Governments Gather In The Fight To Keep Minke Whales Off The Menu
The Sunday Age
Sunday July 2, 2000
One of the world's most emotive and politically explosive battles enters a crucial phase in Adelaide tomorrow when 35 government representatives and 13 national and global environment groups gather for the continuing campaign to save the whale.
Government ministers from New Zealand and Britain will join federal Environment Minister Robert Hill to try to prevent marauding harpoon boats, mostly from Japan and Norway, from slaughtering increasing numbers of some of the greatest mammals on earth so diners can eat whale in Japan and Norway.
The mood for the International Whaling Commission meeting has been set partly by the environmental and animal rights' coalition, which promises a peaceful WhaleFest 2000 in Adelaide to coincide with the event, and by the IWC, which has foreshadowed increased security to protect international delegates from possible attacks.
Emotions are expected to run high at the three-day session as several nations support the Australian and New Zealand proposal to substantially increase the protective zones for whales, while condemning the cruelty of blowing whales apart with explosives-laden harpoons.
Whaling opponents also want to take a further step towards a global whale sanctuary system and to prevent the Japanese from expanding the slaughter by adding two new species to be hunted by its factory ship and harpoon gun boats.
They now want to take another 50 Bryde's whales and 10 sperm whales a year for alleged scientific purposes. The sperm whale is related to the fictional Moby Dick. Greenpeace says Japan also wants to take another 50 minke whales to alleviate ``hardship" within its whaling communities.
But indications are that the South Pacific Whale Sanctuary proposed by Australia and New Zealand - and co-sponsored by the United States, Britain, France, Monaco, Italy and the Netherlands - is doomed in the face of pressure from whaler nations, notably Japan, which does not harvest in the area where the new sanctuary is proposed.
Senator Hill - who expects the majority vote to support the sanctuary but to fall short of the required 75per cent - is perplexed by the Japanese stand.
He wrote recently to the Japanese Government saying ``you do whale there, there is no reason you should not be able to accede (to the sanctuary)". Their reply was to say they did not dismiss the possibility of future whaling. The minister believes opposition stems from a fear that the sanctuary would reduce whaling potential and fuel the movement against commercial whaling.
Shigeko Misaki, spokeswoman for the Japanese Whaling Association (JWA), who is also in Adelaide for the meeting, says Japan will oppose the proposed sanctuary because it believes in the ``sustainable utilisation of the marine species, including whales".
The Adelaide meeting is notable because of the high-powered ministerial delegations from Britain, New Zealand and Australia that will oppose Japan and Norway. Britain's fisheries minister, Elliott Morley, told The Guardian that Japan's plans to expand the whale kill would ``fly in the face of world opinion".
Opponents of the annual kill will also be fighting continuing pressure by whalers to lift the mid 1980s moratorium on the commercial harvesting of whales.
``We want the moratorium to continue. It is always under threat," says Senator Hill.
Despite the moratorium, whales continue to be hunted and slaughtered in their hundreds each year under the guise of ``scientific research", which Senator Hill says is a facade for a commercial whaling industry in Japan.
Norway kills 655 minke whales a year off its coasts and in the North Sea.
``They (Japan) are taking 500 (whales) and then (the meat) ends up in the fish markets ... nobody can seriously say that that is driven by a scientific objective," Senator Hill told The Sunday Age.
Many species of whale are now protected from commercial whaling in the Indian Ocean and Southern Ocean sanctuaries.
The current agreement means the whales can live in one ocean but die in another, if whalers decide to hunt in unprotected areas. Tens of thousands of other unprotected cetaceans continue to be taken each year, notably by Japan, around its coast.
Senator Hill and Greenpeace argue that the migration routes of many of the great whales that visit Australia have not been adequately protected without the proposed new South Pacific sanctuary.
Explains Senator Hill: ``You haven't covered the Pacific Ocean and, of course, they migrate to both sides. The purpose of the sanctuary is to allow them freedom to do so... We're completing, in effect, the scientific project that started with the establishment of the Southern Whale Sanctuary".
Greenpeace international whale campaigner John Frizell says the Adelaide meeting is crucial because a win for the sanctuary could mean lifetime protection for some species, primarily those who feed in the current protected areas of the Southern Ocean before migrating to the area of the proposed South Pacific Sanctuary, where they breed and nurture their young.
Mr Frizell says that in the Southern Ocean Sanctuary, around Antarctica, the Japanese catch about 440 minke whales a year under the guise of scientific whaling while in the Pacific, near Japan, they have been catching 100 minke whales a year since 1994 under the same pretence.
He suspects the Japanese move to hunt the Bryde's whale has more to do with the dinner table in Japan - where whale meat sells for $150 a kilo - than with science.
However, the Japanese Whaling Association's Ms Misaki argues that any proposed take would comply with strictly set quotas that would not endanger any species. She also defends plans to return to commercial whaling on the basis that the targeted species are abundant and would not be endangered under sustainable harvesting limits.
Ms Misaki says minke whales, at about 760,000, are abundant in the Antarctic and the North Atlantic, where Japan wants to resume ``sustainable commercial whaling". A take of 2000 whales a year would be sustainable, even over 100 years.
Ms Misaki does not expect the moratorium to be lifted in Adelaide, but believes it could fall next year. She also expects the proposed new sanctuary will not get the numbers.
Ms Misaki argues that the protection of one species, including whales, would create an ecological imbalance in the area ``because whales consume a staggering amount of other marine species, and if whales are to be protected across the board, other species would suffer," she says.
But the plan to continue killing whales for commercial or alleged scientific purposes is strenuously opposed by many, including Australia.
``We do not believe you have to kill whales to study them," Senator Hill said recently.
Greenpeace agrees. ``This is widely regarded as commercial whaling in disguise. We are all quite well aware that they are doing it to keep the whale meat market going and to train a new generation of whalers, to keep this industry ticking over," says John Frizell.
Mr Frizell adds that the whales are not safe even in sanctuaries because the Japanese hunt them there for ``scientific purposes" and could do so in the proposed new sanctuary.
But Zack Qereqeretabua, whale campaigner for Greenpeace Australia in the Pacific, says the killing of whales is far more widespread than the figures before the IWC suggest.
``Every year around 20,000 smaller cetaceans are taken by Japanese whalers off their coast, including unprotected pilot whales, false killer whales, dolphins and porpoise, as well as 68 Baird's beaked whales," Mr Qereqeretabua says.
``They are saying that coastal whaling is a cultural need. What happens when the cultural needs conflict with the ecosystem's biological limits?"
© 2000 The Sunday Age