As the Report of the 2009 Expert Workshop on JARPN II
states;
“The primary rationale for stomach sampling, which requires
killing the animal, is the qualitative and quantitative information
on prey composition (e g species, age) and stomach fullness that it
provides, all of which are valuable when studying consumption
and functional relationships between marine mammals and their
prey … The Panel recognises that at present, certain data, primarily
stomach content data, are only available via lethal sampling