The Institute of Cetacean Research
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Bycatches Surveys
Bycatches surveys
There are a number of bycatch events of large whales along the Japanese coast, mainly associated to entanglements in commercial fisheries set nets on both sides of the Japanese archipelago. The Japanese regulation on bycatches of large whales (established from 1 July 2001) requires that all animals should be registered with a DNA profile before any product derived from a bycaught animal are sold in the market. Details of the regulation and procedure can be found in: http://www.icrwhale.org/pdf/higekujira.pdf. The Institute of Cetacean Research (ICR) is the institution in charge of registering genetically all large whales bycaught along the Japanese coast. DNA profiles of bycaught animals are added into the Japanese DNA register for large whales.
Fos this aim ICR asks the fishermen to collect a small piece of skin or muscle samples from bycaught whales, which they should send to the genetic laboratory of the ICR (as frozen samples). Together with the genetic samples, the fishermen should provide the following information to the ICR in accordance with an established protocol: species, date and location of the bycatch, type of set net, body length and sex of the bycaught whales to be used (sold). The ICR corroborates species identity by DNA analysis.
The most frequent bycaught baleen whale in set nets along the Japanese coast is the common minke whale (Figure 1). The genetic profiles of bycaught common minke whales have been added into a larger genetic data set, which has been used by ICR scientists in analyses on stock structure of this species.
Figure 1. A common minke whale bycaught in a fisheries set net.
Information on bycatches of large cetacean and results of analyses are reported to the International Whaling Commission's Scientific Committee (IWC SC) and North Atlantic Marine Mammal Commission's Scientific Committee (NAMMCO SC) annual meetings on a voluntary base as Progress Reports on Cetacean Research.