dan Vergano
Photo: Whale meat for sale in a Japanese market. (Stephen Palumbi, Stanford University)
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