Aquatic Bushmeat
The Beaked Whale Stranding Event.
8.4.2019
I am sharing some <GRAPHIC CONTENT> because I feel like there are a number of important conversations that need to happen and nothing tells a story better than a set of captivating images.
This picture shows a chunk of whale meat, freshly cut off one of 3 beaked whales that stranded dead on my home beach here in Praia do Tofo, Mozambique on Monday (I have some more images saved to the ‘conservation’ story in my highlights on my Instagram page @jessisatthebeach).
In my mind, there are three key issues; 1) the lack of attention and awareness of the issue of aquatic bushmeat; 2) the blatant public health issue regarding the risks of consuming the meat from stranded dead whales; 3) the lack of adherence to operational protocols and legislative tools that have been designed to guide how these situations are dealt with.
So let’s talk about ‘Bushmeat’. It's the term used to describe the harvest of terrestrial and feral wild mammals for food and sometimes bait.
More recently the concept of aquatic bushmeat has evolved. It was acknowledged by CMS (Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals) in 2016 as an emerging threat to marine megafauna (i.e. turtles, whales, sharks, dugong, dolphin, rays, also sea birds and crocodiles!).
Aquatic bushmeat is obtained through illegal or unregulated hunting, stranded animals (alive or dead) and through bycatch.
I've been delving into this issue in Mozambique for a number of years now with regards to how sea turtles are impacted by aquatic bushmeat and more recently in Madagascar too. Aquatic bushmeat is a complex conservation topic to deal with. It often falls through legislative cracks, isn't taken seriously by enforcement and in general, is not addressed probably due to its multifaceted nature. By this I mean that it’s complex to deal with because animals are targeted, opportunistically seized and also because it crosses sectors from community/ artisanal fisheries to large-scale commercial fisheries and #IUU (illegal, unregulated and reported) fishing and maybe is mixed in with or confused a little with #IWT (illegal wildlife crime).
These pictures illustrate one of the many complicated facets of the aquatic bushmeat problem. It is the seizing of aquatic bushmeat from a stranding event (in this particular case the whales were already dead upon stranding).
Despite that, all whales are protected in MZ waters, that some conservation areas have operational protocols (mostly verbal agreements) for what to do in stranding events, every time a megafauna stranding event occurs there is chaos. A plethora of administrative, bureaucratic, enforcement issues mixed in with a few well-intentioned scientists and then a mob-mentality of hundreds of people from the local community.
These scenarios are always a highly-emotional mix of competing interests from stakeholders. The administrators and government are confused about how to handle the situation given they have zero resources or operational budgets to do their jobs. The police are unclear about the relevant environmental laws and what they should do to manage the growing frenetic crowd of hungry people.
The local community believes that stranded animals like this are a gift sent from God. They don't consider that for an animal to arrive on the beach is an atypical scenario. The community don't consider that the animals were already dead on arrival and why might this have been. A lack of obvious physical injuries to the animals suggested illness/disease was a possible cause of death.
Most of the community were keen to harvest the meat even though they believed the animals were dolphins rather than belonging to a rare family of beaked whales. To almost everyone, including myself the beaked whales really do look quite similar to dolphins just a lot bigger.
Due to the low literacy and education rates, most of the community don't know about the ecological concepts of higher order animals in the food chain, nor about the concept of bioaccumulation of toxins and heavy metals in the tissues of such species at the upper end of the food webs.
The community were largely unaware of the risks of eating aquatic bushmeat from such a scenario. Unfortunately many did not want to hear the opinion that eating this meat could be a risk to their health or their families.
Beaked whales are notoriously hard to confirm species ID. There's a few species in the Ziphiidae family that these specimens could be and they are all pretty data deficient. Cue the excitement from marine mammal scientists across the globe as word spread…..
Mozambique has a strong, shiny new conservation law since 2017 to aggregate the penalties for wildlife crimes. It was primarily designed to help fight against the rapidly escalating elephant and lion poaching but it covers all protected species, marine or terrestrial. It adds measures to strengthen penalties related to protected species (MZ listed or CITES listed) in and outside of conservation areas with specific mention to authorities and enforcement officers associated with any IWT, including “extracting wildlife resources, to sell, distribute, purchase, transfer, receive, provide to another person, transport, import, export, transit or prepare protected or prohibited species”.
Ideally, the whale carcasses should have been buried or burnt, with the skeletons saved or exhumed later to use for science and outreach.
Why because;
1) all whales are classified as protected species in MZ and there are legal instruments that prohibit sharing the carcass for any other reason;
2) it is a human health risk to consume whale meat from stranded animals because the cause of death was unclear and
3) the whales were considered as a rare stranding event and are understudied, especially in this part of their subtropical distribution so collecting all possible scientific information would be useful for informing science and conservation.
Despite the legal instruments and the scientific desires to document a rare species, the growing pressure from the community resulted in the police consenting to the harvest of the dead whales for meat.
In other parts of the world, carcasses like this are considered hazardous biological waste and are appropriately disposed of by local authorities.
In this situation, this was not the case. With no regard for public health or even a verbal warning of the risks of consumption by the authorities, the three carcasses were dismantled for protein. The first was dismantled by the local community before the authorities and other stakeholders were even aware it existed.
The whales were frantically chopped apart, with people running back and forth from the carcasses to their designated beach spot, dumping slabs of bloody meat in the sand and running back to claim for more.
Filling buckets and plastic bags. The sand stained red, everyone's hands, arms, feet and clothes covered in blood. Free meat, free protein is a gift and after all, it was the perfect way to celebrate a public holiday.
Finally, there's a lot of follow up work that could be done to learn from this situation;
>Discussions between the health departments, environmental department, fisheries, academia and conservationists are needed. To review the way the process was handled and how to improve for next time.
>Protocols for managing stranded animals should be developed and all stakeholders should be trained on this material.
>The communities need to be sensitised on the risks of consumption of aquatic bushmeat from stranded animals. Conservation sensitisation is also needed to discuss the idea that not everything that can and should be an edible protein source.
>A review of existing legal mechanisms and how they apply in this situation including revision of such tools with relevant stakeholders. Including how and when poverty and the claim of hungry people overrule the principle that encouraging the consumption of protected species is counterproductive for their conservation. Reviewing the authoritative hierarchy to determine if this is subjectively interpreted who actually has the jurisdiction on the day to make such a decision.
> Who is liable and what would have happened if hundreds of people became sick from eating this meat.
Are you interested to collaborate with me on one of the points above? Or continue to investigate aquatic bushmeat? I'd love to hear from you with ideas. Please get in touch.
