Table of Contents

Title: Chapter 17 Nekton: Free Swimmers of the Sea; 17.1

Mammals

Page #: 85

Date: 3/12/13

Objective

• Students will be able to discuss the international regulation and history of whaling.

Word of the Day

• Mammal: Any of various warm-blooded vertebrate animals of the class Mammalia, including humans, characterized by a covering of hair on the skin and, in the female, milk-producing mammary glands for nourishing the young.

Nekton

• Nekton • Organisms that swim in the sea.• Can be warm blooded or cold

blooded.

Mammals

• Mammals

p. 415

• Warm blooded - “homeotherms.”

• Breath air.• Streamlined shapes for diving.• Live young (not eggs.)• Nursed by mother.

Mammals

• Whales

p. 415

• Cetaceans• Can have teeth (toothed

whales.)• Can have baleen: Boney filter

for capturing krill.• May migrate short or long

distances.

Mammals

• Whaling

p. 418

• Great Whales:– Blue– Sperm– Humpback– Finback– Sei– Right

Great Whales

Mammals

• Whaling

p. 418

• Whales are hunted for oil baleen and blubber.

• 800 - 1000 A.D.: Earliest European whaling by the Norse.

• 1700s & 1800s: Hand-held harpoons.• 1868: Harpoon gun invented.• 1925: Factory ships allow whales to

be processed at sea.• 1930s: Whales going extinct. Blues

whales at less than 4% of their original populations.

Basque (French and Spanish) whalers.

Mammals

• Whaling

p. 418

• 1946: International Whaling Commission (IWC) established by Australia, Argentina, Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Panama, South Africa, Soviet Union and U.S.– Killing of Blues, Grays, Bowheads, Right

and cows with calves stopped.– Opening and closing dates and

minimum size data established.

Mammals

• Whaling

p. 418

• 1979: IWC moratorium on all whaling in Indian Ocean. Use of factory ships outlawed.– Whaling continues from land bases in

Antarctica.

• IWC moratorium on all commercial whaling except dolphins and porpoises.

Mammals

• Whaling

p. 418

• 1993: Norway resumes whaling. Hunts Minke whales under its own catch limits.

• 1994: IWC creates whale sanctuary below 55º S in Antarctic waters.– Japan votes against it.

• 1999: Iceland leaves IWC and begins whaling.

• 2000: Japan begins “scientific” whale hunt in Antarctic waters (Whale Wars.)

IWC Whale Sanctuaries

Mammals

• Whaling

p. 418

p. 419

• IWC allows whaling by native peoples of Alaska, Greenland, former Soviet Union.

• Whale populations recover slowly:– Its hard to find mates.– Noise interference by ships.– Krill harvesting.– Pollution.

Classwork

• Page 193 • Issue #14 Lifestyles of the Large and Blubbery: Of Blue Whales and Krill