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Cetacean Society International Whales Alive! - Vol. X No. 2 - April 2001 Whaling UpdateBy Kate O'Connell, CSI Board It is a grim time for whales. On January 16, 2001, the Norwegian government announced that it would open the door to the export of whale products. Not content with defying the International Whaling Commission's ban on commercial whaling, Norway has opted to defy the CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) ban on trade in whale products. "In granting export licences, the Government is seeking to normalize conditions for Norwegian minke whaling," said Norwegian Minister of Fisheries, Otto Gregussen. In the last edition of Whales Alive!, it was reported that several Norwegian whaling entities had sought to reopen the export of whale products, and that certain companies had actually signed agreements with Japanese purchasers for the sale of roughly 500 tons of whale blubber. Articles in the Norwegian press, upon the announcement of the decision by the government to resume the export of whale products, rang with jubilant quotes from the whalers in support of the ruling, and with promises to look for increased quotas and whaling on other species. Less than two weeks after the announcement however, the whalers' jubilance was somewhat dimmed when a representative of a Norwegian government agency on nutrition (Statens Naeringsnmiddeltilsyn) confirmed reports that whale blubber is toxic, and recommended against eating it in large quantities. In response to this announcement, the Norwegian Fisheries Directorate undertook a round of studies to try and confirm the information on toxic whale blubber. The studies, done by the Norwegian Air Quality office or NILU, were based on samples of the 1999 and 2000 minke whale hunt, and confirmed high levels of dioxin were present in blubber. Following World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines on intakes of contaminated whale products, the blubber samples were so contaminated by dioxins that it would mean that a 150 pound adult could safely eat less than 4 tablespoons of blubber a week. In an article in the Norwegian e-journal Fiskaren, Fisheries Minister, Otto Gregussen, has promised more studies, and indicated that no export will take place of any highly contaminated whale product. However, in spite of the ongoing concern over the safety of ingesting whale products, Toshikatsu Matsuoka, Japanese vice minister of agriculture, forestry and fisheries met Norwegian Fisheries Minister Otto Gregussen in Tokyo in the last week of March to confirm they would soon start working-level talks on the resumption of the whale meat trade. "Although there are various international opinions over Norway's exports of whale meat to Japan, it poses no problem in terms of international law," the Norwegian minister told Matsuoka, according to the Japanese ministry official. The Minister has also said that Norwegian whale products could be sold to Iceland and Peru as well, as those countries, in addition to Norway and Japan, have refused to accept the CITES trade ban listing whales. The Japanese fleet of factory ships returned to port as this edition of Whales Alive! was brought to press. According to the Japanese Institute for Cetacean Research (ICR), 440 minke whales were killed in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary, the fourteenth year that Japan has taken advantage of a loophole in the rules of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) and has killed whales for scientific research. Once the research is complete, the carcasses are then sold on the Japanese market for human consumption. The Director General of the ICR, Dr. Seji Ohsumi, has continued to claim that minke whales in the Southern Ocean are plentiful; in viewing ICR information about their whaling on the Japanese Foreign Affairs website (http://www.mofa.go.jp), the ICR cites the fact that there are some 760,000 minkes in southern waters. However, the IWC Scientific Committee not only acknowledged at its last meeting that there is no population estimate for Southern hemisphere minkes, it also indicated that estimates are likely to be appreciably lower than the figure still used by the ICR to help justify its research whale kill. At its last Annual Meeting in July, the International Whaling Commission adopted Resolution 2000-3. This Resolution called on the IWC to progress its work on the Revised Management Scheme (RMS - see Whales Alive!, January 2001). A special intersessional Working Group of the Commission met in the Oceanographic Museum in Monaco from 6th - 8th February 2001. According to the IWC, the purpose of the meeting was to: (1) make further progress on revising the section of the Schedule that deals with supervision and control; and (2) develop a text to incorporate the structure and elements of the RMS, including the Revised Management Procedure, into the Schedule. It is clear that whaling on a full commercial scale is moving closer to being a reality. According to the press release issued by the IWC at the close of the session in Monaco, "There was a valuable exchange of views and ideas on what should comprise an appropriate supervision and control system, and how best to incorporate the RMS into the Schedule. Progress was made in several areas but some fundamental differences remain. New and revised draft texts were developed which will be refined intersessionally in time for further discussions at the Commission's Annual Meeting in London in July 2001." Norway and Japan have now escalated their attacks on the IWC and CITES, and have acted in such a way so as to undermine the management decisions of both Conventions. Norway has now taken the enormous decision of opening up exports in whale products, in spite of the fact that the last three meetings of CITES (with more than 150 member nations) overwhelmingly rejected their proposal to do just that. The one bit of light on the horizon is the fact that the public in both Norway and Japan are beginning to question their governments' support of whaling and whale trade. The main question now is who will win? The whalers? Or the whales? Please help CSI in its fight to save the whales. Contact the following and make your concerns known about their whaling activities. The recent success on the Norwegian dolphin kill issue (see following article) shows the power of public persuasion!! Ambassador Kunihiko Saito Prime Minister of Norway Jens Stoltenberg Ambassador Knut Vollbaek To send an email message: http://www.norway.org/contact/ Mr. Egil Ove Sundheim Go to next article: Dolphins Saved from Norwegian Harpoons or: Table of Contents. © Copyright 2001, Cetacean Society International, Inc. URL for this page: http://csiwhalesalive.org/csi01202.html |