Looking Forward To The IWC Annual Meeting In July

By William Rossiter, CSI President

The International Whaling Commission's 56th Annual Meeting will be in Sorrento, Italy from 13-22 July 2004. CSI is very pleased that Heather Rockwell, of the International Wildlife Coalition, again will be our IWC Non-Governmental Observer, working closely with CSI Board Members Nancy Azzam, representing Windstar Foundation, Deb Adams, for Dolphin Connection, and two NGOs we are trying to help get to the meeting, Marta Hevia of Argentina's Fundacion Cethus and Yolanda Alaniz of Mexico's COMARINO. They will all add their considerable experience to the cadre of NGOs working to stop commercial whaling, and increase the IWC's focus on environmental, small cetacean, and whale watching issues.

You can make a difference for whales at the IWC meeting, by helping CSI meet the increasing costs; the NGO registration fee alone has climbed this year to an astonishing $1,100, and we are working very hard to help critical people from other nations to attend! Please respond to our IWC appeal letter you will receive soon. This is CSI's only solicitation for support besides membership fees.

The IWC will again face Japan's obstinate "scientific" whaling. The fleet returned in March having killed 440 minke whales in Antarctic waters. As you read this the processed meat already may be available in supermarkets (see what you can do, below). For the first time in years there were no anti-whaling demonstrations as the fleet returned, perhaps in recognition that such strategies may have fueled the backlash by the industry that has used every weapon at their disposal in a war to keep on whaling until there are no more whales. Japan will kill at least 700 large whales and thousands of dolphins in 2004, providing about 2,000 tons of meat for consumers who are manipulated to eat it, and who are prevented from understanding the conservation implications or international perspective on the massacre.

Meanwhile the US announced a quota of 75 bowhead whales allowed to be struck in 2004, which includes harpooned whales not recovered, in the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission's (AEWC) aboriginal subsistence whaling. The quota was derived from regulations adopted at the 2002 Special Meeting of the IWC.