“Anti-whaling nations will battle Monday to maintain control of the International Whaling Commission, with pro-catch countries hoping to dominate the body for the first time in more than 20 years,” reports AFP/Yahoo.
The leading anti-whaling nations are Australia and New Zealand. Their primary foes are Japan, Norway and Iceland.
Today, if you oppose whaling, you can go on a “virtual march” to save whales: Pick a slogan and upload your photo — which will be displayed on a building in front of the delegates’ meeting, via Greenpeace’s June 19 March site.
That’s a screenshot of the page on which Greenpeace shows the building on which “virtual marchers'” images are being projected.
It seems like an attention getting way to protest, but I wish they’d had an option to just add a name. I don’t have any pictures to upload.
If the Commission does go for the anti-whale side it will take more than protests to fight them. It will take what it always takes, real and significant economic damage that clearly outweighs whatever benefits they think they get from the slaughter.
I don’t know…human suck so bad I find myself more and more wishing we’d never evolved. I suppose it would be more pleasant if I had a “God” to blame us on.
Same here. Sigh. But we can speak up in countless other ways … thinking … it’s been a while since i wrote letters about whaling, but i’ll go look and come back.
The U.S. has the legal might — given it by legislation — with which to punish countries that favor whaling. But it fails to use that legal / economic leverage.
Here’s a site — Pacific Whale.org with a nice/easy e-mail campaign.
Excuse me?
about the legislation? Yes, but it’s been over five years since i read about it. I can look if you don’t believe me.
The International Whaling Moratorium Enforcement Act of 1993
H. R. 1955
To require the President to impose economic sanctions against countries that engage in whaling not authorized and approved by the International Whaling Commission.
etc., etc.
I don’t deny that such legislation exists, only that it would be even slightly reasonable to make use of it under the circumstances.
Apparently the US has the ‘legal might’ to do a lot of things, at least according to itself.
It seems to me there is quite a lot of sloppy thinking abroad with respect to the whaling question. Will do an extensive piece on this on Eurotrib today or tomorrow.
I hope you’ll include the severe problem of over-fishing and illegal fishing.
Illegal whaling is one of the primary problems that Australia and New Zealand are trying to address.
The IWC was not founded to end whaling, but to contain it for the sake of species.
The Japanese and Norwegians are the worst about illegal whaling, best I recall.
And the methods employed are profoundly, terribly cruel and prolong death while the whale is in agony.
Norwegians do not engage in illegal whaling any more than the US engages in illegal CO2 emissions. Norway reserved itself from the moratorium introduced by the IWC and thus is not legally bound by it.
Whether the methods are cruel is debatable. Most whales demonstrably die within seconds. In some cases, however, as much as two minutes may pass. Then again, compared to the horrors of factory farming as practised, say, in the US, this is a quite humane way indeed of obtaining meat.
I wouldn’t mind debating with you but, since the topic here is whaling, I’d like to confine the remarks to that. I have plenty to say on the other issues you raise, but not in this thread.
Very well. In my forthcoming piece I’ll address both.
They are related, you see, as long as calls for boycotts are only being made in the case of whaling.
It’s very important, in order to have a constructive — ie., not inflammatory — discussion that we confine the subject to whaling.
The tactics of using other issues are common among those who dislike the beliefs of anti-war activists in this country. In reply to the Larry Johnson piece I quote on the front page today, a blogger replies: “But can you name one person who has been beheaded by US troops?”
If I wished, I could point out Norway’s refusal to sign the worldwide moratorium on whaling as putting it in league with the U.S. refusing to join the I.C.C. Refuse to sign an international agreement when it suits one’s selfish purposes.
If I wished, I could bring up the horrific slaughter of the few remaining wild wolves in Norway.
Or I could bring up the mountains of whale blubber rotting in Norwegian freezers.
Or the high toxicity level of whale blubber harvested by Norwegian whalers — which speaks more profoundly to the devastation of the oceans by pollutants worldwide.
We can probably slam each other until kingdom come.
My bottom line: Whales have been hunted to near-extinction, and we do not need whales in order to survive — except in very rare aboriginal groups such as the Inuits.
Well, both those objections are pretty easy to refute.
(1) Minke whales have not been hunted to near-extinction. There are an estimated 400,000 in the North Atlantic alone, so the culling of a few hundred specimens is in no way a threat to the species.
(2) We do not need to eat, or skin, any animals in order to survive. All killing of animals for such purposes is purely a matter of convenience, at least in the developed world.
By the way, it seems to me you have already brought up all those other issues while purporting not to – itself a time-honored rhetorical trick – so it’s only fair to let me counter thus:
(1) The planned hunt of a couple of wolves in Norway last year, which I incidentally strongly oppose, neither aimed to nor is expected to render the species extinct in this country. So it’s a little disingeious (or ignorant) for you to imply otherwise.
(2) The ‘mountains of whale blubber rotting in Norwegian freezers’ are so doing solely because of a self-imposed ban on export, a concession to the anti-whaling movement. The blubber would otherwise have been exported to Japan at a handsome price.
(3) The high toxicity of whale blubber is neither here nor there as far as Norway is concerned; here only the flesh is eaten. (If anyone else wants to consume it though, they’ll have to decide for themselves whether doing so meets whatever safety requirements they have.)
(4) The comparison of refusing to join the moratorium, which as you hinted at yourself is at odds with the original purpose of the IWC, with refusal to join the ICC amounts to quite a lack of proper perspective, it seems to me.
I grew up on a diet that included whale steak at least once a fortnight. Healthy food for those of us who are carnivores.
I am looking forward to your diary tomorrow. Much of the debate has been hijacked by clever fundraisers in some NGOs. Way too much emotion has been brought in to this debate on sustainable harvesting of natural resources.
When they play in your own neighborhood. My photo:
We have some orcas in Hood Canal but I never manage to see them when we cross the bridge … maybe they’re miles away.
Have you ever gone to the coast to watch the grays migrate to Alaska and back?
the Georgia Strait.
But orcas are not whales, they are dolphins.
orcas (aka “killer whales”) are really dolphins – the largest dolphins, in fact.
“although generally considered more closely related to dolphins than other whale species,
the word ‘whale’ is used broadly to indicate size rather than zoological affinity. They are unlike dolphins in appearance and do not migrate but move around according to the availability of food and natural conditions such as depth of water.”
So, yes – the large dolphins are called “killer whales” because they are large and don’t look that much like other dolphins.
First Nations of BC rarely killed them, they thought there were gods. Maybe orcas just don’t taste good.
But Bush doesn’t like them, he took them off the endangered species act in 2002 even though their
populations are rapdily declining.
I did send a picture, but so far I haven’t seen my name listed, nor have I received their confirming e-mail (the submission was confirmed on the site). I assume they’re flooded with submissions. I really can’t understand how such small, low-resolution (even from cell phone cameras) pictures will be able to be successfully and clearly projected onto a building, but who cares — I sent one anyway.
The original deadline was supposedly around 8 hours ago, but I noticed that right afterwards they seem to have tacked on another couple of days (the countdown now says 1 day, 15 hours, 45 minutes left).
From what I can see on the IWC’s website, the registration of the participants is scheduled for today, June 19, while the meeting itself will take place starting on Monday, June 20, and continue through Friday, June 24. So there’s some extra time for action.
THANK YOU! Let us know if yours shows up. And I’m glad they extended the deadline since I just found out about it this morning.
I just found out that they finally posted my pic — they sent me an e-mail. I had uploaded it again yesterday, thinking that maybe something had gone wrong the first time, because I hadn’t seen or received anything yet.
Now I’m wondering if it was just a backlog problem, and if I will end up appearing twice… oh well, who cares… the important thing is to “be” there!
Norway is continuing commercial whaling in defiance of the moratorium, taking about 600 Minke whales per year out of the North-East Atlantic population that has been estimated by the Scientific Committee of the IWC (May 1996) at 112,000. [The Norwegian take has increased every year] There are an estimated 750,000 Minkes in the Antarctic, so the species as a whole is in good shape; but the North Atlantic population is genetically distinct from the Antarctic one (by DNA tests).
When Norway announced its decision to resume commercial whaling at the 1992 IWC meeting, 17 nations signed a statement condemning it. The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society has deliberately sunk two of the Norwegian ships that were participating in the Minke hunt. The IWC has repeatedly called on Norway to halt its whaling activities, but Norway continues to set itself a quota (549 animals for the year 2001). In the 1997 season Norwegian whalers in 31 vessels killed 503 Minke whales of their 580-whale quota. This produced an estimated 730 tons of meat valued at about $2.9 million. Norway hunts Minke whales only for their meat, but in Jan. 2000 they announced that they will start exporting other whale products (mainly blubber) to Japan.
UC Irvine School of Biological Sciences
June 6, 2003
Norway now kills 700 Minke whales per year. The Minke Whale is the world’s most heavily hunted whale.
http://tinyurl.com/ca563
http://tinyurl.com/cookk