Date: Fri, 10 May, 1996
Japanese researchers fertilize whale ova in-vitro+

SAPPORO, Kyodo, - Japanese researchers said Friday they conducted the world's first in-vitro fertilization of minke whale ova during a research expedition in the recent southern hemisphere summer. The researchers said the experiment was aimed at comparative research into the protection and cultivation of threatened whale species.

It was conducted during the annual scientific whaling expedition in the Antarctic Ocean by the government-affiliated Institute of Cetacean Research between November 1995 and April this year. The researchers said they first extracted the ova from a harvested whale and waited for them to mature before fertilizing them with frozen whale sperm. They said they carried out the operation several dozen times aboard ship during the expedition.

Yutaka Fukui, professor at the Obihiro University of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine in the northernmost main island of Hokkaido, who was a member of the research team, said photos taken under a microscope during the procedure are being analyzed to determine whether it was a success.

The procedure relied on methods used in the in-vitro fertilization of cattle, although the time needed for maturation of whale ova is three times that of cattle. Fukui said future experiments will focus on finding the optimum conditions for cultivating the ova. He said researchers wanting to artificially increase whale populations will have to overcome the difficult problem of inserting a fertilized ovum into a female whale.

Hidehiro Kato, who heads the Large Cetacean Program at the Fisheries Agency's National Research Institute for Far Seas Laboratory in Shimizu, Shizuoka Prefecture in central Japan, said it is the first time the first stage of fertilized whale ova has been observed.
"It has tremendous significance for the understanding of the whale's breeding mechanism, which is said to be similar to that of cattle and horses," Kato said.

The Institute of Cetacean Research was established as a nonprofit organization by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries in 1987 to undertake scientific research on whales following the introduction of a moratorium on commercial whaling. The Institute catches a quota of minke whales in the Antarctic Ocean for research purposes.



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