Sustainable fishing. Photograph:© SAF — Coastal Care
Excerpts;
While countries such as Japan, Norway, and Iceland often are criticized for their commercial whaling practices, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) marine biologist Michael Moore points out how the majority of nations are also complicit in killing whales by deploying commercial fishing gear.
Moore cites scientific literature, necropsy reports, and individual case studies in an editorial essay addressing the ethics of whale entanglement and commercial whaling to be published Friday in ICES Journal of Marine Science.
Moore, a veterinarian and the Director of the WHOI Marine Mammal Center, has studied large whale mortality throughout his career, first as an observer for the International Whaling Commission on an Icelandic whaling vessel and currently, as one of the few experts called to respond to whale strandings and entanglements along the East Coast of the U.S…
