"Dress it up how you like - whaling is murder and murder is wrong"(From a full page advertisement in the Times, May 1, 1996, placed by the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, UK)
The High North Alliance, the umbrella organisation for seafaring hunters of the North Atlantic, is situated in the fishing village of Reine, just north of the Arctic Circle.
Here people eat whale meat as steaks, stew, meatballs and pizza. Whale meat is everyday food. They don't eat it all the time, of course. They also have lamb and beef, and more than anything they eat fish - four days a week. Reine is only one of many communities in the frigid North Atlantic - from Clyde River, Baffin Island in the west to Nizimaja Zolotitsa on the White Sea in the east - where the hunting of whales and seals is a natural pan of life and livelihoods.
So being told that our high north diet makes us murderers is hard to swallow. For us, such claims are so absurd and unfair that we can only shake our heads in disbelief
But it hasn't been possible to trivialise the campaigns against whaling and sealing. Their objective has been to destroy markets for the products of the hunts - and this has to some extent been successful. Pressure from anti-whaling campaigns has led to an international ban on commercial whaling. The US market for sealskins is effectively closed. And urban western consumers are regularly urged to boycott products from whaling and sealing nations. for hunting communities across the High North, these campaigns have had serious economic and social consequences.
We have made an effort to understand the thinking behind this protest - and to explore the possibilities for dialogue. The first organised protests were directed at large-scale industrial exploitation of marine mammals by giant corporations, demanding fighter regulations for hunts to safeguard stocks from depletion. And they had a point. Marine living resources must be conserved, and this can only be achieved by ensuring off-takes are sustainable. For the people of the High North, to do otherwise would be to endanger our own future.
But we feel there is a need to point out that those responsible for the over-exploitation of the past came from the south - from the more temperate regions of the North Atlantic. They did their greatest damage at a time when whale and seal oil was the major commodity for fuel, fighting and a wide range of industrial uses, which have since been entirely replaced by fossil fuels, vegetable oils and other substances. What was once a global industry no longer exists, Whaling and sealing continue today in communities where whales and seals have long been important to local economies, cultures and diets
But even when whale and seal populations were finally spared the destruction of industrial hunts, the campaigns to -save- them refused to die. According to the original terms of reference, these populations have already been saved, but the world clearly has trouble digesting this fact. Thus, in 1992, an international survey found that 65-75% of people in Australia, Germany, England and the US believed that all the
great whales am in danger of extinction,while around 50% of these same people believed whaling was still conducted primarily for oil. Knowledge of population sizes of different whale species was also very poor, and tended to be far below the best available scientific estimates. It seems to us that a fundamental ignorance of the facts is responsible for keeping Wive false fears for the future of whales and seals.(3)Now a new argument against marine mammal hunts has emerged to bolster the flagging ecological arguments, or even to replace them: it is -whaling is murder, and murder is wrong.! No longer is it a question of how many whales or seals are killed, or even bow they are killed. Now the question is: should they be killed at all?(4) Four nations - the US, the UK, New Zealand and Australia - have already declared themselves opposed in principle to all commercial whaling. Our basic concern is to ensure that whales are not killed stated New Zealand's commissioner to the International Whaling Commission (IWC)(5)
US domestic legislation treats marine mammals very differently from other animals. Ali hunting of marine mammals is prohibited, with exceptions possible only in cases of hunting by natives for subsistence purposes. But the hunting of terrestrial mammals is permitted, including by mum of traps. The US is currently in conflict with the EU, which wants to ban imports of fur from trapped animals. in a similar conflict, but with the roles reversed, the US prohibited the importation of kangaroo products from Australia
There is an obvious cultural element in the conflict over marine mammal hunts. In certain Western cultures, whales and seals have a special status, either above, or outside, the rest of the animal kingdom. -whales are different they deserve to be saved, not as potential meat balls, but as a source of encouragement to mankind said former chairman of the US Marine Mammal Commission, Victor Scheffer.(6)
Perhaps it will come as a surprise to such people that the -whale-murderers. of the High North can be just as culturally eccentric. In northern Norway, for example, people have a special relationship to the eider duck. Although in Denmark, all reputable game merchants sell eider breast, and are fond of reminding northern Norwegians what a delicacy they are missing, there are few who would dream of trying it. For centuries they collected the valuable down from the eider duck's nest. They built small houses for it and protected it against predators. While they no longer collect its down, they continue to protect it. They hunt many kinds of duck and other seabirds, but the hunting of eider ducks is prohibited, even though it is one of the most common species of duck in northern Norway. As for eating one - the very thought is ridiculous!
So the statement -whales are different. begs a question: for whom? Different cultures will never be able to agree on which animals are special and which ones are best for dinner. The important question is how we relate to them cultural differences.
The High North Alliance is an umbrella organisation representing whalers and sealers from Canada, Greenland the Faroe Islands, Iceland and Norway, as well as a number of local communites. The HNA is committed to working for the future of coastal cultures and the sustainable use of marine mammal resources.
Notes:
- 3. Milton Freeman and Stephen Kellert, Public Attitudes to Whales - Results of a Six-Country Survey., (Canadian Circumpolar Institute/Yale University, 1992).
- 4. The qustion the seat hunt posed was not just how seals were killed, but whether they should be killed at all. Quote by Brian Davis, founder of the International Fund for Animal Welfare, in campaign brochure produced by the International Fund for Animal Welfare, undated, distributed in 1995.
- 5. Jim McLay, The IWC- Wither or Whither? (Terra Media World of Whales Exhibition Lecture Series, Auckland Museum, Aug. 21, 1996).
- 6. Quoted in Lora Lones, The Marine Mammal Protection Act and International Protection of Ceta-ceans: A Unilateral Attempt to Effectuate Transnational Conservation, Vanderbilt journal of Transnational Law (Vol. 22, 1989).