Whaling ban safe for now

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http://www.nature.com/news/2004/040719/full/040719-18.html

 

Published online: 23 July 2004; |

doi:10.1038/news040719-18

 

Whaling ban safe for now

Amanda Leigh Haag

 

But pro-whaling countries question future of

international commission.

 

International bans on commercial whaling are unlikely

to be lifted in the near future. That's the take-home

message from four days of stormy negotiations at the

annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission

(IWC). The meeting in Sorrento, Italy, came to a close

yesterday with yet another year of gridlock over

approval of a plan for sustainable management and

monitoring of whale catches.

 

IWC chairman Henrik Fischer shocked anti-whaling

delegates with a statement on the opening day that a

" Revised Management Scheme " , or RMS, should be in

place by the 2005 annual meeting in South Korea. That

would have lifted an 18-year moratorium on commercial

whaling and allowed resumption of hunting under a

catch-quota system.

 

But critics of the plan say the proposed RMS is

unenforceable, because it lacks penalties or

compliance mechanisms to ensure that illegal whaling

and under-reporting don't occur.

 

" The draft that is on the table is not even on a par

with fisheries agreements around the world, " says

Kitty Block of Humane Society International. " Other

fisheries agreements have international observers and

inspectors, and satellite tracking. This one has no

international inspectors or observers, " she says.

 

The decision not to implement the RMS represents a

substantial victory, for the time being, for countries

and non-profit groups opposed to the resumption of

full-scale commercial whaling.

 

Mounting tension

 

The stakes were high even before the start of this

year's meeting after claims that " vote buying " by

Japan threatened to tip the balance of countries in

favour of a vote for commercial whaling. Although it

was considered unlikely before the meeting that

pro-whaling countries would achieve the three-quarters

majority needed to win the vote, many feared that new

member countries and developing countries siding with

Japan would give the pro-whaling countries a moral

victory. Tension mounted further after Fischer's

announcement that the management regime should be

approved by 2005, as it created what seemed to be an

unstoppable momentum towards lifting the ban.

 

Japan has expressed extreme dissatisfaction over the

outcome of the meeting. In addition to losing the vote

on the RMS, its proposal for a commercial catch of

3,000 minke whales in the Southern Ocean Sanctuary of

the Antarctic was also rejected. Japan says the

sanctuary should be abolished altogether, as the

Antarctic has the most abundant whale populations in

the world.

 

But Doug DeMaster, chair of the IWC's scientific

committee, says there has not been enough research to

adequately assess the stocks of whales in the

sanctuary. Now that the third circumpolar survey of

the Southern Ocean has been completed, and three sets

of data points are available, the scientific committee

will be able to start looking at trends in minke-whale

abundance, says DeMaster.

 

Countries in favour of the proposed management scheme

say that unless the IWC comes up with a management

system for whaling, it won't survive. Japan's

commissioner to the IWC, Minoru Morimoto, says that

this year's decisions " have heightened our concern

about the future relevance of the IWC for Japan " , and

" provide the incentive for us to look outside of the

IWC to achieve our goals " .

 

" Whales will only be protected in the long term if

there is a management system, " says Gavin Carter,

spokesman for the IWMC World Conservation Trust, a

non-profit group that supports the sustainable use of

commercial whaling. " If IWC doesn't have one, then of

course the whaling countries will have no reason to

stay in it, and then you have no chance for an

international management system to protect whales. "