Introduction
This paper is about Ethics and Whale Harvesting. Because of limitations of time and space, it does not deal with questions concerning:

(1)  cetacean captivity;
(2)  aboriginal, subsistence whaling;
(3)  killing for scientific research;
(4)  incidental dolphin kills in tuna fishing;
(5)  accidental kills from fishing nets or vessel collisions; or
(6)  culling of whales or dolphins to lessen competition for fish stocks.

When I use the term 'whale harvesting' in this paper I am referring exclusively to the sustained killing of whales for purposes of commercial gain - slaughter to sell for profit.

Other issues may be argued at other times and places.

Facing the Issue of Sustainable Whale Harvesting
Marine scientist William Aron, a former United States Commissioner to the International Whaling Commission, recently issued a challenge to the whale conservation community which I believe we should wholeheartedly welcome and seek to come to grips with now.

In an article published this year in Coastal Management, entitled 'The Commons Revisited: Thoughts on Marine Mammal Management', Aron (1988) calls for a new review of public policy relating to marine mammals in general and whales in particular.

He draws a distinction between two fundamentally different philosophical and scientific bases for determining human actions towards cetaceans. He contrasts the 'extractive conservationist' policy which is based on the 'wise use of living resources' with the 'protectionist' philosophy which is based on 'animal rights and non-consumptive or aesthetic use'.

The key issue raised by Aron's paper is whether marine mammals should be managed in order to extract a consumable harvest while still conserving the species, or whether they should be 'managed to achieve a goal built around nonconsumptive values which may be primarily moral or ethical'.

Applying this question to the International Whaling Commission, it may be posed as a choice between alternative future management regimes. One possible IWC management regime is the continuous exploitation of whales, on a scientifically controlled basis, as a renewable resource to be harvested commercially for the optimum sustainable yield.

An alternative management regime, also possible for the IWC, is the permanent protection of whales throughout the world as the most appropriate means for the optimum utilisation of the unique natural resource as part of the common heritage of all humankind.

Bill Aron is now the director of the Northwest and Alaska Fisheries Centre of the United States National Marine Fisheries Service, in Seattle, Washington, and his Coastal Management article deals with pinipeds, sea otters, and other marine mammals in addition to whales, dolphins, and porpoises. But whale protectionists and conservationists alike should be grateful to him for placing the issue of ethics and morality out on the table for open discussion and debate.

If our interest is consumptive utilisation of cetacean resources without causing species extinction, one set of future policies is called for. 'If, however, the concern for marine mammals is essentially based on the ethics or morality of their harvest,' Aron asserts, 'we must clearly recognise' that this involves a different set of values and calls for different policies.

I, for one, believe that the time has come for us to accept Aron's challenge, to admit that the whale issue in particular is increasingly becoming one of morals and ethics, and for us to engage in a critical examination of the global impacts of the alternative choices before us, and the varying rationales supporting them.

Historical Background: Knowledge and Education
To place the matter in historical perspective, it is worth noting that until after World WarII, relatively little was known about whales by the general public. Awesome leviathans and playful dolphins have figured as mythic symbols in cultures around the globe since ancient times. Rock-carvings, mosaics, vases, and coins as well as stories, poems, and legends give evidence of the significant role which cetaceans have played in human art and literature for thousands of years. More often than not they have been revered as sacred.

During the centuries of depredation and commercial exploitation which began around 1,000 A.D., whales became known as giant protagonists and the source of meat, oil, and other products upon which much human society was for a long time dependent. Rended carcasses were almost the sole source of biological knowledge.

The increase in large-scale, pelagic whaling which followed World War II led to significant enlargements of knowledge. As one of the Mammal Society's founders. L. Harrison Matthews, points out in his book, The Natural History of the Whale, 'the study of cetology grew rapidly after the end of war in 1945'.

When the International Whaling Commission was established by a 15-nation treaty in 1946, one of its key aims was to 'organise studies and investigations relating to whales and whaling'. At first this was tied almost exclusively to the expanding, heavily mechanised whaling industry and the research scientists who worked on the whaling fleets.

But during the 1970s and 80s the world has witnessed a veritable explosion of new knowledge and consequently new attitudes about whales and other cetaceans. At the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, held in Stockholm, Sweden, the whale became a worldwide symbol for environmental conservation, and a 'ten year moratorium on commercial whaling' was called for 'under the auspices of the IWC'. Although the moratorium recommendation was not accepted for another 10 years, till 1982, the Stockholm conference marked an historic turning point in global consciousness.

It was succeeded by perhaps the greatest growth of interest in a particular group of wild animals ever experienced in human society, Public awareness of whales, particularly in the western world, fed on itself through a proliferation of books, magazines, films, television shows, painting, sculptures, and advocacy organisations. Dolphins and small whales exhibited in aquaria captivated visitors, young and old alike, and became most popular attractions.

A new breed of whale scientists, operating outside the traditional consumptive research techniques applied by the whaling industry, undertook benign studies of live whales in their natural habitats. And the new industry of commercial whalewatching from boats grew into a multi-million dollar enterprise in the United States. (Barstow 1986).

As knowledge and education grew worldwide, a dramatic change in interest came about, from exclusive concern for the consumptive use of whales for maximum economic gain, to widespread caring for their non-consumptive utilization as living wonders of the sea. In fact, in June of 1983, the year following the IWC's historic vote to establish zero quotas for all commercial whaling stocks beginning in 1986, the IWC itself cosponsored with a number of active whales conservation organisations, the first Global Conference on the Non-Consumptive Utilisation of Cetacean Resources. This 'Whales Alive' Conference, as it came to be called, was a landmark in the movement re-examine 'Whales in a Modern World'.

It was followed, in 1984, by the adoption of the United Nations Environment Programme of a 'Global Plan of Action for Marine Mammal Conservation', which has as one of its principal components the aim of education and enhancement of public understanding around the world. In seeking to implement this goal, organisations such as the Cetacean Society International are working with UNEP to produce and distribute books and multi - media materials in Spanish and other non - English languages to further expand the human cetacean knowledge base upon which future judgements must be made.

Changing Attitudes, Values and Standards of Ethics
Ethics is a matter of values. Values are based on attitudes. Attitudes derive from knowledge, or the lack thereof, and from feeling. But attitudes and therefore values and human standards of ethics do change.

History reminds us that in some societies in earlier times the practice of cannibalism was considered a virtue. As recently as 130 years ago in the United States, and even more recently in some other countries, human slavery was supported and defended as being economically and ethically justified.

Over the past 40 years we have seen a highly significant change in attitude and ethics with regard to whales. In practice, during the first two decades under the International Whaling Commission, whales were considered by the whalers to be an expendable resource. As Matthews describes it, 'the whaling companies seemed determined to reap as big a harvest as possible in the shortest time, regardless of the consequences'.

Following the 1972 Stockholm Conference, concerted measures were undertaken by the IWC to assure that whale populations below a designated critical level would not be exploited at all. These actions reflected a newly developed global consensus that it was morally wrong to kill any species of whale to extinction. This has now become universally accepted, with even Japanese whaling advocates adamantly insisting that whale species survival is a fundamental imperative. As Aron acknowledges, 'If a harvesting regime threatens a species or population with extinction, the current world ethic demands that such activities cease.'

Thus the first debate has already been resolved. Public attitudes and morality today have at least removed whales form the category of expendable resource.

Now we come to the broader ethical question - the next phase in the debate. Is it morally acceptable to kill whales at all for commercial gain - to harvest them as a renewable resource, assuming that their kill can be regulated to sustain a continuing yield?

With the IWC moratorium now in effect, this question at the moment is purely academic. However, when the comprehensive assessment of whale stocks currently underway is reviewed and the present zero quotas on all stocks come up for reconsideration at the 1990 IWC meeting, I assure you it will be far from academic. It will be the fundamental issue to be decided by the IWC in determining the Commission's own future and the future of human-cetacean relations on our planet.

This is why it seems to me that now is a good time to initiate the debate and to acknowledge its ethical core. If harvesting whales is acceptable, there can be little scientific doubt now that at least some species of whales can in the future sustain a limited, strictly regulated take, without threatening species survival. So the argument against killing whales can no longer be based on preventing extinction. A different rationale is required.

A recent survey of attitudes and knowledge of New England whalewatchers conducted by Kaaren Lewis in the summer of 1987 based on questionnaires returned by 190 passengers who had been out on whalewatching trips aboard the Dolphin Fleet form Provincetown, Massachusetts, may be a straw in the wind.

While the population surveyed was admittedly likely to be biased in favour of whale protection, the responses to one question in particular appear provocative. Nearly two - thirds of the respondents strongly disagreed (41%) or moderately disagreed (23%) with the statement: 'If a whale population becomes abundant as a result of man's protection, the hunting of whales should be resumed.' Less than one third agreed with this statement, either strongly (5%) or moderately (24%).

The whale community, I believe, is ready to think about this issue now.

The Global Arena and the International Whaling Commission
Before outlining my own views on the ethics of whale harvesting, there is one other aspect of this issue which I would like to discuss. Whale protectionists have been accused of narrow - mindedly seeking to impose their own values and ethics upon people in other countries who have the right to live by different standards if they so choose. It is argued that if Americans are allowed to kill cattle, sheep, and pigs for food and profit, then the Japanese and others should be allowed to kill whales.

In his article in Coastal Management, for example, Bill Aron suggests that whale protection policies, unrelated to species survival, represent the unilateral and arbitrary application of a localised bias. He cautions against 'the perception by many countries that the United Stated is trying to press its moral and ethical standards on others, in ways that have negative economic consequences, at no cost to the United States.'

The fundamental factor, however, is that the issue of whale protection is in fact a global arena. Unlike domesticated animals bred within national boundaries, whales are wild, migratory animals which come under international jurisdiction. Just as it is now an accepted 'world ethic' that no whale species should be killed to extinction, so in the future 'no harvesting' may become a global principle.

Japanese scientist Hideo Obare, in an article recently published in The Siren, the ocean news magazine of the United Nations Environment Programme, emphasised the point that 'whales are not domestic animals. The oceans where whales live are not the private property of Japan.'

Obara goes on to observe that the strength of anti - whaling advocates within the International Whaling Commission today 'may mean that the anti - whaling sentiment has become the prevailing opinion worldwide, and that the time has come for even the Japanese government to change its attitudes.'

The fact is also that the forum where the whale harvesting issue must ultimately be determined is a multi-national body. The forty or so member nations of the International Whaling Commission represent the overwhelming majority of the earth's people. Moreover, re-enforcing the IWC treaty itself is the provision in Article 65 of the United Nations Law of the Sea Treaty, which, while not yet fully ratified, pledges its signatory states in the case of cetaceans in particular to 'work through the appropriate international organisations for their conservation, management, and study'.

The United Nations as a whole set far-reaching ethical standards for all the peoples of the world when, on 10 December 1948, it adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Now, forty years later, it falls to the agency established to represent 'the interest of the nations of the world in safeguarding for future generations the great natural resources represented by the whale stocks' - namely, the IWC - to determine for all what scientific and ethical standards will best provide in the future for 'the conservation, development, and optimum utilisation of the whale resources'.

A Variety of Ethical Approaches
One can approach the question of ethics in the harvesting of whales from a variety of viewpoints.

In his prophetic 1957 science fiction novel, The Deep Range, Arthur C. Clarke portrays a Sir Lankan Buddhist leader as believing, quite simply, that 'it is wrong to inflict injury or death on any living creature' and that 'killing is only justified to save the life of a higher creature'. This imagined future protagonist carries out a global crusade against the highly sophisticated mass slaughter of whales for food in the 21st century because, he asserts, 'whales give us the most dramatic presentation of our case'. In effect, the whales constitute a breakthrough species for the Buddhists' sacredness of life philosophy.

In a United States radio broadcast on 2 May 1978, the noted CBS news reporter Walter Cronkite cited a number of special traits which appear to place cetaceans in 'a different moral category than other animals'. He commented that there is something in humanity's ethical development 'that is done violence to when men kill, without compunction, intelligent creatures which a growing number of people consider almost human'.

In Sir Sydney Frost's December 1978 Report of the Inquiry into Whales and Whaling issued by the government of Australia, a number of ethical arguments are cited in support of the inquiry's central conclusion 'that Australian whaling should end, and that, internationally, Australia should pursue a policy of opposition to whaling'.

In a paper dealing with moral and ethical questions presented at the 1983 Boston 'Whales Alive' Conference, American philosophers Dale Jamieson and Tom Regan argued that the same reasons for considering human beings to have 'inherent value' and 'individual rights' should also apply to as 'intelligent and sensitive creatures' as whales. They represent a special case in point for the rapidly growing animal rights movement around the world.

Perhaps one way to summarise such approaches as to why humankind should permanently renounce commercial whale killing and should start with whales in seeking to end the non- essential taking of other species' lives is to consider that the two highest mountain peaks of evolution on our planet are homo sapiens on land and cetaceans in the sea. Surely the two most highly developed forms of life on earth should coexist in peace.

Whales are Uniquely Special
My own rationale for asking the IWC to decide to adopt a management regime of permanent protection for whales from consumptive commercial exploitation on a global basis is both simple and complex. It is grounded i pragmatic practicalities of both fact and feeling regarding 'Whales in a Modern World'.

I am not here arguing for the sanctity of all life on earth. I am not advocating equal rights for all animal species. I am seeking to set forth a rational and moral basis for a future determination by one, specialised, international, human agency that one order of marine mammals should be managed in this manner.

Why whales? My rationale most simply is that whales are uniquely special! They really are in a class by themselves.

Let me cite four major categories of uniqueness.

First, whales are biologically special.
Whales include by far the largest animals on earth, growing to be over 30 metres in length - the blue whale (Balenoptera musculus). Whales include the possessors of by far the largest brain of any creature ever to have lived on our planet, weighing four or five times as much as the human brain - the sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus). Whales include the creators of the most complex, long - lasting, repetitive sound patterns of any non - human animal - the humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae). And whales include species (Tursiops truncatus and some other odontocetes) which exceed humans and all other groups as well in convolutedness or fissurisation of the cerebral cortex.

Marine mammal veterinarian Sam Ridgway, of the U.S. Naval Ocean Systems Centre in San Diego, has reported findings that the bottlenose dolphin, in particular, by a variety of measurements (encephalisation quotient, volume of cortex, ratio of brain weight to spinal cord weight, etc.) ranks just below humans and considerably above other higher primates, including gorillas, chimpanzees, and orangutans.

In all these ways whales are truly unique biologically!

Second, whales are ecologically special.
Whales have evolved as marine mammals over millions of years, with both baleen and toothed whales probably appearing up to 25 million years ago, long before the development of human beings and the latter's intrusion in the ocean ecosystem.

Whales are at the top of the vast food chain of the sea. Baleen whales consume the largest amount of zooplankton, and the killer whale (Orcinus orca) is the world's greatest non- human predator. Whales affect the ocean ecosystem in a uniquely global manner, and any exploitation of other marine resources, whether krill or fish, must uniquely take into account cetaceans. Human life depends upon a proper balance in the amount of oxygen inn earth's atmosphere produced from the plankton that is kept in check most critically by whale consumption.

Third, whales are culturally special.
Living cetaceans have an almost unbelievable capacity for enriching the lives of human beings with whom they come in peaceful contact. They have uniquely universal appeal to the human spirit. They are unmatched invokers of awe. There is a mystique about them that inspires a sense of wonder and exhilaration among persons from all races and nations in ways no other, non-human species has equalled so widely. On a global scale, whales outclass elephants, tigers, gorillas, or even pandas.

Another aspect of whales' cultural uniqueness lies in their special aesthetic qualities. Throughout human history they have been the subject of exceptional artistic creations. They are supremely photogenic. (Just look through Heathcote Williams new book, Whale Nation, if you want confirmation of this.) They even serve as special keys for education. Cetaceans have such a unique fascination and such widespread interest for persons of all ages and backgrounds that they become breakthrough educational motivators.

To top it all off, whales appear to have a unique affinity for human beings. Despite their overwhelming size and power, and despite the centuries of their being victimised by human predation, whales in the wild are proving to be uniquely tolerant of the peaceful proximity of human beings and indeed are increasingly demonstrating not merely passive coping but deliberate initiating of positive interactions. This adds significantly to their cultural uniqueness!

Fourth, whales are politically special.
They are uniquely non-national in range. Their living space, unlike that of land animals, does not fall within clearly defined national boundaries. Their dwelling place is largely the global commons, the seas of the world which do not belong to any one nation. More than any other marine mammal, whales are pelagic in their habitat, and thus they constitute a unique global resource.

Moreover, whales are uniquely subject in international control. Because they are not legally an exclusive resource of any one nation, no one nation can claim a moral right to kill them. The exploitation or protection of whales is logically and legally a determination to be made on an international basis, through the established agency of the International Whaling Commission. In this way too whales are unique!

The Caring Factor and Mutual Enrichment
All the foregoing considerations provide a rationale for the IWC to ban the future harvesting of whales. It may turn out in the end, however, that the most rational basis for providing permanent protection for all whales is at the same time the most irrational - it is the all but universal emotional response elicited by whales from human beings who are not engaged in the actual business of whale killing. Because of this response, the consumptive exploitation of whales for commercial gain may already have become so unacceptable to so large a segment of the global public that it simply must be given up.

Modern technology has provided the facts and the imagery, via books and films and worldwide television exposure, which have fed this feeling. Knowing about whales leads to caring. If anyone doubted the extent and depth of this caring, on a global scale, they must surely have been taken aback by the almost incredible intensity of interest, concern, the energy focused from every corner of the globe on the internationally televised saga of the televised saga of the rescue efforts for the three gary whales trapped in arctic ice at Point Barrow, Alaska, in October 1988.

I believe that humankind is on the threshold of a profound moral transformation. The world is turning from valuing whales dead to valuing them more alive. The idea of sharing our planet with whales alive is replacing the concept of killing them for sale. The IWC moratorium now in effect marks the start of a whole new era in human/cetacean relations. For at least a temporary period, humankind as a whole is now committed to maintaining a relationship of peaceful coexistence between humans and whales.

During the past decade in particular evidence has been accumulating that a new relationship of caring and sharing can indeed offer mutual enrichment. New Zealand author Wade Doak's amazing new book, Encounters with Whales and Dolphins, documents scores of incidents throughout the world's waters of positive human/cetacean interaction which leave little doubt that these free - swimming encounters were meaningful and satisfying to both species. Encounter accounts range from giant sperm whales to pods of wild orcas or game-playing oceanic dolphins.

Anyone who has had personal contact with cetaceans in their home environment knows how incredibly enriching this experience can be for the human psyche. By the same token, dolphins riding bow waves and sporting in the seas surrounding ships, 'friendly, gary whales nudging small surface craft and inviting human hand strokes, acrobatic humpback whales of their own accord approaching whale watch vessels and preforming close-up manoeuvres to the cheers of onlookers often for more than half an hour at a time - all of these repeated manifestations clearly demonstrate that, at least on some occasions, humans are in fact providing a not unwelcome added dimension to cetacean lives. Surely this constituted a form of mutual enrichment.

Conclusion
So this is my thesis: beyond whale species survival, because of what we now know about whales and because of how humans now feel about whales, their special uniqueness merits a new moral and ethical standard in the global arena of the IWC, that will permanently protect them from consumptive, commercial exploitation.

Think about it - should not peaceful coexistence and mutual enrichment be the overriding goal for future relations between humans and whales in a modern world?