Blood on the Water

Extracts:
"Britain and other nations are now admitting that they are they are not prepared to agree to a resumption of whaling in any form, sustainable or otherwise, a move guaranteed to undermine the IWC's raison d'etre .......

........Many IWC members are now coming to accept that limited commercial whaling would not threaten the survival of the more abundant whales. "We are approaching a situation", admits Ivor Llewellyn, head of the British delegation to the IWC. "where it will be possible to exploit certain whale stocks on a sustainable basis". With this knowledge, Britain has decided to come out of the closet at the annual meeting of the IWC in Aberdeen next week, and adopt a more "honest" position. Britain has always said that it would not contemplate voting to end the moratorium on commercial whaling without assurances about healthy whale stocks, humane killing methods and fully effective procedures for monitoring a commercial hunt. But now, even those assurances are not enough. Britain is finally admitting that it will oppose the resumption of whaling whatever the IWC scientists say .....

..... Llewellyn maintains that there still are valid scientific reasons to keep the moratorium in place. The size of many whale stocks is still unknown, for instance, and certain methods of killing are ineffective and inhumane. Also lacking in an agreed way of making sure whaling nations catch no more than they are assigned and the no one whales outside IWC control. "But we should not use this to disguise the fact that we oppose the resumption of commercial whaling on any grounds", says Llewellyn. "We have come to the conclusion that it is better to be honest". While many IWC members agree with Britain's position, they are reluctant to admit it formally. Registering a moral opposition to whaling could be risky, they feel. For according to the 1946 International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling, the IWC exists only "to provide for the proper conservation of whale stocks and thus make possible the orderly development of the whaling industry". Accordingly, most anti-whaling members of the IWC have preferred to carefully cloak their opposition to whaling in the language of science. "Some members have used fine-tuning and perfecting the RMP to cover their ethical opposition to commercial whaling", admits Sidney Holt, a whale expert and a member of the International Fund for Animal Welfare ....

... it will be difficult for countries like Britain to participate in the scientific proceedings of the IWC only to disregard findings that suggest controlled whaling will not endanger whales. The British position "sits very strangely" with the convention, says Gambell (the IWC secretary) "Here we have a fisheries convention which is being used not for regulating a fishery but for preventing a fishery". Holt adds: "The commission will want to know why Britain doesn't just leave" .....