The Minke Whale Hearing Project: Another Way to Harass and Kill Marine Mammals
Norway makes no apologies for its ongoing slaughter of whales. This time, however, the assault was funded by the U.S.
If you were to devise a plan for harassing, injuring, and killing whales, Norway is where you would want to pull it off.
Despite the moratorium on commercial whaling spearheaded by the International Whaling Commission in 1982 and put into effect in 1986, Norway has not halted the commercial killing of whales (more on that in a minute).
This brings us to the bizarre Minke Whale Hearing Project –- a U.S.-funded study to take hearing measurements in baleen whales.
Baleen whales, which filter plankton, krill, and small fish through incredible keratin plates in their mouths, include the humpback and gigantic blue whale –- the largest animal on Earth –- along with 14 other species. But if you’re going to corral, trap, and experiment on them, it’s best to go for the smallest variety, juvenile minke whales.
In May of 2021 off of Lofoten, Norway, a scheme was put into effect to do just that, using netting between two small islands the whales are known to traverse during their summer migration. The unsuspecting whales were trapped and then corralled into a “modified fish farm.”
Once inside the fish farm, the netting was pulled up from below, encasing the whales in an immobile position where attached electrodes measured their hearing. This “non-invasive method” the National Marine Mammal Foundation assured us, is the same one used to “test a human newborn baby’s hearing.”
Only these aren’t human newborns. They’re free-ranging, marine mammals weighing thousands of pounds who were abducted while going about their business in their own habitat.
Despite numerous objections to the plan, including a “statement of concern” from the Whale and Dolphin Conservation (WDC) signed off by 50 scientists and veterinarians from around the world, the Minke Whale Hearing Project went forward.
In the end, several of the trapped whales, including a humpback, somehow managed to escape. Two of the juvenile minke whales that were captured were likely calves still dependent on their mothers.
One of the minkes suffered “paralysis with subsequent myopathy” when it came into contact with the net, requiring intervention to keep its breathing hole above water. As described in an email between members of the research group, “Eventually the animal began to hyperventilate and vomited.”
Another hapless minke became entangled in a “barrier line” that came loose, resulting in its drowning.
Finally, in 2023 the “auditory brainstem response” of two whales was investigated and documented in a paper published late last year in Science, which noted a higher level of sensitivity to ultrasonic frequencies than previously known. This “may mean that whales are even more affected by our noise than we thought,” noted Sacha Vignieri, a senior research editor at the magazine.
The cruelty involved aside, however, nothing appears to have changed in the permitted volume of noise we routinely create in the ocean, such as in the construction and operation of offshore wind turbines.
The monetary price of this project has not been released. What we do know, however, is that it was entirely funded by U.S. federal agencies, namely NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), the Marine Mammal Commission, U.S. Navy Living Marine Resources, the Office of Naval Research, and BOEM (the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management).
Asked if she knew of any legitimate reason for this research, Regina Asmutis-Silvia, executive director of Whale and Dolphin Conservation North America, told me, “The concerns over this experiment remain largely the same as when it was first proposed and executed…We know the long-term impact on the whale who died as a result of the experimental design, but what about those who were released?”
Whales, she pointed out, “remember things just like we do. Releasing the whales alive does not mean that these individuals will not suffer long-term stress responses to sounds or activities they associate with this experiment.
“It is both tragic and ironic,” she added, “to harm individual whales to substantiate just how harmful human sounds are on these species.”
Keep on whaling
Since the 1986 International Whaling Commission’s moratorium on commercial whaling, reports out of Norway indicate that 15,000 whales, including 580 in 2022, have been hunted. The legal workaround is said to be a “formal objection” issued by Norway to the ban.
According to WDC “At first, whales were hunted under the guise of ‘scientific research’ but by 1993, Norway resumed full-blown, openly commercial whaling citing its ‘objection’ to the moratorium.”
Another country that has continued to hunt whales is Iceland. Despite halting the 2023 hunt, it resumed commercial whaling in 2024, permitting Hvalur hf., the only remaining whaling company in Iceland, to kill 128 fin whales. According to Reuters, most of the whale meat is sold to Japan, a third country that engages in commercial whaling.
Norwegians are said to consume very small amounts of whale meat these days, with most of the catch ending up as dog food.
And as reported by National Geographic a number of years ago, it appears the cruelty came full circle when whale meat from Norway hunts was turned into feed for animals being raised on fur farms.
As for the data obtained during the hearing project, Asmutis-Silvia puts it this way: “There are a million things we still don’t know about whales; their hearing thresholds are just one of them.”
Beyond outrageous. Great reporting, Linda!
I'm printing a copy of this story and putting it in the ocean for cetaceans to read.