Declines in coastal fish catches have resulted in people in many developing countries seeking other sources of protein and sea mammals are increasingly being tapped as food sources, NewScientist.com reported Friday.

Though the consumption of marine mammals is condemned in much of the world, and large-scale whaling has decreased in the last four decades, smaller cetaceans like dolphins are making up for dwindling protein sources in coastal areas of west Africa, Peru, Brazil, Colombia, Trinidad and Tobago, Madagascar, Sri Lanka, India, the Philippines and Burma, the researchers said.

"This is essentially a bushmeat problem," said Martin Robards of the Wildlife Conservation Society in Alaska, who worked with Randall Reeves of the Okapi Wildlife Associates in Quebec, Canada, to create the first comprehensive survey of the kinds and amounts of marine mammals consumed each year.

From 1970 to 2009 humans ate at least 92 species of cetaceans, they said.

"Traditionally, you think of Japan or natives in the Arctic as big consumers, and they are," Robards said, "but that's not the whole story."

Their meat and scales were probably destined for China to be used in culinary delicacies, traditional medicine and handicrafts, the officials said.

No one was arrested in the seizure operations this week at Puerto Princesa airport on the island of Palawan, the only area where they can be found in the Philippines, said local conservation official Alex Marciada.

"We suspect, considering the volume of the scales, that between 80 to 100 individual (pangolins) were butchered," Marciada, spokesman of the Palawan Council for Sustainable Development, told AFP.

The pangolin, which eats termites and ants, is a protected animal in the Philippines where it is considered "near-threatened" by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature due to extensive hunting and habitat loss.

Palawan authorities seized 26.5 kilograms (58 pounds) of pangolin meat on Wednesday and 95 kilograms of pangolin scales on Monday at Puerto Princesa airport, Marciada said.

Also seized with the pangolin scales were 90.5 kilograms of scales from endangered sea turtles, he said, describing the seizures as the biggest haul of trafficked pangolin meat in Palawan.

Wildlife officers said the shipment was disguised as frozen goat meat.

The government is hunting for those behind the killing of the pangolins which is punishable by up to six years in jail for every animal killed, said wildlife enforcement officer Adelina Villena.