Page 319 - Environment: The Science Behind the Stories

ThE SCIENCE BEhIND ThE STORY

Using Forensics Because subspecies of whales from
to Uncover Illegal different oceans differ genetically, the
researchers were able to analyze the
Whaling genetic variation in their samples and
learn that one fin whale came from
As any television buff knows, foren- the Atlantic, the other three came
sic science is a crucial tool in solving from the Pacific, and eight of the nine
mysteries and fighting crime. In recent minke whales came from the Southern
years, conservation biologists have Hemisphere.
been using forensics to unearth secrets Dr. C. Scott baker runs genetic analyses Because several of these spe-
and catch bad guys in the multi-billion- in a Japanese hotel room. cies and subspecies were off-limits
dollar illegal global wildlife trade. One to hunting, the data suggested that
such detective story comes from the Stephen Palumbi, Frank Cipriano, and some meat had been hunted, pro-
Pacific Ocean and Japan. their colleagues. For close to two dec- cessed, or traded illegally. Baker and
The meat from whales has long ades they have been traveling to Asia Palumbi concluded in a 1994 paper
been a delicacy in Japan and other on what have amounted to top-secret in Science that “legal whaling serves
nations. Whaling ships decimated popu- grocery shopping trips. as a cover for the sale of illegal whale
lations of most species of whales in the It began in 1993, when Baker products.” They urged that the inter-
20th century through overhunting, and and Palumbi bought samples of whale national community monitor catches
the International Whaling Commission meat—all labeled simply as kujira, more closely.
(IWC) outlawed commercial whaling the generic Japanese term for whale Two years later, Baker, Palumbi,
worldwide beginning in 1986. Yet whale meat—from markets in Japan and and Cipriano presented results from
meat continues to be sold to wealthy sequenced DNA from these samples. markets in South Korea and Japan.
consumers (Figure 1). This meat comes Law forbids the export of whale meat, Again their genetic sleuthing revealed
legally from several sources: so the researchers had to run analyses a diversity of whale species, and they
in their hotel rooms with portable genetic stated that their data were “difficult to
• From scientific hunts. Japan and kits. Once back home in the United reconcile” with records of legal catches
several other nations negotiated States, they compared their data with (scientific whaling by Japan and fish-
with the IWC to continue to hunt sequences from known whale species. ing bycatch by South Korea) reported
limited numbers of whales for By analyzing which samples by these nations to the IWC. Among
research purposes, and this meat matched which, they concluded that the whales they detected were two
may be sold afterwards.
they had sampled meat from nine specimens of what seemed to be a
• From whales killed accidentally minke whales, four fin whales, one subspecies or species of whale new to
when caught in fishing nets meant humpback whale, and two dolphins. science.
for other animals (bycatch; p. 457).
• Possibly from stockpiles frozen
before the IWC’s moratorium.

However, conservation biolo-
gists long suspected that much of the
whale meat on the market was actually
caught illegally for the purpose of sell-
ing for food and that fleets from Japan
and other nations were killing more
whales than international law allowed.
Once DNA sequencing technology was Figure 1 Whale
developed, scientists could use this meat, much of
tool to find out. it illegal, is sold
The detectives in this story are in Japanese and
conservation geneticists C. Scott Baker, Korean markets.

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