Guest guest Posted July 7, 2001 Report Share Posted July 7, 2001 As the International Whaling Commission prepares to meet later this month, rhetoric both for and against the Revised Management Scheme heats up. Here, Japan lays out its case for lifting the moratorium on commercial whaling and is answered by a representative of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, a British group. ******* http://www.theadvertiser.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,2286703%255E42 1,00.html Whale protest keeps pace with inflation By SIMON BENSON 07jul01 WHEN 33 nations of the International Whaling Commission meet in London in two weeks, the first thing they are likely to see is an 18m inflatable sperm whale. The nylon cetacean is being used to highlight the plight of the species which the Japanese started hunting this year and as a protest against increasing international whaling quotas. The move has cost the International Fund for Animal Welfare $24,000 not including the $500 freight to London. " The idea is that it is a sperm whale and the Japanese started taking sperm whales last year, " IFAW chief executive Mick McIntyre. " Ninety-eight per cent of people wouldn't know that these whales are being hunted. " It's a protest gesture and an awareness gesture. " At the meeting, Australia's Environment Minister Robert Hill will push for a a South Pacific whale sanctuary covering 23 million square kilometres. The proposed sanctuary would cover southern hemisphere whales such as the southern right, humpback, sperm, minke and blue whale. A similar sanctuary exists in the Indian and Southern oceans. The proposal just fell short of being ratified at the last meeting of the IWC in Adelaide last year. But conservation groups are concerned that new nations joining the IWC will lend support to Japan, which is pushing for an end to the moratorium on commercial whaling enforced in 1986. The IWC meeting begins on Monday, July 23, and will end on Friday, July 27. ================================================= http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1424000/1424363.stm Friday, 6 July, 2001, 09:43 GMT 10:43 UK 'End whaling ban for whales' sake' By BBC News Online's environment correspondent Alex Kirby Japan says the moratorium on commercial whaling should be lifted - in order to protect whales. It says this would deter pirate whaling, and would give the International Whaling Commission (IWC) complete control of the hunt. Japan is one of the countries leading efforts to overturn the commission's moratorium, in force since 1986. It will argue its case at the IWC annual meeting in London later this month. The argument that resuming the hunt would be in the whales' own interest comes from a senior member of the Japanese delegation to the IWC, Mr Joji Morishita. Mr Morishita, of the Japanese Fisheries Agency, told BBC News Online: " At the moment the IWC is dysfunctional. " Asking whaling countries outside the commission to join it is inviting them to join a suicide club. Stopping the pirates " But there are whaling countries that don't belong to it. People in the Philippines, for instance, kill about 20 Bryde's whales a year. " The Indonesians kill at least 10 sperm whales annually. This is legal whaling. It takes place around their coasts, but it's unregulated. Sperm whales - now hunted by Japan " If the IWC ended the moratorium it might get those countries to join, and then it could regulate their catches. " There's another argument for lifting the ban. The best deterrent for uncontrolled pirate whaling on the high seas is to allow limited whaling under the IWC. " That would mean whalemeat prices went down, and pirate whaling can survive only when they're high. " The IWC allows some coastal communities in places like Russia, North America and the Caribbean to continue catching small numbers of whales to support their traditional way of life. It calls this " aboriginal whaling " . But it suspended commercial whaling 15 years ago amid fears that some species would not recover from centuries of hunting. Despite the moratorium, Japan continues to catch whales in the name of scientific research, something the IWC rules allow. It currently catches around 400 minke whales annually, most in the Antarctic, and 50 Bryde's and 10 sperm whales in the north Pacific. The only other IWC member to disregard the moratorium is Norway, which catches around 500 minkes a year off its coasts. Norway objected to the ban when it was introduced and so is not bound by it. Iceland rejoined the IWC last month and says it will resume commercial whaling, perhaps as early as next year. Independent minds Japan's critics routinely accuse it of bribing smaller members of the IWC to support it, a charge Joji Morishita rejects. He told BBC News Online: " Japan gives development aid to more than 150 countries. The IWC has just over 40 members. Gray whale numbers are growing " Among them are several - India and Argentina, for example - which receive huge amounts of Japanese aid. But they never vote with us. " We're specifically accused of trying to buy the votes of Caribbean nations. Their most important industries are bananas and tourism. " If they used their votes as their economy dictates, they'd be voting with the US and Europe, to keep the moratorium. Scenting success " Voting with us is certainly not something decided by money. " Mr Morishita believes the IWC will soon accept the arguments for " limited sustainable whaling, not like the bad old days " , though he does not think the moratorium will go this year. He says: " The number of whales we can catch may turn out to be very small. " But what matters is the principle - respect for science and international law. " ========================================================================= 06/07/2001 17:09 WDCS reply to Japan's Joji Morishita comments to BBC Online Japan's Joji Morishita has told BBC Online that the moratorium on commercial whaling should be lifted - in order to protect whales. He says that commercial whaling would stop pirate whaling and encourage all whaling to come under the remit of the IWC. Japan has also recently been touring the world trying to recruit new members to the IWC with spurious arguments about whales eating fish. Firstly, it should be noted that it has always been the whaling industry that has resisted international control and regulation. In 1976, Dr Colin Clark, a mathematician at the University of British Columbia wrote: " International Institutions such as the International Whaling Commission...seem to have been established on the assumption that the economic interests of the industry would, if properly channelled, automatically ensure the conservation of the resource " . However, " The economic incentives for conservation of such resources (i.e. whales) may be quite minimal, as far as the commercial industry is concerned " . Simply put, whales reproduce slowly. It therefore makes economic sense to kill large numbers of whales as quickly as possible and reinvest the proceeds, in order to maximize profit, rather than to manage them sustainably over time. Strictly regulated whaling would simply mean lower profits. Another reason why the whalers are resisting completion of the IWC's RMS (while accusing IWC members of stalling its progress) is that under a strictly enforced RMS (which whaling countries would have to pay for) any future whaling would be far less profitable. Unfortunately, the supply of 'scientific' whale meat to the Japanese market during the IWC moratorium on commercial whaling has ensured demand and kept prices high. This provides every incentive for illegal hunting and smuggling. Should commercial hunting resume under the RMS, the high price of whale meat will ensure that illegal whaling and trade can only increase. Mr. Morishita talks about wanting IWC regulation but Japan has consistently refused to abide by certain IWC decisions, such as the Southern Ocean Whale sanctuary, continuing their so-called scientific whaling programme despite repeated requests to stop and abide by international regulation. Indeed, the Japanese have continued to misrepresent the IWC by claiming that there are 761,000 minkes in the Southern Hemisphere. The reality is that the IWC Scientific Committee has said that previous estimates of minke whale numbers in the Southern Hemisphere were " no longer appropriate estimates of current minke whale abundance " . At the 2000 meeting of the IWC in Australia, the Scientific Committee went on to report that recent work indicated that there was now " a point estimate that was appreciably lower than the total of the previously agreed point estimate " . The Committee went on to say that it was " currently unable to provide reliable estimates of current minke whale abundance " . Despite this, the Japanese have continued their whaling programme and continued to misrepresent the number of minkes. The Japanese have continued to argue that they need to kill minke whales in order to free up fish resources. However, the Japanese arguments do not take into account the fact that marine ecosystems and marine food webs are highly complex. It is not possible to predict accurately the impact that removing one species will have on the abundance of another species. The whaling nations also do not take into account that many whales do not eat commercially important fish. Some primarily eat invertebrates -for example most of the large whales - eat plankton. Nor does the argument recognize that some whales have their feeding grounds well outside important fisheries areas. For example, most of the large whale species feed predominantly in polar areas during the spring and summer, and their presence elsewhere is because they are migrating or breeding (when they often do not feed or feed very little). Even when whales appear to overlap in diet and distribution with commercial fisheries, there is no evidence that they are the controlling factor in the availability of commercial fish stocks. This is because marine mammals are typically not the most important predators of fish. In many ecosystems, predatory fish are actually the most significant predators of other fish, and in many instances humans are next. Removing whales could even have a negative impact on commercial fisheries - for example if they are preying on predatory fish their removal could cause increased numbers of predatory fish which, in turn, could take more of the commercially important species. For example, marine mammals have been accused of consuming 1.1 million tons of Pollock in the Bering Sea. What is not reported by the whalers is that predation by other fish is estimated at 2,7 million tons, and cannibalism accounted for some 7.4 million tons annually. The whalers fail to mention that the biomass of whales left in the oceans after centuries of slaughter is significantly lower than it was before whaling started (possibly down to some 20%). If we have lost so much whale biomass shouldn't we have more fish left today with so many less whales to prey on them? Again, if we wish to see the answers we should look to the way humans manage, or mismanage, fisheries rather than falsely blame cetaceans. The Japanese have continued to argue that they need to kill minke whales in order to save other species such as the endangered Southern Hemisphere blue whale. However, a recent study has estimated (using the population model underlying the IWC Catch Limit Algorithm (CLA)) that it will take some 765 years for Blue whales to recover to 50% of their pre-whaling stock size under a complete moratorium and 711 years if whaling is allowed on 5000 minke whales annually. This demonstrates that the 'conservation' effect would be minimal. Indeed, after 20 years and a total harvest of 100,000 minke whales, there would only be four additional blue whales. Under such whaling conditions, it only requires a mistake by a Japanese harpooner or a pirate whaler able to operate under the cover afforded by legal whale meat trade, to err in their identification of young Blue whales on four occasions during those twenty years to eliminate any supposed conservation effort. The Japanese claims are not about conserving whales, its about commercial advantage for their whaling operations. Do not be influenced by poor science and even worse rhetoric Source: WDCS ===================================================================== Japan farm minister to meet U.S. commerce secretary on whaling TOKYO, July 6, Kyodo - Japanese Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Tsutomu Takebe will have talks with U.S. Commerce Secretary Donald Evans on Japan's whaling program during his trip to the United States beginning Sunday, ministry officials said Friday. Takebe is expected to explain Japan's research whaling practices to Evans, who is in charge of U.S. fishery policy, the officials said. Japan gave up commercial whaling in 1986 in compliance with an international moratorium and turned to research whaling in the following year under rules set by the International Whaling Commission. Last year, the U.S. considered slapping curbs on Japanese imports as Japan expanded its research whaling to include Bryde's whales and sperm whales, protected under U.S. law. Takebe is also scheduled to meet U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick, the officials said. 2001 Kyodo News © ============================================================ Gray Whales with Winston http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/Jungle/1953/index.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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