John Yeld, The Cape Argus, Independent Online 30 Nov 07;
"What does that say about our values and priorities? And it's not likely to be a unique event in the next few decades."
One marine mammal - the Chinese river dolphin, or baiji - has gone extinct in the past 50 years and others are likely to follow in the coming decades, a leading marine scientist has warned.
The baiji, a white dolphin found only in China's Yangtze River and nicknamed "the goddess of the Yangtze", is considered extinct after scientists failed to find a single animal during a six-week search on the river last November and December.
Speaking on Thursday at the opening plenary of the 17th biennial Conference on the Biology of Marine Mammals at the Cape Town International Convention Centre, Society for Marine Mammalogy president John Reynolds made a plea for scientists to also promote conservation of the species that they worked on and cared about, which was "far more difficult" than science.
"We're losing species, we're losing stocks - the standard (scientific) operating procedures are not working well," he warned.
The conference, co-hosted by the Society for Marine Mammalogy and Pretoria University's Mammal Research Institute, has attracted more than 900 delegates from 57 nations. It is the first time it has been held in the southern hemisphere and only the second time outside north America.
Reynolds noted that the recent extinction of the baiji - the small, nearly blind white dolphin - had been foreseeable and could have been prevented.
"What does that say about our values and priorities?" he asked, and added: "And it's not likely to be a unique event in the next few decades." The Caribbean monk seal had also been "irrevocably lost", and at least another 22 species or particular stocks of species - including the killer whales off the North American coastline - were on the verge of becoming extinct unless urgent conservation programmes were implemented, he pointed out.
"And based on recent history, I don't know if we will (be able to implement such programmes)," he warned.
There were some success stories, such as the Alaskan bowhead whale whose numbers were increasing at more than three percent a year, which was "great news".
However, marine mammals were facing a number of risks in the future, including global climate change.
"It's a really daunting picture, and there are no guarantees that all stocks and species will make it."
Reynolds said conservation was "more difficult, more elusive" than good science, and he challenged society members to augment their science by also practising conservation advocacy, "for what you think is right".
"All that is needed is a collective will to preserve."
Reynold's theme was echoed by eminent Japanese marine mammal scientist Dr Toshio Kasuya, who was presented with the society's second Kenneth S Norris Career Achievement Award, in honour of his "exemplary and sustained contributions to science and society through research, teaching and service in marine mammalogy" over 46 years.
Kasuya, who retired last year, spoke of two marine mammal "tragedies" in Japan's fisheries history.
These were the failure of the government fisheries agency to take the scientists' advice to regulate the annual catch by coastal fishermen of as many as 21 000 dolphins, most of them striped dolphins, and the hunting of sperm whales off Japan.
Officially this hunting killed 88 000 whales between 1910 and 1988, but the true number could have been two or even three times greater because of poaching by Japanese coastal fishermen and Soviet pelagic fishing.
Kasuya said there was "no doubt" that whales had culture, with experience transmitted among members of the group.
"Whales can learn, they live long enough to accumulate experiences and they have a social system to transmit it to others."
He was opposed to Japan's recent approach of evaluating science in terms of economic benefit and said no marine mammal science was free from the conservation imperative.
"We are responsible for the future of marine mammals, even when we are paid by organisations with other objectives."
This article was originally published on page 13 of The Cape Argus on November 30, 2007
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