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| cutting to the bone |
Scientists think that 82% of whales living in the crowded North Atlantic between Nova Scotia and and Cape Cod are entangled in fishing gear at some point in their lives. Some manage to free themselves, a few are helped by humans to get free, and the unlucky ones die a death that can be slow and very painful. Call it torture for whales. A study published in Conservation Biology examined 1762 documented deaths and serious injuries in eight large whale species between 1970 and 2009. Forty-three percent of the deaths were caused by entanglement. The problem is well known along the North American coast but the problem is world-wide. A line can take up to four months to work its way through thick whale blubber to the bone. Such an injury will kill a large whale in six months by drowning, starvation, infection, or hemorrhage. Assuming fishing gear will be lost or simply dumped overboard as long as humans eat fish, the question arises: is it
morally right to euthanize a whale that cannot be disentangled?
Trying to free a thrashing multi-ton whale at sea is dangerous for humans. But if the whale species is critically endangered, like the North Atlantic right whale, who number less than five hundred individuals, euthanizing an individual contributes to the extinction of the species. The suffering is stopped but the end is advanced.
Of course neither euthanasia nor disentanglement fixes the problem. Prevention is the key. One reason prevention is not effective is because individual accountability is lacking for gear that traps a whale. Along the East Coast gillnets and pot fishing appear to be the worse offenders. Current regulations have modified fishing gear in the hopes whales can break free of it or have kept it out of critical areas. What needs to be added is indelible identifying information so that individual fishermen or companies whose gear takes a whale can be held accountable. Equipment modifications and restrictions have been expensive and onerous according to fishermen representatives. The National Marine Fisheries Service and an advisory group are now considering how to limit the amount of vertical rope and the use of sinking ground lines. Labeling gear seems a draconian measure for an industry that already faces great risk for sometimes little reward, but whales species are
recovering only slowly despite a global moratorium on whaling largely in effect. Seafood consumers were able to alter the way tuna fishing mangled and killed thousands of dolphins each years. They could do the same for whales.
