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Fin whale

Short and cruel hunt season ends in Iceland

The shortened Icelandic fin whale hunts season has finished with a final total of 23...
Bottlenose dolphins breaching

Landmark report reveals UK wildlife’s devastating decline

With whales and dolphins already facing many threats, a landmark report released this week reveals...
Dolphins with oil rig

Go ahead for new UK oil and gas exploration threatens whales and dolphins

Permission has been granted for the development of the UK's biggest untapped oilfield off Shetland,...
Icelandic hunting vessels in port

Whaling boat kept in port after more hunt cruelty exposed

Icelandic whale hunting fleet One of the whaling boats involved in the latest hunts in...

New report links toxins to whale strandings and low fertility levels

A new study, to be released this week by the Institute of Zoology in London, will reveal high toxin levels in large numbers of dead whales, dolphins and porpoises that have stranded on shores around Europe.

Scientists involved in the research warn that samples from the 1,081 marine mammals studied indicate that the accumulation of these deadly toxins may cause the strandings, and drastically lower fertility levels. It is thought that pollutants such as flame retardants and PCBs, man-made compounds used widely in electrical equipment until the 1970s, suppress the immune system, making the animals become distressed from multiple bacterial, parasitic and other infections.

This new report follows another by scientists at Aberdeen University released in February , which found very high levels of chemical toxins in the bodies of a pod of whales stranded in Scotland three years ago. That study suggested that chemicals could have been a factor in the whales navigating off course.