Date: Mon, 24 Jun, 1996
(APN) Return of the Whales - Brazil

At the whaling industry's peak in the mid-18th century, whaling stations known as "armacaoes" -- traps -- appeared every 125 miles along Brazil's seaboard. In those days, when 400 to 600 whales were killed each year off the coast of Santa Catarina alone, overhunting was already evident.

Right whales gradually vanished off Bahia, Espirito Santo, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo and Parana states. By the 1890s, fisherman reported just six kills a year off Santa Catarina. That number dwindled to three by 1950. A decade later, only one whaling station remained in operation -- the armacao at Imbituba, 60 miles south of the state capital of Florianopolis.

In 1973, marine biologists pronounced the right whales extinct in Brazil and the Imbituba station -- where 350 whales were slaughtered a year at the turn of the century -- finally closed its kilns.

Eight years passed, and scientists wrote off any possibility the creatures might return. But navy Admiral Ibsen Camara, the vice commander of Brazil's armed forces and the only outspoken critic of whaling during the 1964-1985 military regime, thought otherwise.

With a $1,000 grant from the University of Miami, he called Palazzo -- then a first-year biology major at college -- and asked him to look for the whales off the shores of Santa Catarina.

For more than a year, the portly, spectacled 18-year-old cut classes and exams and spent weekends camping on beaches up and down the state searching for the whales, to no avail. With his grant money running out, Palazzo tried the island of Sao Francisco do Sul in September 1982. Fishermen had told of seeing a great black fish swimming close to shore.

It was 8 a.m. and he was walking along the beach when a spout offshore caught his eye.
"This big, black thing was rising and falling in the water," recalls Palazzo. "It was a whale, and she had a nylon gill net caught in her fin. I fell down on my knees and started to cry."

In 1986, Palazzoreceived an $8,000 grant from the World Wildlife Fund to study the whales and to teach conservation to fishermen, using books and slide shows.
"There was a radical change in the fishermen's behavior," he says. "They understood how important it was to save the whales and they began to volunteer to protect them."

A year later, the government imposed a whaling ban. Offenders were punished with five-year prison terms and the seizure of their boats and equipment. Last year, Santa Catarina Gov. Paulo Afonso declared state waters a whale refuge and ordered state police to patrol for clandestine whalers.

Today, scientists say the right whale population is growing by 8 percent a year. But its future is hardly guaranteed. Environmental groups facing shrinking donations are cutting outlays. In May, the International Wildlife Coalition -- Palazzo's main sponsor -- halved its $30,000-a-year funding. Meanwhile, the equipment needed to monitor the whales grows costlier and results, not surprisingly, are slow.

To track the whales, Palazzo wants to tag them with high frequency transmitters that can be monitored by satellite. But each tag costs $3,000, and the satellite hookup $1,000.
"It's futile to protect them here and leave them exposed in other areas," he says. "We need to discover their migration paths to keep whalers away from them on the high seas."

One big enemy is the Japanese whaler. Every year, Japanese ships go to Antarctica and hunt countless endangered species. Meanwhile, lobbyists from Tokyo exert pressure on the International Whaling Commission to end the 1986 worldwide ban.

A more subtle threat to the whales is the contamination of their marine environment with organochlorine compounds, such as DDTs and PCBs. Studies show that arctic waters act as a sink for organochlorines. The contaminants tend to accumulate in the whale's blubber, and mothers pass their toxic load on to their babies through their milk. Each generation of whales starts out with more toxins than the previous one, a process known as bio-magnification, says Allison Smith of the British Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society in Bath, England. Whales with high concentrations of organochlorines are susceptible to diseases that normally wouldn't affect them, she says, posing a risk of major die-offs.
"What will ultimately decide the fate of the whales will be what the average person throws away in his kitchen sink or trash can," she says.

But Palazzo remains enthusiastic. Recently, he has been working to start a tourism agency that he hopes will attract whale watchers from around the world. The revenue, he says, will be put back into the project. He works around the clock, spends weekends away from his wife and two children and has spent all of his inheritance to keep the whale project going. Will he ever give up?
"No way," Palazzo says. "To meet a right whale is to face 60 million years of evolution. They've managed to survive all this time. We can't just let them die off now."



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