THE INSTITUTE OF CETACEAN RESEARCH
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MEDIA BRIEFING NOTE
September 5, 2008

• The Antarctic minke whale (Balaenoptera bonaerensis) spends winter in tropicalwaters and migrates to the Antarctic waters in summer for food. The whale
intensively feeds there in the summer feeding season and stores energy as fat for
long-distance migration and to cope with less prey availability in tropical waters. In
the Antarctic waters, many predators, such as large baleen whales (including theAntarctic minke whale), penguins, seals and sea birds depend on krill (Euphausiasuperba) for food.
• The Antarctic ecosystem sustains this abundant biomass with rich nutrients. This
energy- rich environment is connected to sea ice. Recent global warming affects the
Antarctic ecosystem, as many animal species such as krill, penguins and seals may beaffected by this change.

Konishi et al. 2008. Decline in energy storage in the Antarctic minke whale (Balaenopterabonaerensis) in the Southern Ocean. Published: Polar Biology. DOI:10.1007/s00300-0080491-3
SummaryThis study assessed the long-term trend in energy storage in Antarctic minke whales sampled
in JARPA. The multiple regression analyses demonstrated that the blubber thickness, girthand blubber weight all declined for 18 years. In these analyses, other factors, such as date,body length, body weight, age, etc. were included as parameters. The analyses showed a0.02cm (17kg) blubber decline per year, resulting in a 9% decline for 18 years. This study
concluded that the reason or reasons for this long term decline could be either the population
decline of krill, competition among other krill feeding whale species, or could be both.

• The paper (Konishi et al. 2008) is significant because a long-term trend in energy
storage in the large biomass minke whale was for the first time reported in a peerreviewed scientific publication. The energy-trend study is important to show whatchange is occurring in the Antarctic ecosystem as well as in the population of minke
whales. The population change and food web are related with energy flow, andenergy stock is one of the important indices. This paper also discussed the new resultsfrom JARPA and IDCR-SOWER that showed the recovery of humpback populationthat may cause competition with the minke whale for their ecological niche.
1ICR Comment
Anti-whaling scientists and NGO activists are not experts on all of the wide range ofsubjects relating to whales, whaling and whale research. In order to ensure their articles
inform readers of the facts, journalists and editors of non-peer-reviewed newspapers andmagazines have a far greater responsibility than those in the peer-reviewed journals tofilter out distortions and misrepresentation by people with an agenda. It is troubling thatsome journalists and editors present views opposing whale research that are biased ortendentious as if they were widely-accepted scientific truths. The general public is
unable to perceive the difference between a scientific finding and pure demagoguery
intended to create controversy. Helping to spread such misrepresentation damages not
only the public perception and respect of science but also the credibility of journalism.
One of the best things about science is that it is a self-correcting discipline. We believethat any self-respecting scientist should prevent themselves from dedicating time andefforts to publicly discrediting other scientists’ work without ever producing any
scientific results or producing reports from the methods they propagandize as thesolution to systematically obtaining all scientific data, that is non-lethal research. Thus,
the only way to deny someone’s scientific results is to produce other results and publish
them in a peer-reviewed journal.
• Responses prepared by Dr. Kenji Konishi to questions by The Guardian (UK).
(The Guardian chose to publish two news articles on the subject before receiving
our responses.)
GUARDIAN: What is the implication for the health of the whales?
KONISHI: Our work clearly showed that the Antarctic minke whale reduced its stockedenergy in the feeding summer season. However, solely from these results we cannot say
how this energy decline means for the Antarctic minke whale health.
GUARDIAN: Would they find it harder to survive the winters?
Survival from starvation is the most serious problem for any animal species. However,starvation is an extreme phenomenon. The data from our survey do not suggest that theAntarctic minke whale is undergoing starvation, because they still stock energy during
their feeding period.
GUARDIAN: Could they be less successful at breeding?
To know the effects of energy decline, we would also need to refer to pregnancy rate,
because reproduction is firstly affected by the lack of energy. If the decline continues
further for a long period, the minke whale will be less successful at breeding.
GUARDIAN: A 9% decrease in fat weight over 18 years seems a large change. Why
has nobody reported it before now?
Dr. Seiji Ohsumi has already reported the energy decline for the IWC’ scientific reportwith a simple analysis in 1997. But the meeting required further refinement andconsideration.
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GUARDIAN: Many people have criticised the Japanese scientific whaling program. Do
you think this vindicates the research?
Sorry, I can’t find any relevant connection to our article in your question.
GUARDIAN: Could this work have been done without killing the whales?
I’m sure that without our research program we would have not been able to becomeaware and report on the energy decline in the Antarctic minke whale.
GUARDIAN: What needs to be done now to monitor the situation further into thefuture?
To monitor and grasp the situation further into the future of the Antarctic minke whale,
other animal species related and their ecosystem changes, a continuous, long-term andsystematic research such as the Japanese whale research program is necessary.

• Responses given in writing by Dr. Kenji Konishi to questions by National
Geographic
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC: If your interest is determining how the physicalenvironment and predator consumption affects krill demography, couldn't you justmeasure krill abundance directly? Why did you have to look at minke whale blubber?
KONISHI: We are a cetacean research organization so our major focus is naturally withwhales. Our interest is not limited to how the physical environment and predator
consumption affects krill demography. And, our result is a part of JARPA program,which is a long-term study of cetaceans in the Antarctic.
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC: Other scientists I have spoken to argue that there are
nonlethal ways of obtaining similar data. For example, skin biopsies could be taken.
What is your response to this?
KONISHI: These data could only be obtained using lethal research. The measurement(sampling) position on the whale body must be same, whereas biopsy samples are notfrom same position of body. No scientists could obtain the results from the chemical ormeasurement energy analyses using samples from different part of body and depth ofblubber.
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC: Your team hypothesizes in the paper that a possible
reason for the minke whales' reduction in blubber thickness is due to competition fromother baleen whales. You mention a computer model that supports the idea that different
whale species can interact and compete with one another. Is there any real world
evidence for this? Is this something JARPA scientists are planning to investigate?
KONISHI: The ecosystem model which I cited in our paper is also published in a peer
reviewed journal, CCAMLR Science. This paper used real data of historical catch,sighting survey and stomach contents data obtained from JARPA survey. Thisecosystem model matched to the real present data which many scientists have alreadycontributed for a long time. So this hypothesis is consistent with other research.
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC: In your analysis, did you consider how the distance fromsea ice where the whales were captured might affect their blubber thickness? Iunderstand this was a recommendation by the IWC to JARPA in 2006.
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KONISHI: Yes, we considered the capture position with ice. In our analyses, weincluded latitude, which is also covering the distance to permanent ice, as anindependent parameter. Pack ice and minke whales are quite mobile, so the distance topack ice is not a good parameter in the energy analysis.
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC: Your data suggests that minke whales have gotten
progressively leaner as a result of decreased krill. Some people might argue this isevidence that minke whales are not fit to be commercially hunted again any time soon.
Do you have any thoughts on this?
KONISHI: I do not think such an argument can be made based on our study because themarine ecosystem is very complex and there are many factors that need to be considered,such as abundance and the age range of the stock. As we wrote on the paper on Polar
Biology, krill decrease and the increase of humpback have to be considered equally.
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC: Can you translate the .36 centimeter reduction in minke
whale blubber to a percentage loss of krill in the oceans? In other words, how much lesskrill must there be in the ocean for the minke whale to lose that much blubber?
KONISHI: This calculation is not included within the scope of our paper.

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