What are the changed circumstances that might no longer require that a total ban on
all commercial whaling be kept in place? The first is a moral consideration, due to
the fact that the moratorium decision was acceded to by whaling countries in 1982
following a collective undertaking that by 1990 the moratorium decision was to be
reviewed after certain research had been completed by the IWC Scientific Committee.
This research included completing stock assessments on a number of stocks of the
non-endangered minke whale, and developing an improved and science-based
management procedure; these important tasks were satisfactorily completed by 1992.
The improved management procedure has resulted in a rigorous means
(unanimously adopted by the IWC Scientific Committee) of calculating conservative
and sustainable whale harvest levels. The stock assessment tasks ascertained that
there were indeed several stocks of minke whales which could sustain conservative
levels of annual harvest without depleting those stocks. An important moral issue
involves the acceptance of considerable funds for research and meeting costs
provided to the IWC by the three whaling countries, when the intention of the U.S.
and other anti-whaling countries is to disregard all scientific justification for an
eventual resumption of whaling. (The 1994 decision by the IWC majority to create a
whale sanctuary in the Antarctic regions, discussed below, is an example of IWC
duplicity in which the U.S. takes a prominent role).
Why End the Whaling Moratorium?
After some years of abiding by the terms of the imposed pause in commercial
whaling and covering most of the cost of the research being undertaken by the IWC,
Iceland, Japan and Norway now seek to take a few hundred minke whales from their
coastal waters under the authority of the 1946 International Convention for the
Regulation of Whaling. The regional minke whale stocks of interest to the three
whaling countries number in the tens of thousands in each case, and, furthermore,
this abundant and non-endangered whale species has a global distribution. In
addition to these three coastal fishery stocks, there are many hundreds of thousands
of minke whale in the Antarctic that Japan wishes to resume hunting under IWC-
established whaling quotas and regulations. These Antarctic minke stocks are
believed to be several times larger now than existed before commercial whaling of
these particular stocks commenced in the 1930's, so that little threat would be posed
by a limited and strictly regulated fishery. Nevertheless, in order to block Japan's use
of these abundant stocks in the event the whaling moratorium is ever lifted, the U.S.
and other nations at the IWC voted in 1994 to create a whale sanctuary covering the
southern oceans from 40o South down to the edge of the Antarctic continent. This
measure, lacking any scientific justification, was taken after Japan had financed
sixteen years of IWC Antarctic minke whale census work that enabled the IWC
Scientific Committee to determine the abundance and biological characteristics of the
Antarctic minke whale stocks.
Why a Resumption of Controlled Whaling is not a Serious Threat
The continued use of whalemeat as food in Japan and Iceland is restricted to
localized regions, with more widespread consumption of whalemeat only occurring
in Norway. Meeting these customary food needs can be satisfied by relatively small-
scale fisheries compared to earlier large, industrial-scale, whaling operations which
supplied the global demand for whale oil and a large variety of other whale-derived
products that are now no longer needed.
It is necessary to stress this singular and significant difference between past and
present whale-product demand, because the alleged necessity to maintain a total ban
on commercial hunting of whales is continually justified by opponents of whaling by
invoking the spectre of the imminent return of uncontrollable large-scale and
technologically-sophisticated industrial whaling fleets. Such a prognosis ignores the
historic decline (starting in the 1960's) of commercial whaling due to loss of markets
and the lack of profitability that followed upon the imposition of small quotas by the
IWC. These market losses are irreversible because of the ready availability of cheap
substitute commodities, as well as trade restrictions placed on the importation of
whale products by most of the former whale-product consuming and trading nations.
The Moratorium and International Relations
American interests are not well served by the continued harassment of three small
national fisheries far from American waters. Although these three countries' whaling
activities do not threaten a single American job, it is a fact that these fisheries, no
matter how small, do help create hundreds of jobs in the whale protection industry in
the U.S.. Paradoxically, this U.S. domestic industry likely employs many more people
and generates larger annual revenues than the commercial whale fisheries of Iceland,
Japan and Norway combined.
Why Does the U.S. Waste Resources on a Conservation Non-Issue?
It appears those claiming to represent the U.S. public will are various self-interested
lobby groups who are effective in mobilizing numbers of people to write to officials
in the administration and to members of the U.S. Congress. As any elected official
well knows, there are large numbers of highly emotional issues (especially those
connected with the environment or with killing) that are capable of producing a flood
of letters and postcards from ordinary people who, for a variety of different reasons,
choose to support such emotive causes. A very well-publicized and emotional cause
for the past 20 years has been "Saving the Whale", an imagined composite creature of
extra-ordinary intelligence which most urban people believe is in danger of becoming
extinct because it continues to be wantonly slaughtered for all sorts of non-essential
reasons (e.g. the international cosmetic retailer The Body Shop, advises shoppers that
the endangered blue whale is still being hunted to make oil, candles and soap, but
that Body Shop soap contains no oil from the blue whale). Continuing
misinformation campaigns, focused upon discredited earlier ideas are continually
promoted by such groups as, e.g., Greenpeace, the U.S. Humane Society, WWF, the
International Fund for Animal Welfare and a host of other such organizations.
Until recently the press, many public figures in the entertainment world and
politicians in the U.S. and certain other countries frequently repeated whale
preservationists' erroneous stories. However, now it appears that journalists are
increasingly going beyond merely questioning the truthfulness of these fund-raising
campaigns and are exposing campaigners' dishonesty as well as taking a more
positive position concerning the environmental and social benefits stemming from the
sustainable use of wildlife.
Creating False Illusions
How would people respond to the invitation to protest if they knew the stocks and
species in question were not endangered by the actions of a strictly-regulated fishery,
and that the reason whales are being killed is to provide food for people who have
long been eating whalemeat rather than eating beef or turkey? Would Americans be
so opposed to whaling if they knew that hard-working people, living in remote
coastal communities where agriculture cannot be practised for reasons of climate or
geography, have kept their families fed and their communities alive by hunting
whales? Or that the importance of whaling to these small family-based fishing
operations is less its profitability and more the predictability and basic security such
an activity provides in the context of a local economy where returns vary widely due
to the natural and unpredictable fluctuations common to fish populations in these
regions?
It is germane to ask: what if campaign resources expended by whale protection
organizations were directed to saving lambs or calves from slaughter? In such a
situation, would not tens of thousands of urban residents respond in much the same
way as they do in the case of whale saving? Consider the scenario creatively
manufactured by the protest industry: the bleating of lambs roughly separated from
their mothers, wild-eyed calves being electric-shocked into trucks for the long ride to
mass slaughter, and the utter needlessness of it all when supermarket shelves are
abundantly stocked with such a large variety of alternatives. Such emotional
campaign material would surely energize many thousands of urban American school
children and adult vegetarians to send postcards to Washington, whilst at the same
leaving millions of other Americans utterly unconvinced of the need to protest.
However, large-scale campaigns assuredly will not be targeted toward lambs or
calves in the U.S. for two important reasons: first, the considerable investment
already made in creating a hugely successful mythology about the "endangered"
whale as the "human of the sea", and second, an attack on the domestic agriculture
industry would receive little or no political support in Congress, threatening as it
would, so many American jobs.
Are Americans Ready to Support an End to the Whaling Moratorium?
The first of such counter views originated from an invitation published in the Federal
Register in 1992 to respond to the U.S. position in favour of extending the
moratorium on commercial whaling and in favour of banning whale research that
requires killing whales. Responses to this policy position were received from 41
individuals and organizations in the U.S., of which 80% supported ending the
moratorium on commercial whaling and 88% opposed banning lethal research on
whales. However, this sample of American opinion is quite small, though the small
response received might in itself give some indication of how Americans feel about
the whaling issue.
Recently a larger and fully representative sample of Americans expressed a collective
view on whaling policy in a national public opinion poll carried out by the Gallup
Organization with funds supplied by the National Science Foundation. In this 1992
poll fewer than half the Americans polled reported they were opposed to the hunting
of whales. When asked whether, in setting whaling policy, the maintenance of
traditional whaling communities should be taken into account, about half answered
that such concerns were important, a response rate that was double that of those
believing such concerns were not important in deciding whaling policy. In response
to a question whether whales should be considered as a protein (food) source for
human use, Americans were equally divided pro and con. In answer to the question
whether respondents would support a policy allowing a small number of whales to
be harvested from non-endangered species of whale, about 90% of Americans
answered affirmatively (which, incidently, constituting a higher response rate than
was obtained from respondents in five other countries, including Japan and Norway!)
One may wonder why so many Americans would answer in ways that appear to
contradict the views proclaimed by whale protection lobbyists. The answer is likely
due to the fact that most Americans have been led to believe that whales are severely
endangered everywhere and consequently they express concerns based upon this
erroneous belief. When it is suggested that only non-endangered species will be
subject to hunting, respondents are freed from the constraints these fears engender.
To test this interpretation (that many Americans truly believe that whales are
endangered) respondents were questioned about the population status of whales
commonly mentioned in protectionist campaign literature. In choosing from among
broad categories of population estimate (<1000, 1000-9999, 10000-99999, etc) only 1%
of Americans knew there were about one million minke whales and more than one
million sperm whales alive today. In fact about one-third of Americans believed there
were less than 1000 minkes in the world and more than half thought there were less
than 10000 sperm whales (rather than ca. 1.5 million). It is no surprise then that so
many people write their congressmen when hearing that advanced nations such as
Japan and Norway wish to resume whaling, for under these imagined circumstances
how could the scant one thousand minke whales have any hope of surviving?
Conclusion
The U.S., in persisting with its environmentally-unjustified whaling policy, creates
various strains in international relations with these friendly nations and strains its
own credibility with many of its own citizenry. It does so in the mistaken belief that
the American public supports its position. But in regard to the governments' putative
policy on whaling, the American public, according to Gallup, overwhelmingly
supports President Clinton's stated policy contained in an October 1993 letter to
congress in which it is plainly stated that U.S. whaling policy will be based upon
science. However, subsequent performance in connection with the 1994 meetings of
the IWC indicates that U.S. policy does not follow the rhetoric of the U.S. President (3).
In the Gallup poll, fully 80% of American believe that whaling policy should indeed
be based upon the best scientific advice, which is also a requirement contained in the
1946 International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling which the U.S. and
thirty-seven other countries remain bound to uphold as members of the IWC. This
congruence, together with Gallup's finding that 90% of Americans agree with a
resumption of whaling provided that only limited harvests are taken from stocks of
abundant and non-endangered whale species, brings the American public into full
accord with the whaling policies of Iceland, Japan and Norway, and out of
conformity with U.S. whaling policy and the contrarian advice it is based upon.
Under these circumstances of popular support at home and firm scientific advice
from the IWC Scientific Committee, it is hard to understand why the U.S.
government finds it so difficult to deal rationally with friendly nations in respect to
an international resource management agreement it has pledged to uphold. Indeed,
when the evidence is examined, there would appear to be no compelling reason for
dishonouring that particular international commitment at this time.
Notes
2. The Marine Mammal Commission (MMC) appears to have been surprised by the lack of support for its
proposed policy against commercial and research whaling. According to the 1993 MMC Annual Report to
Congress "it was evident that some of [our] recommendations had not been explained or understood clearly",
requiring that the policy be "clarified and expanded" (though, it can be safely assumed, not significantly altered
following its rejection by those troubling to respond).
3. For example, the U.S. was one of the most prominent delegations working for adoption of the Antarctic whale
sanctuary proposal at the 1994 IWC meeting This sanctuary proposal was adopted without sound scientific
justification being offered and in extreme haste before the IWC Scientific Committee had been allowed an
opportunity to offer advice on the tabled proposal. As a Washington Times article commented (May 5, 1994), the
U.S. position paper in support of a sanctuary "clearly grasps at straws" and "can only be termed pseudoscientific"
as it presents "its one-sided view....ignor[ing] all published scientific data that disagrees with its...thesis".
At its 1982 Annual Meeting, the International Whaling Commission (IWC) instituted
a pause in commercial whaling. In 1982, given the questionable state of knowledge,
this whaling ban (or moratorium) was arguably justified for conservation or
management reasons. However, today it is no longer justified on the basis of science,
nor for management or conservation purposes. Rather it has become a purely political
issue, and one that has significant foreign policy and moral implications, as well as
being counter-productive in environmental terms.
The International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (the international
agreement setting up and governing the IWC) seeks to regulate the whaling activities
of signatory nations. It expressly states that the concerns of the producers and
consumers of whale products are to be considered when decisions are made. At the
present time, despite many countries having ceased whaling, there remain at least
three countries seeking a selective lifting of the moratorium in accord with the
recommendations of the IWC Scientific Committee. These countries, namely Iceland,
Japan and Norway, are the countries where whale products comprise not just a
valuable fishery product for certain of their coastal communities, but where
whalemeat is included in the national cuisine. In that latter significant respect, these
maritime nations share among themselves a significant feature not found in the
former whaling nations, such as the U.S. (and Australia, France, Germany, the
Netherlands, New Zealand, S. Africa, and the U.K.) where whalemeat has never been
a measurable component of the national diet.
The historic excesses associated with over-exploitation of the great whales occurred
during times when whales provided an abundant supply of needed and inexpensive
oil for various industrial purposes. Once petroleum-based oils had become widely
available and margarine manufacture began using vegetable oils, the main
justification for continued large-scale whaling ceased to exist for most whaling
nations. Thus by the 1970's and particularly the 1980's, whaling continued principally
to provide meat in those few societies where it had historically been an important
part of the diet. Most other whaling nations, including the U.S., the U.K. and the
Netherlands, had by then abandoned the increasingly unprofitable whaling and
trading in whale products.
The continuation of a whaling ban when no conservation or management justification
exists has the potential to damage international relations. It is important to remember
that the three whaling nations negatively impacted by the continuing ban are allies of
the U.S., bound by a variety of historical, cultural and commercial ties that ordinarily
should provide a secure basis for continuing goodwill and international cooperation.
Yet citizens of these whaling countries have become acutely aware of the apparent
moral and political weaknesses of the U.S. government in not being able to stand up
to the self-serving demands of "environmental" activists who seek political and
financial advantage by actions that impose undeserved and unjustified hardship upon
small groups of people living, in environmental terms, exemplary lives. For more and
more people who subscribe to the doctrine of sustainable use of natural resources, the
question becomes: for how much longer will the U.S. choose to act as an
international bully, ignoring both science and common sense as well as an
international resource management agreement it has a legal and moral obligation to
uphold?
Why would the U.S. pursue the worthy policy of marine conservation by adopting
such questionable, indeed counter-productive, means as attacking such a conservation
non-issue as taking a limited and non-depleting harvest from a wide-ranging non-
endangered species? It is not as though Americans no longer kill whales for food, for
that is a legally-protected right exercised by some Americans that will assuredly
continue long into the future. We are told that the reason the U.S. persists in its
policy of opposing a resumption of commercial whaling is because that is what the
American public wants. But is this truly the case? How good is the evidence being
used to support this particular policy?
Do thousands of mailed protests, sent to politicians in Washington and in some
European capitals, and millions of dollars collected in support of such campaigns
suggest some real (as opposed to illusory) concerns among the general publics of
those countries? Indeed, such behaviour certainly does indicate real concern: it tells
us that large numbers of people are concerned that the last whale is about to be
slaughtered and that endangered species are about to be exterminated just to make
soap and candles or for other trivial purposes. The illusion derives from the fact that
the last whale is not about to be removed from the ocean, and it is not being hunted
to make soap and candles nor for other trivial purposes.
Recent information challenges the U.S. government assertion that the American
public has spoken and that this consequently legitimates government policy in
respect to whaling issues. Twenty years of "Save the Whale" hyperbole and
misinformation has certainly had an impact on urban peoples and others, including
many of those in government and in areas of life not dealing closely with the
whaling issue. However, the U.S. administration does have available other
expressions of public opinion that might challenge the perception fostered by animal
protection organizations.
From fantasy and fear powerful myths are created and will persist as long as
ignorance is allowed to influence peoples' judgements. Realistically however, the
world will always contain creative salesmen having questionable ethical standards, so
it is not remarkable that various self-interested groups play on peoples' fears for their
own financial gain. What is the more regrettable is that members of the U.S.
Congress, with access to research staffs and experts in relevant fields, apparently do
not see the need to question the claims of those using exaggerated rhetoric and
improbable arguments to set themselves and their extreme causes against the
reasonable interests of friendly countries.
1. These journalists include, e.g. Ray Bonner of the New York Times, and Leslie Spencer of Forbes Magazine
in the U.S., Kevin Dowling and Michael Sissons in the U.K., Ulrich Schwarz in Germany, Robin Brunet and
Ken MacQueen in Canada, Erik Sander and Leif Blaedel in Denmark, Padraic McGuinness and Ian Verrender in
Australia, Tommy Hammarstrom and Jan Guilliou in Sweden, among an increasing number that also includes
unnamed editorial writers in such papers as the Chicago Herald Tribune, Politiken (in Denmark) and The Times
and Sunday Times (in England) among others.