New? Hardly. Analysis of DNA in blue whale faeces has been applied in California for more than 10 years, so don't expect the world of whale science to be rocked to its foundations.

It has also met with limited success, and for just one species of whale, prompting Japan's Institute of Cetacean Research (ICR) to say: "Australian scientists have misrepresented their research in order to make a political statement against whaling."

The research was "revealed", to the BBC at least, by Dr. Nick Gales, a research scientist with the Antarctic division of Australia's Environment Department.

He said: "We will be telling the International Whaling Commission that this is a robust, non-lethal method for studying whales. It's going to provide some real information to put into food web models. If it points out that whales are competing for fish stocks, then we'll have to deal with that."

Political Motive
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out why Australia should be pushing this "robust, non-lethal method", and why its "announcement" comes so late in the day.

Its introduction to the IWC, but more importantly to the news-hungry media, is intended to undermine Japan's lethal sampling program, one of the justifications for which is the need to study whales' diet.

And the reason why we have waited so long is because all the other attempts to cast aspersions on Japan's research had to fail first. These have ranged from the ridiculous claim by the Humane Society of the US that Japanese scientists cannot tell a dead whale from a live one (see "The Living Dead Whale!", Harpoon, 1996), to the now perennial revelation by New Zealand scientists that the meat from endangered whales is readily available in Japan. Yawn.

No Substitute
People who get beyond the headlines of media reports will also realise that the "new" research being introduced by Australia really is no substitute for Japan's methodology.

It has not been tested on minke whales, and Dr. Gales acknowledged to the BBC that it could not meet some of Japan's research aims.

The ICR, which oversees the Japanese research program, is more specific.

"While DNA analysis of whale faeces may provide information on what an individual whale has eaten, the technique is not a substitute for research involving killing whales and examining stomach contents because it will not provide data on how much and where whales have eaten. These data are essential for ecosystem models.

"The primary objective of Japan's whale research programs is the development of ecosystem models that will improve the basis for the management of all marine resources. Eco-system models require data that can only be obtained from direct examination of whale stomach contents. With DNA analysis, there is a high probability that important prey species could be missed and the analysis does not provide a basis to calculate total volumes of prey consumed or the relative importance of different prey species as components of the diet."

Stubborn
Still, in a head-to-head comparison with the Japanese research, the study of faeces has its merits, insists Gales. "It's certainly no more time-consuming than killing whales," he told the BBC. "And it's a lot cheaper."

Really? Chasing a few blue whales off the coast of California is one thing. But can we now expect an Australian research fleet to go chasing hundreds of Antarctic minke whales in search of "thin brown clouds"?

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