This week we’re attending the annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission to keep a watchful eye on any negotiations that might lead to legitimizing commercial whaling. We’ve been quite busy working around the clock for the whales and to prove to everyone that whales are meant to be seen, not hurt. Sadly, as the clock ticks on the conference room wall Iceland continues to kill endangered fin whales. Just this morning the whalers killed two more of these rare giants. The same whales my friends in Iceland’s whale watching industry depends on.

On Tuesday we released Whale Watching Worldwide and Australian minister Peter Garrett introduced the IFAW report to the IWC Commission meeting with an excellent speech, crediting IFAW for its production on the floor of the meeting. There was a great deal of support among the countries in attendance for the report.

Japan’s ‘scientific whaling’ in the North Pacific was discussed and as usual the pro-whaling countries praised the critical importance of lethal research. I’m sure if Japan’s supermarkets were in attendance they’d praise the program for affording government subsidized meat to sell on its shelves. It was nice to hear the US representative strongly oppose scientific whaling - a product of IFAW’s diligent efforts to put pressure on the US government.

Stay tuned for the latest on our hard work to protect these great animals.

Governments from more than 80 countries opened the 61st annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in Madeira today (Mon), following a year of closed-door discussions which have failed to secure agreement from Japan, Iceland and Norway to respect the body’s scientific procedures and commercial whaling ban.

Conservation-minded delegates to the week-long meeting said much is at stake for whales and decades of international efforts to protect them.

Patrick Ramage, whale programme director for the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), said: "Our planet's great whales face more threats today than at any time in history. It's time to get rid of commercial whaling, not the whaling ban."

An IWC moratorium on commercial whaling came into effect in 1986. Since that time, the government of Japan has killed some 12,000 whales, abusing a provision in the convention which permits whaling for scientific research purposes.

A major focus of this week's meeting is a proposed deal to sanction unsustainable coastal whaling by Japan in exchange for a reduction in its ongoing "scientific" whaling in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary. Such a deal would violate the moratorium and established scientific procedures, legitimise Japan’s ongoing "scientific" whaling and ignore decades of work by the IWC Scientific Committee.

"Countries that support sound science and whale conservation should reject this deal and instead take action inside and outside the IWC to make the commercial whaling moratorium effective," Ramage added. "The future of the IWC is conservation science, not commercial slaughter."

A new IFAW report to be released during the Madeira meeting documents the continuing dramatic growth and expanding economic contribution of whale watching worldwide.

I just arrived back from Hvalfjörður filming the whaling boat bringing two fin whales to the whaling station. I went with a cameraman and a photographer from Morgunblaðið and a journalist.

The helicopter came and met us near the mouth of the fjord at 3am. The helecopter we were supposed to get was not available but that was Ok. The whaling boat was already in the fjord so we quickly got the photographer on board. We spent more time having the cameraman on board.
 

The weather was quite rough with strong wind so we could not follow the boat in the helecopter all the way to the station. There was no time or chance to do a proper stand up either but we drove to the whaling station and I drove through the open gate after another car. 

Sigursteinn

Fin whaling has just started again in Iceland after a pause since 2006. The first of the endangered fins to be killed this summer are expected to be brought to Hvalfjordur whaling station tomorrow (Friday June 19). As a human being I feel very sorry that this brutal killing is happening. As an Icelander I feel ashamed for my governement. A few days ago I did a whale watching tour with the Elding company just outside Reykjavík. For half an hour we watched a calm minke whale swimming peacefully near us. On board were guests from different countries, many from Finland, the UK and the US. As we were all enjoying the company of the minke whale the captain came to me and pointed north at a small dot in the distance. "There´s a minke whaling boat," he said angrily. A few moments later we all watched the minke disappear gracefully, swimming north in the direction of the whalers some four miles away. This is our grim reality in Iceland.

 Please help put an end to the bloody business of whaling by supporting whale watching!

Sigursteinn

As the first of Iceland’s whaling ships reportedly heads to sea today to train its harpoons on 150 endangered fin whales, the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) is urging the Icelandic government to call off this cruel and needless slaughter now. IFAW opposes whaling because it is unacceptably cruel – there is no humane way to kill a whale and research has shown that whales shot with explosive harpoons can take more than half an hour to die. Targeting an endangered species also raises serious conservation concerns as it pushes the threatened fin whales closer to extinction.

Opinion polling and independent economic research in Iceland has revealed little or no appetite for whale meat, while responsible whale watching, by contrast, is financially lucrative and one of Iceland’s biggest tourist draws.

Robbie Marsland, UK Director of IFAW, said: “At a time when Iceland is struggling to rebuild its economy, it is in the country’s own interests more than ever before not to embark on activities which could damage Iceland’s international reputation and its business interests.

“There is simply no valid argument in favour of whaling – it is cruel, unnecessary and unsustainable. In Iceland’s case it is also illogical to pursue a policy for which there is little market. The most positive step which would benefit Icelanders and whales would be for the Icelandic government to end whaling now and work instead to protect its valuable whale watching industry.

“Whale watching generates almost £5m a year for coastal communities in Iceland - it offers a humane, sustainable and profitable alternative to whaling.”

The current whaling quotas were set earlier this year by the outgoing Fisheries and Agriculture Minister, Einar K Gudfinnsson. He granted commercial whaling quotas of up to 150 endangered fin whales and 100 minke whales a year for the next five years. Iceland’s new Fisheries Minister, Steingrimur J Sigfusson, later announced these catch allowances would remain for one year, despite only a limited domestic market for minke whales and no domestic market for fin whales. In recent days the catch limit for minke whales has been increased to 200.

The slaughter of minke whales began last month, at which time representatives from IFAW and other animal welfare organisations held a protest outside the Icelandic Embassy in London and met with the Icelandic Ambassador to express their concerns.

Post written by Patrick Ramage, IFAW's Global Whale Program Director

Many people think commercial hunting of whales ended in the 1980s. Sadly, this is not the case! More than 30,000 whales have been killed since the 1986 commercial whaling ban and Japan, Iceland and Norway continue to slaughter whales for products that nobody needs. The Government of Japan leads this effort and its factory ship and fleet are killing whales right now in the waters of the Southern Ocean Sanctuary around Antarctica!

Whales face more threats today than at any time in history -- from marine pollution and habitat destruction, to entanglement in fishing gear and collisions with high-speed vessels. New and emerging threats such as global warming and ocean noise pollution are also threatening the ways whales breed, feed and migrate across our oceans

For more than two decades, IFAW has been giving hands-on-help to whales around the world. Not just on the water or on the beach but also in the halls of government. IFAW is a leader in the fight to protect our planet's great whales at the International Whaling Commission (IWC) the global body charged with protecting whales and managing whale stocks. On Sunday, January 25th, the Washington Post broke the news of a secret Bush administration plan to allow the Government of Japan to kill more whales.

Read the Post story and join our campaign to encourage governments worldwide, including the Governments of Japan, Iceland and Norway to put down the harpoon, pick up the camera and join the emerging global consensus for whale conservation in the 21st century!

Join our fight to protect whales - take action today at www.stopwhaling.org

An independent group of Antarctic law and policy experts, convened in Canberra Australia by IFAW, has released a report detailing options available to the Australian Government to challenge Japan’s whaling program through the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS).

This gives yet another legal avenue for the Australian government to stop Japan's whaling operations through international law.

The report is available on the IFAW Australia website.

This note about a recent victory for whales was sent by Beth Algood, the International Fund for Animal Welfare's Program Manager in our Washington D.C. office.

The Natural Resources Defense Counsel (NRDC), IFAW and other plaintiffs settled a Mid-Frequency Active sonar lawsuit on Friday, concluding IFAW’s participation in litigation against the Navy.  Among the terms of the settlement, the Navy has agreed to publicly disclose previously classified information, provide funding of almost $15 million in new marine mammal research, and has made assurances that the Navy will abide by federal environmental protection laws.  Earlier this year NRDC and IFAW successfully settled a Low-Frequency Active Sonar case and litigated the Southern California Mid-Frequency Active Sonar lawsuit decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. 

The news was also posted to the Environmental Magazines web site.

IFAW was pleased to contribute to a unique project just published by NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) about a memoir written by a now deceased Russian scientist documenting the Soviet Union's whaling activities from roughly the period of 1950-1980 is available from the NMFS site.

The memoir, written by A.A. Berzin is described by the author in the following preface:

I have always condemned (and to do anything more was not within our power or abilities) the illegal and sometimes destructive whaling by the Soviet Union. This opinion was expressed in numerous documents, including reports and records of presentations at scientific and other meetings; these documents are the witnesses to this condemnation. However, none of these documents ever saw the light of day: all of them were marked with the sinister stamp “secret.” When necessary in this memoir, my opinion of the whaling will be supported by data drawn from these documents.

An encouraging article on Australia's Sydney Morning Herald today quotes Tomohiko Taniguchi, previously spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Tokyo.

"Of the hundreds of matters he dealt with, the one he dreaded most was defending Japan's whaling program...'I hated this issue because there's no point in Japan sticking to its position,' he tells the Herald."

The Japanese whaling industry is neglibible in contributing to their economy, the number of people who derive their living from whaling is a tiny fraction in a country of 130 million. With a worsening economy the subsidies and concessions provided to the whaling industry will become harder to justify especially when compared to the damage done to international relationships.

Do we dare hope that we are looking at the last days of whaling by Japan?