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On 21 June Francisco and I landed in Madeira for the 61 International Whaling Commission (IWC). I went along as an NGO observer - NGO�s are rarely allowed to speak and are heavily marginalised or silenced by the IWC. Nevertheless, it�s a chance to speak to other likeminded and to get a greater understanding of the political process of both killing and conserving whales.
Surfers for Cetaceans did a press release for their Visual Petition (http://visualpetition.com) and Sea Shepherd launched their Walzing Matilda Southern Ocean campaign in the foyer of the hotel where the conference was being held.
Meanwhile, inside the conference room a few metres away all the delegates are focused on Sea Shepherd�s anti-whaling Japanese campaign in the Southern Ocean. Suddenly many of the delegations have turned into self-appointed jury against Sea Shepherd and Sea Shepherd is not allowed to defend itself or present its side of the argument. So video footage is shown, probably docked, by the Japanese delegation, alleging that Sea Shepherd is risking lives at sea by ramming into the Japanese mother ship. Then a line of Japanese paid delegates (mainly the usual Eastern Caribbean ones) give a passionate anti-Sea Shepherd speech and noone recalls the fact that the Japanese whaling body has lost 3 of its own members at sea without any help from Sea Shepherd. So it was effectively like a mock trial and took up a half day of the IWC�s precious little time.
At the NGO party we presented Sidney Holt with a T-shirt and a vintage bottle of Madeira wine in celebration of the fact that Sidney has devoted all his life to saving whales and that this was his fiftieth anniversary of attending IWC meetings.
Sidney writes on an E-mail:
�There was a proposal to hold a special inter-sessional meeting to resolve the Greenland humpback quota issue but it was finally decided to do that by correspondence.
Greenland's petition to kill another 10 Humpbacks
on top of 700 tons of whalemeat per year
Madeira will soon have one of the world's finest whaling and whales museums. I visited the building with Melanie Salmon (CEO of Global Ocean) - just finished, magnificent and huge but empty - guided by the Director, Luis Freitas. One part will be about the history of whaling in Madeira (begun only in 19411), another part about saving whales and about the science of whales and their environment, with a third section on the transition. There will be both public and research libraries and many kinds of research facilities as well as space for children and extensive educational facilities. All most impressive.�
It was an honour and a privilege to spend some time with Sidney and unusually the NGOs were apportioned a little time to speak on the podium in front of the heavily weighted Ministries of Fisheries around the world.
This is what he said, and he spoke from the heart for the many of us:
Statement by Sidney Holt, Observer for the non-governmental organizations concerned with the conservation of the Antarctic and its resources (The Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition, ASOC) on behalf of NGOs participating in the Annual Meeting of the International Whaling Commission IWC) in Madeira, June 2999. v3 of Saturday, June 20, 2009
[A fuller version of our ideas, has been passed to the Secretariat and we hope that it will be made available to delegations and to the media in the normal way. It is also, or soon will be, posted on the ASOC web-site]
Mr Chairman, Delegations and Observers,
I am honoured to have been chosen to address you by the NGOs here concerned with animal welfare, conservation and the environment.
We intend to be pro-active, not merely re-active. We wish to focus on the future of whales and the ecosystems they inhabit, not just the future of the IWC. Its first quarter century were, as we all know, a total failure. It has not acquired much credit by dedicating the quarter century since the moratorium on commercial whaling was declared mainly to looking for ways to continue whaling without wiping out the remaining whales. Still, we want the IWC to survive.
It is exactly eighty years since the eminent Argentinian international lawyer, Se�or Jos� Su�rez, proposed to the League of Nations that a sanctuary for whales be established in the Antarctic. Suarez reported that if nothing were done the fin, blue and humpback whales would be practically exterminated in the Southern Hemisphere. It took rather longer than he thought it would, but it happened. Then the sei whale resource was plundered in the 1960s, and demolition of the minke whales was begun in the 1970s
Think about this: The biomass of the still numerous minke whales is less than one percent of the biomass of the southern hemisphere baleen whales at the time Suarez reported to the League of Nations.
2009 is the thirtieth anniversary of the creation of the Indian Ocean Whale Sanctuary. Next month the first symposium on the cetaceans of the region will be held in The Maldives. None of the mostly young scientists from the region who will attend have killed whales.
Here's a snippet: the crews of two British pelagic expeditions operating in the SE Pacific sector of the Antarctic, in 1955, when The Sanctuary was opened by the IWC to pelagic whaling, noted that blue and fin whales in The Sanctuary approached ships: those in other sectors fled from ships.
This year is important to me because I first became involved with the IWC exactly half a century ago - 1959. It was promised then that Antarctic baleen whale catches would be reduced to sustainable levels, in accordance with scientific advice, by 1964 at the latest. Japan and the USSR in particular didn't like the advice offered � they said they had made investments in new factories, needing to be amortised - so the reduction didn't happen until the early 1970s.
All the NGOs for which I now speak unreservedly support the continuation, unchanged, of the moratorium. But they think it is time to move on to end all commercial whaling under Special Permits, all whaling in sanctuaries, all whaling under objections. And all international trade in commodities from Appendix I CITES-listed species. An end is justified by the growth in the past thirty-five years of scientific knowledge about whales, using non-lethal methods, and by the increase in scale and extent of non-lethal uses of whales. Furthermore, increases in threats to the survival and welfare of whales, resulting from intensified and growing diversity of human activities in and around the ocean � especially unsustainable fishing, maritime transport, pollution and change in ocean climate - mean that relieving the ecological stress caused by whaling is now even more urgent.
The wondrous, vulnerable whales never have done and never will contribute substantially to the food security of humans. Nor do they threaten it. Notwithstanding much propaganda and fake science they are not responsible for the troubles of the fishing industry.
Commercial whaling is now unnecessary, is utterly inhumane, and is unprofitable, continuing � subsidized - for minimal financial gain.
But a few corporate entities want to keep the technology and skills of so-called "Modern whaling" in being for a few more decades until the whales again become abundant enough � they hope - to justify another spate of profitable slaughter. Here's what the boss of what was then the world's biggest whaling company said to the 1951 meeting of the IWC, when the future of The Sanctuary was being debated. "I don't like to think of the number of aged whales dying there without our people being able to have a shot at them."
Think bout that. Is that attitude to wildlife now dead? I hope so but I fear not.
Nevertheless, we in civil society insist on being conciliatory and constructive. The three-year phase-in of zero catch limits after 1982 was enough to allow seven countries to make the social and economic adjustments needed to fold their operations. That should be enough now for a phase-down, and -out of residual commercial whaling. The catches in that period should be fewer than the numbers of whales killed in 2008 and 2008/09; no new whaling vessels should be brought into service, and no new whaling operations begun. The phase-down and -out should be fair to the whaling countries that did abide by the IWC's 1982 decision. Intransigence should not be rewarded.
If you decide to extend the life of the Small Working Group we suggest you revise its terms of reference to include consideration of this option. And some other useful things could be started [If I hadn't run out of time I'd list them]:
resume negotiations for revising the ICRW;
launch serious plans for conducting research - as promised to the United Nations in 1972 �on the recovery of the whale populations and ecosystems that were severely impacted by unregulated and poorly regulated commercial whaling, as well as to gain more knowledge about the new threats to cetaceans.
Those are our suggestions. Thank you.
And by the end of the podium talks by the NGOs you realise that nothing is clear cut and those speaking on behalf of the indigenous peoples right to manage their own marine resources also echoes their right to kill whales and their right to a non-polluted ocean.
The Eastern Caribbean states including Antigua, Turks and Caicos and St Lucia, speak from their hollow and bought �out hearts with such clarity and passion, their Judaic hypocricy is jarring �they say whatever they are told to say by the Japanese man who pops up daily to give them written instructions with what to say and how to vote... they never ever think of the people they are supposedly representing, fuelled as they are by ambition, power and greed, a typical day in politics I guess.
At the end of the meeting nothing much has changed, perhaps some subtle nuances here and there. The worldview on whales is as polarised as it ever was � those who want to kill them for profit and those who view them as evolved, intelligent beings, unfit for human consumption. I can�t see how such dramatically opposing viewpoints can ever come together without some kind of compromise � did we compromise on slavery all those years ago I ask myself?
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