How we all kill whales

• Published in: ICES Journal of Marine Science
• Main Author: Moore, Michael J.
• Format: Report
• Language: English
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: Whaling; Entanglement; Bycatch; Mortality; Animal welfare; Norway; Iceland
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/1912/6455

Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2013. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Oxford University Press for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in ICES Journal of Marine Science 71 (2014):760-763, doi:10.1093/icesjms/fsu008. Today there is enormous popular interest in marine mammals. Western media tend to dwell on the ongoing debate about commercial whaling by Japan, Norway and Iceland. There is, however, relative silence as to how the shipping and fishing industries of many if not all maritime countries are also catching and sometimes killing whales, albeit unintentionally. Thus, western countries have, through the development and increase in fishing and shipping in continental shelf waters, essentially resumed whaling as vessel speeds and fishing gear strength have increased in recent decades. The ways in which these animals die, especially in fixed fishing gear that they become entangled in and swim off with, would raise substantive concern with consumers of seafood were they to be aware of what they were enabling. 2015-02-14