South Korea puzzled by claims on whaling

South Korean officials said Thursday they were puzzled by a report that the country's fishermen are deliberately netting whales in defiance of an international ban. Whale meat can be sold legally in South Korea if the mammals are accidentally caught in fishing nets, but these deaths must be reported to the authorities.A report in Britain's New Scientist magazine cites DNA experts, who estimate South Korean trawlermen caught 827 minke whales between 1999 and 2003. This compares with the figure of 458 reported to the authorities.The report said the findings fuel suspicions that -- far from accidentally netting cetaceans -- South Korean fishermen deliberately try to snare them."I'm not in a position to comment on a scientific study. But we have a solid system to control commercial whaling," Ahn Chi-Guk, deputy director of the Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries, told AFP.Marine police inspect whales to determine whether they were caught accidentally or deliberately. Intentional catches are punishable with a jail term of up to three years or a fine of 20 million won (21,000 dollars).But activists say a minke whale can fetch up to 100,000 dollars, a powerful incentive for fishermen to take the risk.Scientists led by Scott Baker of Oregon State University bought minke meat in South Korean markets and used DNA "fingerprinting" -- getting the genetic ID of each animal -- to calculate how many individual whales had been caught.The figure of 827 is arrived at mathematically, using the number of signatures to estimate the whales' population and the size of the so-called by-catch over the four years."We suspect this is really a form of unregulated commercial whaling," Baker told New Scientist.Kim Zang-Geun, head of the state-financed Cetacean Research Institute, said the estimate might have been overblown."I can't say for sure until I see the original paper, but I wonder if the sampling and statistical estimate can be reliable enough," he said, noting that access to the whale meat market here is very limited.The International Whaling Commission, which is meeting this month in Alaska, imposes a moratorium on commercial whaling.The future of minke whales in the Sea of Japan (East Sea) is the subject of an review by the commission, but Baker believes this population could be imperilled by the hidden "by-catch".