Whale news: IWC breakdown and sperm whales to go extinct soon.

[gturner]

The IWC meeting broke down, with most other countries refusing to support the push by the US and Japan to resume commercial whaling. They couldn't reach a consensus, and in the aftermath environmentalists can't reach a consensus on whether the outcome was a good thing or a bad thing.

But not to let a whale crisis go to waste, we have this release:

American scientists found high levels of toxic and heavy metals in 1,000 sperm whales from samples taken over five years, the Associated Press reports.

"These contaminants, I think, are threatening the human food supply. They certainly are threatening the whales and the other animals that live in the ocean," biologist Roger Payne told the AP.

The report found high levels of cadmium, aluminum, chromium, lead, silver, mercury and titanium in the whales.
The founder and president of Ocean Alliance said ultimately the metals contaminate fish, which are a primary source of protein for 1 billion people, the story says.

U.S. Whaling Commissioner Monica Medina told the 88 member nations of the report released Thursday and urged the commission to conduct further research.

"This provides new and very important information about the hazards and the problem of these sorts of contaminants in the ocean, both for the whales and their habitat," Medina told hundreds of government officials, marine scientists and environmentalists.

The report "is right on target" for raising issues critical to humans as well as whales, Medina told The Associated Press. "We need to know much more about these problems."

The report has been picked up all over the place, including USA Today and here in the SMH, along with a more in depth look here.

I wish one of the researchers would've noted that the oceans are really really big and contain just about every natural element on the periodic table, and that many of these heavy metals are essential for a healthy ecosystem. For example, to keep a reef aquarium healthy you need to add boron, barium, bromine, cobalt, copper, iron, manganese, magnesium, molybdenum, zinc, rubidium, nickel, vanadium, strontium, iodine, silicon, and selenium.

The elements they're in a panic about are naturally present in the oceans in huge amounts. So huge, in fact, that in many cases mankind's entire production throughout history wouldn't make a drop in the bucket.

I think the real environmental threat is coming from the bong water these people are slurping.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

Do you have a link about the IWC meeting. I doubt the United States has any interest in resuming commercial whaling because we don't have a whaling industry anymore. As for Japan, there needs to be a consensus because this scientific whaling bullshit isn't acceptable to anyone. Japan is practically a pariah to many groups because nobody believes the legitimacy of their scientific research, but, at the same time, no one can regulate their whaling industry as long as they claim it's science. They set their own quotas and don't limit themselves to concerns about sustainability (sure, Minke whales are relatively plentiful, but they also hunt endangered Fin whales).

As for the issue with the Sperm whales, that's an absolute tragedy. For such a dramatic change, I doubt it's entirely a natural cause (the ocean is usually in equilibrium, there's no reason for a change). This shouldn't even be a bleeding heart hippy save the whales concern either. Sperm whales are eating fish that are basically poisonous. It's not just killing Whales, it could kill people as well. People need to find a way to find the source of the problem and fix it as soon as possible. Hopefully, in time to save the whales (that way everyone is happy).

 

[gturner]

Do you have a link about the IWC meeting. I doubt the United States has any interest in resuming commercial whaling because we don't have a whaling industry anymore.

I had a giant thread on it last week.
It's probably down on page 3 or 4 by now.

But yes, strange as it sounds, the US was backing a renewal of commercial whaling.

As for Japan, there needs to be a consensus because this scientific whaling bullshit isn't acceptable to anyone. Japan is practically a pariah to many groups because nobody believes the legitimacy of their scientific research, but, at the same time, no one can regulate their whaling industry as long as they claim it's science. They set their own quotas and don't limit themselves to concerns about sustainability (sure, Minke whales are relatively plentiful, but they also hunt endangered Fin whales).

You, like many people, forget that culinary science is a science!

So yeah, how are Japanese culinary scientists going to develop new whale recipes if they don't have whale meat?

As for the issue with the Sperm whales, that's an absolute tragedy. For such a dramatic change, I doubt it's entirely a natural cause (the ocean is usually in equilibrium, there's no reason for a change). This shouldn't even be a bleeding heart hippy save the whales concern either. Sperm whales are eating fish that are basically poisonous. It's not just killing Whales, it could kill people as well. People need to find a way to find the source of the problem and fix it as soon as possible. Hopefully, in time to save the whales (that way everyone is happy).

Actually, the best way to get the problem under control is to kill and harvest all the sperm whales, killer whales, sharks, and anything else at the top of the food chain. You see, the problem isn't something new in the oceans, (unless it's the researchers' addled brains), it's just that the ocean is full of heavy metals and sperm whales are the top of the food chain. I will bet that the heavy metal content of sperm whales has been quite high for the past million years. The researchers should've taken a tissue sample from some pre-industrial specimen, preserved in the Smithsonian or elsewhere, for a baseline.

I'll walk you through a few quick calculations.

The mass of the oceans is 1.38x10^21 kg, or 1.38x10^18 metric tons. Any trace impurity in the ocean with a concentration of one part per billion (by mass) would thus represent 1.38 billion metric tons of that impurity.

First up: Chromium

The chromium concentration of normal seawater is 0.6 ppb by mass, so there are 830 million metric tons of chromium in the ocean, naturally present. World chromium emissions into the atmosphere, from natural and anthropogenic sources in almost equal amounts, is about 74,000 tons/year, and discharges into aquatic systems is about 140,000 tons per year (source). So at current rates, if no chromium ever left the oceans, it would still take mankind almost 6,000 more years to up their chromium content from "naturally present at a level that predates the first whale to ever swim in the ocean" to twice that, which would still be only 4% of the chromium concentration found in normal humans and TrekBBS members (30 ppb). Mankind may have upped the oceans' chromium content from 0.6 ppb to 0.603 ppb, so if chromium is killing whales then we should blame mother nature, not man.

As for the other elements causing concern, aluminum, cadmium, lead, silver, mercury, and titanium, their natural abundance in seawater is listed here.

Aluminum is present at 5 parts per billion by weight, so there are 6.9 billion metric tons of aluminum in the oceans. Aluminum is selling for $2750 a metric ton, so that would be about $19 trillion dollars worth of aluminum (that somebody dumped when nobody was looking ).

Cadmium concentration is 0.05 ppb, so there are 69 million metric tons of it in the ocean. Throughout history mankind has only produced about 1 million tons, so even if all the nickel-cadmium batteries and cadmium coatings ever made were ground up and dumped in the water, it still wouldn't have an impact on the ocean. Additionally, it's worth $5,000 a ton, so I doubt somebody secretly dumped $345 billion dollars worth of a very useful metal that's in high demand.

Lead concentration is 0.03 ppb, so that's 41 million tons. Mankind has mined much more than that, using it for bullets and anti-fouling paint for ships, for a time, and yet the EPA level for safe drinking water is 15 ppb. That's right. The stuff coming out of your tap in a society that's absolutely paranoid about lead in drinking water still contains 500 times higher lead levels than the oceans. Unless the whales are constantly licking the bottoms of old rust buckets, they're not being exposed to a five-hundredth as
much lead as rich American babies.

Mercury concentration in sea water is 0.05 ppb, so that's 69 million tons. Worldwide mercury emissions are about 5,500 tons, from both natural and human sources, and they would take 12,000 years to double the ocean's mercury concentration, except that what flows in flows back out as part of the global flux of mercury. On another note, the observed concentration of mercury in the oceans has remained the same since measurements began, many, many decades ago. This is an element that's well studied because of coal fired power plants, so our understanding of it is very sound.

Titanium concentration is 1 ppb, so that's 1.38 billion tons. In metallic form it sells for about $20 a pound, which is $44,000 a ton, so the amount in the ocean, if coming from refined titanium metal, would represent the loss of $60 trillion dollars worth. Again, I doubt dumping is responsible.

So on to the precious metals and other stuff.

Silver is selling at $18.69 and gold is at $1243 per troy ounce. There are 32,150 troy ounces per metric ton, so the silver is worth $600,000 a ton and gold is worth about $40 million a ton. Oceanic silver concentration is 0.1 ppb and gold concentration is 0.05 ppb, so that's 138 million tons of silver and 69 million tons of gold, which would be worth $82.8 trillion (with a 'T') and $2.75 quadrillion (with a 'Q') dollars, respectively. I don't think we've dumped that much, especially since the total world inventory of gold is only about 140,000 tons, and of that only about 30,000 tons are held in central bank reserves. But even if we did decide to dump the world supply of gold into the oceans, it would only raise the concentration from 0.05 ppb to 0.0501 ppb.

The oceans also contain uranium at 3.3 ppb, weighing in at 4.55 billion tons, but that wasn't cited in the report, but then neither was arsenic.

So take heart. Sperm whales evolved eating high concentrations of heavy metals. I blame the evil squid, but certainly they're under absolutely no threat from it.

So it's all due to bong water. This whole report is the result of drinking bong water.

 

[Cicero]

Do you have a link about the IWC meeting. I doubt the United States has any interest in resuming commercial whaling because we don't have a whaling industry anymore.

I had a giant thread on it last week.
It's probably down on page 3 or 4 by now.

But yes, strange as it sounds, the US was backing a renewal of commercial whaling.

The United States opposed the proposal, despite having participated in its development.

 

[gturner]

Actually your link doesn't say we opposed the proposal. It did contrast us to the scientists from countries who want to maintain the moratorium, saying:

Other scientists, however, including Douglas DeMaster, the chair of the IWC's Scientific Committee and deputy commissioner for the U.S. delegation at the IWC, argues that "whales lose while the moratorium stays in place."

 

[Alidar Jarok]

It says we didn't support it (aka, didn't vote for it). The point about the "whales lose" quote is that the moratorium at the moment has no teeth since the Japanese can just hunt whales for scientific research (and no, not culinary science, usually weighing them and determining stomach contents) and set their own quotas (and the Norse and Icelanders are worse, if at least less hypocritical about it). The point was that something has to be done so they can stop setting their own quotas. No one in the anti-whaling camp (which includes the US) wants to resume full-fledged commercial whaling.

 

[Hoser]

The United States opposed the proposal, despite having participated in its development.

Such good news. Science should be in charge of quotas, not politics.

 

[gturner]

It says we didn't support it (aka, didn't vote for it).

Yes, we neither supported nor opposed the proposal. As expected, Obama once again voted "present."

The point about the "whales lose" quote is that the moratorium at the moment has no teeth since the Japanese can just hunt whales for scientific research (and no, not culinary science, usually weighing them and determining stomach contents) and set their own quotas (and the Norse and Icelanders are worse, if at least less hypocritical about it). The point was that something has to be done so they can stop setting their own quotas. No one in the anti-whaling camp (which includes the US) wants to resume full-fledged commercial whaling.

But given this latest news about the horrendous levels of toxic metals in sperm whales, isn't it critical that we have Japanese scientists perform far more exhaustive autopsies on not just minke and fin whales, but all the whale species? If there was ever a time when we needed to carve up whales and put their tissues on little sample dishes, that time is now!

You see, up through the 1980's we kept the oceans clean by culling massive numbers of whales, thus keeping oceanic heavy metal concentrations under control by removing the top predators from the water.

When we stopped whaling those metals started to build up to toxic levels, threatening not only all whales and fish with extinction, but mankind as well. (One of the reports on the original article made that point.)

So in a bizarre twist of events, when our IWC representative tossed this erroneous pollution report to the members, she was actually making a case for massive and continued scientific and industrialized whaling, on top of making herself look like a scientific imbecile, so it's no wonder that the other countries decided to bail on the proposal.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

You know, I don't know why you're so concerned about posting these topics if you don't know what you're talking about.

 

[gturner]

^ that last bit was mostly humor, which I was using to point out that pollution and whaling are two wildly different subjects requiring wildly different approaches and solutions.

The environmentalists' report on the sperm whales noted that their tissue samples were only from the skin and that the internal organs might have much higher values. If indeed the sperm whales are about to go extinct from toxic metal pollution then we should obviously gather more data by killing a bunch of sperm whales so we can test their internal organs for heavy metals and see if the values are far higher than in the skin samples. It's logic.

So why would our IWC delegates be daft enough to toss this out there if we wanted to reduce Japan's scientific whaling? If anything, it would open up all whale species in all the oceans to an emergency round of Japanese "scientific" harvesting. So that's strike one.

Strike two is that the report is the result of swilling bong water, as all that math I posted pointed out.