Whale Wars, at Sea and on Land: Is the U.S. Set to Support Commercial Whaling?

by Stephanie Ernst

categories: Marine Life, Politics and Law, Wildlife/FreeLiving Animals

Published February 09, 2009 @ 01:35PM PT

Whales, whales, and more whales in the news:

- From NRDC: The Navy’s An Equal Opportunity Deployer: Deadly Sonar Training Slated to Span Both East and West Coasts

- From Sea Shepherd: Response to the Media Release from the Institute for Cetacean Research and Sea Shepherd Returns From the Whale Wars (after being blasted with high-powered water cannons and a disorienting noise weapon with the potential to cause permanent hearing damage)

- And finally, the Animal Welfare Institute today sent out a disturbing e-mail alert.

Last year, we alerted you to the negotiations taking place behind closed doors over a whaling deal, with the U.S. front and center of the discussions. The “fruit” of the negotiations is a document that was released last Monday. Civil society is finally able to see that, as expected, a resumption of commercial whaling is part of this deal. . . .

The compromise, which is being circulated ahead of a special IWC meeting in March, is the result of the U.S. and others bowing to pressure from Japan, Norway and Iceland – the last three commercial whaling nations – and their IWC allies. . . .

A Deadly Deal for Whales

• The compromise would lift the two-decades-long commercial whaling moratorium that has saved the lives of many thousands of whales and has allowed whale populations to start to recover.
• Since the demand for whale meat is declining, the whaling nations have resorted to stockpiling it. In Japan’s case, the government is using the excess meat in school meal programs. Last year, Iceland and Norway, with no significant domestic market for whale meat, exported whale meat to Japan in violation of the intent of an international treaty that bans trade in whale meat.
• The current growing financial crisis has directly impacted Japan and Iceland, and with the whaling countries feeling the economic pinch, they are now vulnerable to pressure to stop whaling once and for all.
• Commercial whaling is an inherently cruel, outdated and unnecessary practice. Except for true aboriginal subsistence needs, there is no part of a whale that cannot be satisfactorily substituted with non-lethal alternatives. Whales are nowadays worth more alive than dead.
• Whales face greater threats today than ever before from climate change, overfishing of prey species, pollution, and other human-caused threats. The U.S. should be working to turn the IWC into a whale conservation body, not taking it back to the dark days of mass whale slaughter.

More Whales Will Be Killed, Not Less

Hogarth justifies his capitulation to whalers by claiming that it would reduce the number of whales being killed, and insisting that the moratorium would remain intact. This is not true.

• The compromise does not address the existing loopholes in the IWC rules that allow the whaling nations to kill thousands of whales every year allegedly in the name of “science.”
• The deal does not address the international trade in whale meat, which leaves the door open for any reduction in the number of whales killed in the Antarctic to be made up for by whales killed by Icelandic and Norwegian whalers with the meat sold to Japan.
• The compromise does not address whales targeted by Norway and Iceland, nor does it preclude other nations from whaling. In fact, the compromise may act as an incentive to other nations to begin whaling commercially.
• The package is non-binding and therefore unenforceable. Japan has a poor record of fisheries management, and so cannot be relied upon to self-regulate.
• Coastal whaling and “scientific” whaling are commercial whaling, because the resulting meat is sold. IWC approval of coastal whaling would overturn the moratorium.

For more details, see the full text of the alert. And keep an eye out for an action here at Change.org on this issue. I'll come back and update this post with a link when it's available.

Update: That action has now been created; see this post for more details.