[/floatr]Guardian: Whales losing blubber, claims controversial Japanese study
...Japan's scientists claim their controversial whaling programme has produced a key finding. Measurements taken from more than 4,500 minke whales slaughtered since the late 1980s reveal the animals have lost significant amounts of blubber, and are getting thinner at a worrying speed. The team says its study offers the first evidence that global warming could be harming whales, because it restricts their food supplies. And they say the discovery could only have been made by killing the animals. Crucially for the Japanese, the results have been published in a mainstream western scientific journal – a move that has dismayed campaigners, who say it could offer scientific whaling a veneer of respectability, and bolster Japan's efforts to hunt more whales...Lars Walloe, a Norwegian whale expert at the University of Oslo, who helped the Japanese team analyse the data, and is listed as an author on the new study, said: "This is a big change in blubber and if it continues it could make it more difficult for the whales to survive. It indicates there have been some big changes in their ecosystem"...Two journals refused to print the findings before they were accepted by Polar Biology, which published them online last month. Walloe, who says he does not support the current ban on commercial whaling, claimed that the journals that turned down the study did so for political, not scientific, reasons...more...
