Global Conference on Whales Debates ‘To Hunt or Not to Hunt?’

Some have come to save the whales, others to insist on their right to harpoon and harvest them.

As the International Whaling Commission meets in this flyspeck principality on the shores of the Mediterranean for its 49th annual conference, the organization has fallen into a bad-humored impasse. Conservation advocates insist that the 11-year-old ban on commercial whale hunting be maintained; the Japanese and Norwegians, contending that stocks of certain species are no longer in danger, are demanding that their right to hunt the oceangoing giants be officially recognized.

“If we can eat whale, why should we eat something raised on artificial feed and fertilizer?” asked Japanese delegate Masayuki Komatsu.

Prince Rainier III, the meeting’s official host, warned that the intransigence of pro-conservationist nations could backfire by causing the breakup of the commission.

“As it stands now, the tense conflict between the whaling and anti-whaling coalitions, each entrenched in their firm resolve and convictions, looks more and more like a no-win situation . . . for the whales,” Rainier told the 39-nation organization as the conference opened Monday.

“Indeed, as anti-whaling forces gain sufficient strength to impose their views unilaterally, the temptation will grow larger for whaling nations to defect [from] this commission, in perfect legality, and resume commercial whaling under their own rules,” the prince said. “What is the largest risk today for whale stocks? Reducing the IWC to a small club of protectionist countries with limited influence on the outside world? Or working out a novel solution in which both sides could be better off?”

On Tuesday, Michael Canny of Ireland, the commission’s deputy chairman, sketched out a controversial package deal that, in effect, would bring the moratorium on commercial whaling to an end by allowing Japan and Norway to catch whales in their coastal waters on the condition that the meat be consumed locally. Later this week, the Makah Indian tribe from Washington state hopes to receive permission to begin whaling for the first time in 70 years.

“ ‘Save the whales’ has largely succeeded,” Canny, referring to what many see as the most effective global movement for animal protection in history, explained earlier. “We’re concerned now that the inability to reach a consensus [on a resumption of commercial whaling] may lead to a breakup of the IWC.”

In fact, according to commission officials, because of Norway’s unilateral resumption of whaling in 1993 and Japan’s taking advantage of a loophole that allows the capture and killing of the large mammals for “scientific” purposes, far more whales are being slaughtered today than four years ago. The Irish proposal, which also demands the phaseout of lethal “scientific” whaling, would reduce the overall kill, Canny asserted.

“What we’re looking at is share the pain, share the gain,” said Canny, who is also director of his country’s National Parks and Wildlife Service. Under the Irish plan, the rest of the world’s oceans, he said, would be declared a “global sanctuary” for whales.

The United States, one of the staunchest opponents of commercial whaling, flatly rejected a core element of Canny’s proposal.

“Simply put, we are opposed to commercial whaling in any form,” U.S. delegation chief Will Martin, international affairs director for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told the conference. The Irish plan, he said, would legitimize practices the Clinton administration objects to: Norway’s decision to resume whaling and Japan’s “scientific” killing of whales.

But the U.S., like the overwhelming majority of the 19 other member nations whose delegates spoke after Canny, agreed to discuss the blueprint for a compromise.

Canny said he doesn’t think that a formal deal is possible before the next IWC meeting, next year in Oman. Frederic Briand, a Monacan delegate, predicted that reconciling pro- and anti-whaling forces will prove a “mission impossible.”

With a good deal of historical justification, the Norwegians and Japanese are now complaining that the commission, created by a 1946 treaty signed by commercial whaling nations, has evolved into a single-mindedly protectionist organization.

“They are two sides of the same coin: conservation and sustainable use,” Kare Bryn, Norway’s whaling commissioner, said in an interview. “But in the past 10 to 15 years, the majority of this organization has chosen to put the emphasis on the first element, on conservation, and to forget about sustainable use.”

According to Komatsu of Japan, 760,000 minke whales now roam the frigid waters off Antarctica alone. “We should be a leader country to demonstrate that Antarctic resources can be used globally,” he said.

For environmentalists, whose most recent triumph came in 1994 with the establishment of a Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary, the current projects of pro-whaling forces threaten to undo a quarter of a century of conservation efforts. Last month, a report to the Australian government rejected the notion that replenishment of whale stocks justifies the lifting of the moratorium, saying that the statistics weren’t reliable and that in the past, whaling countries understated their catch.

Conservationists have also cautioned that under the Irish plan, other countries might be tempted to engage in coastal whaling and illegally sell the meat and blubber to Japan, the world’s largest consumer, thus putting some of the most endangered species, such as the southern right and humpback whales, at even greater risk.

“If they [the IWC member states] are allowed to go back into the old whaling club, the whales will be exterminated,” predicted Patricia Forkan, executive vice president of the Humane Society of the United States.