TL: OUTLAW WHALERS (GP)
SO: Greenpeace International
DT: 1990
Keywords: oceans marine mammals whaling iwc greenpeace groups
illegal norway scandinavia europe japan fareast gp reports /


Introduction

Since the start of the whaling moratorium five years ago, 13,650
whales have been killed by the commercial whaling countries.

The whales were killed under objections to IWC decision and by
whaling under scientific permit. Of the countries involved,
Japan, Norway and Iceland are the same countries now most eager
for the moratorium to be lifted.

As this report documents, they have throughout their involvement
in the IWC demonstrated little if any willingness to cooperate
with the Commission or to stand by its decisions.

They have thwarted the international control of the whaling
industry by violating regulations, exempting themselves from
decisions they didn't like, conducting scientifically invalid
research whaling, and/or supporting operations by nonmember
countries. As whaling has come under ever more international
condemnation they have concocted and spread spurious arguments
to justify their intentions to continue.

There is no evidence that the situation would be any better in
the immediate future. Even in the months since the 1989 IWC
meeting the whalers have acted in such a way as to show how
unwilling they are to help the IWC become an effective
organisation for the conservation of the great whales. The
Government of Japan, for example, circulated a letter to the IWC
threatening that its coastal whalers would embark on an
unregulated hunt of minke whales if the IWC did not grant Japan
a quota this year, under a dubious scheme by which Japan has
repeatedly tried to exempt its coastal minke whaling operations
from the commercial moratorium.

Since May 1990 the Government of Norway has been widely
disseminating false information about the IWC's assessment of
minke whales in order to justify its premature bid for a lifting
of the Protection Stock classification of the NE Atlantic minke
whales. In an unprecedented move the Government forwarded a
formal proposal to the IWC requesting the change even before
their data had been submitted to the Scientific Committee for
review.

Over the years the IWC has taken steps, within the limits of the
Commission's constitution and its membership, to try to improve
its ability to regulate commercial whaling. But it has no
enforcement powers and the mechanisms now in place simply are
not equal to the task.

In the present circumstances there is only one way forward for
the Commission if it is to fulfil the objective of the 1946
International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling: to
safeguard the great whales for future generations.

As the IWC this year reviews its 1982 decision, Greenpeace calls
on the Commission to hold firm to the moratorium.


Attempts to control infractions: The International Observer
Scheme

Aware that something was needed to ensure compliance with the
rules if the Commission was ever to be able to manage the
whaling industry, an International Observer Scheme (IOS) was
developed over many years of difficult negotiations.

The IOS is designed to operate through a system of bilateral
agreements whereby observers from one country are sent, under
IWC auspices, to monitor the whaling operations of another. A
formal report is to be filed with the IWC at the conclusion of
the inspection period.

The Scheme usefully brought the Commission's attention to a
number of infractions that would otherwise not have been
reported. But its overall effectiveness was hobbled by the fact
that observers were sometimes traded between whaling countries
(USSR and Japan in the Antarctic, Iceland and Norway in the
North Atlantic) and were not used at all for some operations,
such as minke whaling in the North Pacific and North Atlantic.
Nor, of course, does the IOS apply to whaling under scientific
permit. A shortage of funding has also limited the IOS'
effectiveness. Often the bilateral arrangements that did exist
were not extensive enough to allow sufficient coverage of an
operation involving several ships and a number of land stations.

This last problem was described in 1980 by an IWC observer sent
to monitor the Japanese coastal whaling operation for sperm and
Brydes whales. At the time the operation comprised seven catcher
boats operating from five land stations. The observer was able
to be present at less than 10% of all the landings.

Although Japan also provided national inspectors through its
Fishery Agency, the fact remained that of the infractions
reported the majority were reported by the international
inspector. In his 1980 report to the IWC, the inspector wrote:
"Although the number of JFA whaling inspectors has increased,
the number of IWC observers has remained at one individual who
is required to observe the whale catch at five different land
stations. This task is clearly impossible, and results in only
token monitoring of compliance with the regulations of the
International Whaling Commission".

The Infractions sub-committee recommended in 1981 that steps be
taken "to provide increased coverage of Japanese land stations"
under the existing bilateral agreement with the U.S., but this
did not happen.

Members of the IWC were aware of the limitations of the IOS, and
some attempted to improve the Scheme once it was in effect. At
the December 1978 Special Meeting of the Commission, for
example, it was agreed to establish a Working Group on New
Observer Schemes. Japan and the USSR spoke against the creation
of the Working Group, arguing that they "consider the existing
scheme adequate and so see no need for any radical change."

Among the points in its mandate, the new group was to "suggest
means of covering minke whaling in North Atlantic and North
Pacific". The Working Group recommended that the existing
international arrangements in both areas be extended to cover
the minke whaling operations and that the possibilities of
allowing inspectors on board the whaling vessels be explored.
These recommendations were never implemented.


The failures of Norway's national inspection system

Although success with the IOS was very limited, where control
has relied entirely on domestic arrangements the outcome has
been disastrous. Norway's record has been particularly
appalling.

In the hey-day of Norwegian minke whaling on the northwest
coast, between 1942 and 1952, half the average annual catch of
1,000 whales a year consisted of first-year calves, while an
unknown proportion of the rest were their mothers. Some of the
calves were weaned but some at least were still suckling. It has
been illegal for IWC countries to kill lactating females and
their calves ever since the Commission was founded, but the
Norwegian authorities at no stage took any corrective action.

At a 1976 workshop in Oslo on North Atlantic whale stocks, Ole-
Vidar Solvik, then of the University of Oslo, presented a thesis
on the North Atlantic minke whale, based on official whaling
logbooks as well as trips he himself made on whaling vessels and
conversations with the crews.

Solvik reported that his investigations of these logbooks had
revealed that a number of the minke whales reported as being
caught around Iceland were, in fact, sei whales. He also found
that in one case a vessel had caught fin whales but had recorded
them as minkes.

Solvik wrote that: "According to my sources it has happened that
such false catch reports have been prepared for locations where
the vessel has never hunted. The probability that such work
gives a completely misleading picture of the given ground is
therefore high."

With the introduction of the New Management Procedure (NMP) in
the mid-1970s the IWC began setting species-specific catch
quotas. But the establishment of such a quota system for minke
whaling in the North Atlantic was opposed by the Norwegian
members of the Scientific Committee, on the grounds that it
would not be possible to control.

In a paper presented to the 1976 Scientific Committee meeting,
Norwegian scientist Age Jonsgard wrote: "The only way of making
effective control would be to send an inspector on board every
vessel. Since so many vessels are participating in the whaling
operations, both practical and economic problems would make such
a regulation unreasonable and in fact impossible ... there can
be no doubt that at least a part of the whalers would ... catch
more whales than permitted."

At the 1977 meeting of the Scientific Committee the Norwegian
scientists "unanimously reiterated their concern over the
appropriateness of catch quota regulation for this fakery in
view of the impossibility of introducing an effective control
system..."

With more than 80 whaling boats in operation at the time,
processing the dead whales at sea, the inherent enforcement
problems were obvious. The Norwegians argued for a system of
regulation based on a control of whaling effort, i.e. numbers of
boats and length of season. But it is no easier policing this
method than a quota-based system. The number of boats may be
kept the same, for example, but there is no accounting for
increases in efficiency through technical improvements such as
electronic equipment.

Once the IWC's quota system was applied, and until the advent of
scientific whaling in 1988, the Norwegians relied for the most
part on land-based inspectors to inspect logbooks when vessels
returned from a whaling trip and to count the flukes of the dead
whales to control that the numbers killed corresponded with the
quantities of whale meat on board. This system proved grossly
inadequate because the inspectors were too few, whalers could
deliver excess meat to unsupervised landing points, and logbooks
could be falsified.

Under this same system the few inspectors - never more than ten
- that actually went on whaling boats did sometimes report
infractions but their efforts were overwhelmed by the sheer
number of vessels to be monitored and by the difficult
situations they faced on board. A report from a Norwegian
inspector in 1986 provides a grim illustration of these problems
[see box].

Greenpeace has obtained a copy of a 1986 inspector's report to
the Norwegian Fisheries Department that was classified
information until last year. It was mentioned in a few Norwegian
newspapers at the time, but the incident was not reported to the
IWC by Norwegian officials as required.

The report, filed by Dag Vongraven, an inspector on board the
whaling ship Ulla, revealed that on a whaling expedition in 1986
the vessel had taken four minke whales more than its allocated
quota of 16 (a 25% over-catch), and that it had shot seven
whales with grenade harpoons on which the grenades were already
detonated, thus making them effectively "cold harpoons", banned
by the IWC since 1983.

Death times of the whales killed ranged from 3 seconds to 30
minutes. Over half took longer than 10 minutes to die, including
some of those killed by grenade harpoon. The female that took 30
minutes to die was harpooned first with a grenade harpoon, then
with a cold harpoon, and finally was shot eight times with a
rifle.

The Ulla's captain refused to sign the report, claiming in a
newspaper account that Vongraven had insisted he would not
report the extra kills. But Vongraven countered that he was told
that if he reported the extra four whales then the crew might as
well take 30 instead of 20, as they would lose their license for
the following season anyway.

With more than 50 catcher boats in operation at the time, and no
more than 8 inspectors, additional violations were certain. As
Vograven said in 1989, "The crew on the "Ulla" is neither better
nor worse than other whalers...They represent the Norwegian
catcher mentality where there is not enough concern for the
ecological balance in the sea. The commercial interests are put
before consideration towards nature."

In the particular case of the Ulla, for which an inspector's
report was possible, sanctions were applied against the captain
in keeping with Norwegian domestic law. He was fined 25,000
kroner for having used the seven cold harpoons, and another
150,000 kroner for the over-catch but was allowed nevertheless
to sell all of the meat. He was also denied his concession for
1987.

It is not known how many similar violations by other whalers
went undetected.

In one of the rare instances that any Norwegian representative
has admitted to the IWC that infractions actually might be
occurring, the motivation was to pull the rug out from under the
IWC's 1985 decision to classify the N.E. Atlantic minke whales
as a Protection Stock.

At the 1985 meeting of the IWC's Scientific Committee scientists
from Bergen's Institute for Marine Research revealed their
suspicion that underreporting of catches had been occurring
regularly since 1977 after quotas had been applied to the North
Atlantic minkes.

The scientists furthermore reported that, following a massive
cut in the quota at the 1983 IWC meeting, the level of under-
reporting in 1984 may have jumped to as high as 30%.


In 1986 the Norwegian story developed a self serving new angle.
The scientists put forward the hypothesis that, rather than
there having been an erratic jump in the level of under-
reporting from 1983 to 1984, the degree of under-reporting might
have gradually been increasing since 1977. They argued that this
gradual increase in under-reporting, rather than an actual
decrease in the size of the stock, might be the explanation for
the decline in the "catch per unit effort" that had been
detected for those years (a declining "cpue" is normally an
indicator of a declining population).

Ultimately this hypothesis was never substantiated, and it was
later dismissed by another group of scientists led by Norway's
Lars Walloe. But by putting it forward that year the Norwegians
were able to cast some doubt on the scientific work that had
resulted in the Protection Stock classification of the N.E.
Atlantic minkes, and to deflect some of the criticism from their
decision the previous year to file an objection to that
decision.

At the same time the Government never accounted officially to
the Commission itself, as required under Article IX(4) of the
1946 Convention, for the massive infractions nor did it report
what steps it might have taken to penalise those committing the
infractions.

Factory ship or land station?

In 1979 the IWC adopted a ban on factory-ship whaling for all
species except minkes. Just two years later it was discovered
that Japan was using an anchored factory ship as a basis for
Bryde's and sperm whaling in the Ogasawara Islands, and was
calling it a "land station" operation. The factory ship was a
self-propelled barge secured by anchors about 100 metres from
shore and attached to land by a floating walkway and pipelines.
Its rudder and prop were removed.

Members of the Infractions Sub-Committee expressed their concern
that this new development in the use of whaling apparatus could
create a dangerous precedent. The Sub-Committee recommended that
the Commission review the definitions of "factory ship" and
"land station" as contained in the 1946 Convention, in light of
the new situation. Japan eventually stopped the operation, but
only after hundreds of Brydes and sperm whales had been killed.

"Whale-stretching" and size limits

Another trick commonly employed by whalers was called
"whale-stretching". The IWC has set minimum size restrictions on
all species except minkes. Reports of catches usually showed
substantial numbers of whales measuring just over the minimum
length. In fact, the proportion of these whales in the overall
catch was often too high to be statistically possible. The
practice was so common that national inspectors were obviously
turning a blind eye to it. The result was that the Scientific
Committee was unable to use the length distributions as reliable
indicators of the true sizes of animals in the catches.

Also related to size limits, the Commission allowed whales that
were just below the minimum length to be killed only if "the
meat of such whales is to be used for local consumption". In the
case of fin whales, this restriction applied to those between
the minimum of 55 feet and 50 feet. In the case of sei whales it
applied to those between the minimum of 40 feet and 35 feet.

Reports over the years revealed that Iceland was taking little
care to distinguish between whales subject to the local
consumption restriction and those that could be exported.

The Canadian IOS observer at the Icelandic land station in 1973,
for example, reported that: "Of the 33 fin whales below 55 feet,
some meat was taken from 23 for local consumption in Iceland, on
the average between 1000 kilos to 1500 kilos from each. The
total production of whale meat for local consumption in Iceland
for the 1973 season was 32,196 kilos. An amount of meat equal to
the meat produced by all 33 fin whales should have been
relegated to the local market, if the IWC ruling is to have any
meaning."

In a report to the Commission in 1979 another Canadian observer
to the Icelandic station in 1977 noted that "No special effort
is taken to separate the meat obtained from whales subject to
the 'local consumption' ruling. The whaling company simply
reports the production allocated for local consumption. Everyone
assumes that they represent the real meat yield of that year's
LCWs [local consumption whales]." 

Whaling through the loopholes: Objections

Use of the objection clause of the 1946 Convention (Article
V(3)) has bedeviled the Commission throughout its history. By
filing objections Member States have exempted themselves from
decisions they have not liked, o*en without regard for
scientific advice and with drastic results for regulatory
efforts. It remains a threat to the successful implementation of
any decisions taken by the Commission.

In the early decades of the IWC's history Member States used the
procedure frequently, particularly on measures intended to cut
Antarctic catches. Iceland took advantage of it in 1955 to
object to the five-year ban on the killing of blue whales in the
North Atlantic. Despite annual appeals by the Scientific
Committee and the Commission, the Icelandic Government delayed
the protection of this devastated species for five years. When
the Commission decided to renew the ban in 1960, Iceland
objected again but finally agreed to comply six months later.

For a while objections were not so common, but once the
Commission began to adopt a string of conservation measures in
the 1980s, so the objection procedure again came into frequent
use.

Five Member States, Iceland, Japan, Norway, Brazil (then a
whaling country) and the Soviet Union, objected to the 1981 ban
on the use of the nonexplosive, or "cold", harpoon for minke
whales (effective in 1983). The cold harpoon had been prohibited
for other species the previous year, but the whaling countries
had argued against inclusion of the minke on the grounds that,
while an explosive harpoon might reduce the cruelty of the hunt,
it would spoil more of the meat on this relatively small
species.

Norway withdrew its objection a few years later having developed
a new type of grenade harpoon, and others also took up the new
weapon although maintained their objections. Iceland, which is
showing renewed interest in minke whaling since the end of its
scientific whaling for fin and sei whales in 1989, has taken no
steps to comply with the ban. At a minimum the Norwegian
explosive harpoons would have to be ordered, with delivery
expected to take 6 months to a year, and crews trained in their
use.

In 1982 four Member States - Japan, Norway, Peru and the Soviet
Union - objected to the moratorium decision. Peru withdrew its
objection in 1983, and Japan in 1988, just after it had started
killing minke whales under special scientific permit. Norway and
the Soviet Union still maintain theirs.

Japan objected also in 1984 to protection of the N. Pacific
sperm whale. Following an agreement negotiated that year with
the U.S. Government, Japan killed nearly 1200 sperm whales over
for years under this objection without American fishery
sanctions being applied. The objection was finally withdrawn in
1988.

Japan, the USSR and Brazil also objected in 1984 to a decision
drastically reducing the catch limits for Southern Hemisphere
minke whales for the 1984/85 season. (Brazil subsequently
brought its whaling operations to an end in 1985 and has been a
strongly conservationist Member of the Commission ever since).

When the Commission voted for full protection of the N.E.
Atlantic stock of minke whales in 1985, on a clear
recommendation of the Scientific Committee, Norway objected. The
objection is still in place. Although Norway has frequently
insisted that it acts in accordance with scientific advice, once
that advice was unequivocally not in its favour it exempted
itself from the decision.


Whaling through the loopholes: Scientific whaling

The other major loophole in the 1946 Whaling Convention is the
scientific whaling provision. Article VIII of the Convention
states that any Member State of the IWC may "issue a permit to
any of its nationals, authorising that national to kill, take or
treat whales for purposes of scientific research", regardless of
any conservation measures that may be in effect. The State is
required only to submit the proposal to the IWC for prior review
by the Scientific Committee and to report its results the
following year. It is under no obligation to accept the
scientists advice. Products from whales caught under permit are
free to be sold, although the obvious commercial motivation has
increasingly worried the IWC.

Over the decades, scientific whaling has been called upon to
boost flagging industries or to keep operations going in the
face of new restrictions on commercial hunts. Never, though, has
it been used so much as during the commercial whaling
moratorium's first five years.

Four countries - Japan, Iceland, Rep. of Korea, and Norway -
have engaged in scientific whaling since the moratorium came
into effect. Their programmes have been criticised by the
Scientific Committee and consistently and repeatedly opposed by
the Commission itself. Korea responded immediately to the
criticisms and abandoned its programme after its first year, in
1986. Iceland continued despite three resolutions opposing its
programme, and eventually stopped in 1989 after losing millions
of dollars due to a Greenpeace-led boycott of its fish products.
Japan and Norway intend to continue even now.

Japanese scientific whaling

Japan has instigated several scientific whaling schemes over the
years. The most notorious was that conducted in the mid-1970s
for Bryde's whales in the Indian Ocean, at the time protected by
the IWC's ban on pelagic whaling for baleen whales in the waters
north of 40ø S. After three years of scientific whaling, more
than 450 Bryde's had been "sampled" and 3000 tonnes of frozen
whale meat had been stored away. Few data came from the exercise
and those few were of such little worth that they were not used
by the Scientific Committee when it attempted to assess the
status of the Bryde's populations. Nevertheless Japan took the
occasion to press, unsuccessfully, for catch limits of nearly
1500 Bryde's and for removal of the long-standing ban on pelagic
whaling for baleen whales in those waters.

Since 1987 Japan has been pursuing a scientific whaling
programme found by IWC scientists and the Commission itself to
be irrelevant and unworkable. So far more than 800 minke whales
have been killed in the Antarctic under this scheme.

The start of Japanese scientific whaling was not much of a
surprise. Already in 1984 - a year before the moratorium was to
come into effect - the Asahi News Service carried a story
(3.12.84) that "[t]he government and industry have considered
various strategies to continue whaling, such as ... continuing
to catch whales under the guise of 'investigative

whaling', although the catch would still be sold and eaten...."

The initial proposal that was submitted to the Scientific
Committee in 1987 called for an annual kill of 825 minkes and 50
sperm whales in the Antarctic over twelve years. Members of the
Committee found the stated objective of the proposal (to obtain
improved estimates of the natural mortality rate of Southern
Hemisphere minke whales) to be impossible to achieve "in theory
or in practice" by the method proposed, and in any event
irrelevant to the IWC's research priorities.

The Commission itself recommended, in a strongly worded
resolution, that until the "serious uncertainties" were
resolved, Japan not proceed with the programme.

Japan responded by presenting a related "feasibility study" to
kill 300 minke whales, and meanwhile did nothing to correct the
fundamental errors of methodology.

The new programme was also sharply criticised by the IWC
scientists and the Commission again passed a resolution asking
Japan not to proceed; this was ignored, and in the 1987/88
season, Japan killed 273 minke whales.

The following year, despite further criticism from the
Scientific Committee and the Commission, Japan conducted another
"feasibility study" and returned to port after killing 241
minkes.

When plans for a return to the original programme for minkes
were presented to the 1989 IWC meeting, scientists reiterated
the concerns they had expressed in 1987. The Commission
accordingly passed yet another resolution noting that: "the
proposed research is not structured to provide or demonstrate
that any existing methodology can solve the problems or satisfy
the objectives which have been set, and therefore the proposed
research does not contribute information essential for rational
management of the stock neither will the proposed take of minke
whales in the Southern Hemisphere in 1989/90 under Special
Permit materially facilitate the Comprehensive Assessment, nor
has it been established that the proposed research addresses
critically important research needs".

The Commission called on Japan therefore to "reconsider" its
research programme.

Japan ignored this new IWC recommendation and its "scientific
whalers" returned from yet another season in the Antarctic in
March 1990 with the meat of 330 "sampled" minke whales on board.

Six hundred tonnes were recently auctioned by the Institute of
Cetacean Research at a Tokyo wholesale market. The sale did not
cover the cost of the expedition itself, which is heavily
subsidised by the Government. But once in the hands of the
wholesalers, the meat's ultimate sale to retailers at prices as
high as œ70 a pound will ensure that some people in Japan will
stand to make a great deal of money from Japanese scientific
whaling.

Icelandic scientific whaling

The Icelandic scientific whaling programme, as originally
announced in 1985, called for the annual take of 80 fin, 80
minke, and 40 sei whales, although ultimately the minke whales
were never taken, and changes were made to the numbers of fin
and sei whales that were "sampled".

The programme contained over thirty separate projects, most of
which were benign research activities such as sightings surveys
and radio tracking, but nine of which involved the killing of
whales. Although the benign research projects for the most part
received broad support from the Scientific Committee the lethal
aspects of the programme were opposed by most IWC Member States,
and were roundly criticised by the Commission's scientists.

In reviewing the proposed research in 1985, most members of the
Scientific Committee "believed that the information likely to be
obtained from the proposed permit would provide only a minimal
improvement in our current knowledge with respect to providing
management advice".

At the specialist sub-committee level of the Scientific
Committee criticism was even harsher. On point after point the
scientists found either that existing samples and data should be
used before new ones were collected or that the proposed project
was irrelevant to meeting the research needs already identified
by the IWC as priorities.

Some of the IWC's scientists requested Iceland that year not to
issue the permits "until such time as a proposed research permit
is developed which provides for improving the knowledge required
for management".

Minor changes were made to the programme during the four years,
but these were largely cosmetic and did nothing to alter the
basic criticism that the programme was ill-conceived and out of
touch with the scientific issues central to the current
uncertainties which led the IWC to adopt a moratorium on
commercial whaling.

No sound scientific justification was ever offered by Iceland
for the changes it made from year to year in the number of
whales to be killed. Nor was any explanation given as to why
when, for example, 20 sei whales were thought to be sufficient
for a particular experiment, the same experiment required 40 fin
whales to be killed.

The fact that meat from the whales that were "scientifically
sampled" was to continue to be sold to Japan as in the days of
commercial whaling was also a point of great concern for many
IWC members. In 1986 the IWC considered a resolution to ban
international trade in products from scientific whaling but
under pressure of compromise what was ultimately adopted was a
recommendation that such products "be utilised primarily for
local consumption".

As a way of meeting that recommendation Iceland, the customary
domestic market for the meat from fin and sei whales of which
accounted then for a minute fraction of the expected yield,
announced that it would sell a portion of the yield to its fur
farms for animal feed and launched a national appeal encouraging
Icelanders to eat the fin and sei meat. As a result domestic
consumption was estimated to have increased to approximately 7%
of the total that year. Many unanswered questions remain as to
the final destination of the scientific whale meat.

In 1987 the Commission adopted resolution noting that the
Icelandic programme did not satisfy all of the Commission's
criteria and recommending that Iceland "revoke and refrain from
issuing" scientific permits "until the uncertainties identified
in the Scientific Committee ...have been resolved to the
satisfaction of the Scientific Committee".

A resolution opposing the Icelandic research proposal were also
adopted in 1988 and 1989. At the 1989 IWC meeting Iceland
announced that its 4-year programme of scientific whaling would
end that year. In the programme's last season 68 fin whales were
taken. A total of 292 fins and 70 sei whales were killed in the
four years.

Norwegian scientific whaling

Norway announced in 1988 a 5-year programme to kill 30 minke
whales the first year and possibly as many as 200 in subsequent
years.

Twenty-nine minke whales were killed in 1988 under the
programme, and 17 in 1989. Norway intends to hunt a further 5
minkes this year but has indicated that it intends to pursue a
much larger programme in future.

Like Iceland, Norway embedded its lethal research plans in a
broader research programme, including sightings surveys. Also
like Iceland, when describing and defending its programme, the
Norwegian government deliberately fails to differentiate between
the non-lethal research, which was praised by the Scientific
Committee and Commission, and the scientific whaling, which the
Committee and Commission have both criticised.

In 1988 and again in 1989 the Scientific Committee found that
Norway's programme of scientific whaling failed to satisfy the
IWC's scientific criteria. It was further argued that the
programme would contribute to neither the Comprehensive
Assessment of Whale Stocks nor to a "critically important
research need" - the two criteria laid down by the Commission.


Resolutions expressing the Commission's concerns and opposing
the Norwegian programme were adopted in both years. Norway
ignored them both and proceeded anyway.

"Traditional" Norwegian whaling

In late 1983, the Norwegian government began conducting informal
talks with the United States and other IWC member states
concerning Norway's official objection to the moratorium. It was
suggested that Norway would be prepared to withdraw its
objection if "the distinctive characteristics of traditional
Norwegian whaling could be recognised in a manner permitting
some limited continued whaling under IWC authorization and
management".

During these talks, and in publications produced to support
their argument, the Norwegians contended that " ... pelagic
whaling, using large specialized vessels and factory ships ...
had little to do with the traditional small-type whaling carried
out by ordinary fishermen along the Norwegian coast and in
adjacent waters," and that small-type whaling in Norway " ...
has always been of a more modest and traditional character, both
with respect to equipment and modes of hunting, as well as to
the utilization of the whale products."

Norway's ploy was labelled "grotesque" by former Norwegian MP
Berge Furre, writing in 1984 in the journal Norsk Natur. He
described the situation in this way: "Now it is important for
Norway to convince the USA that the coastal people at Fedje and
Skrova--with the most up-to-date fishery technology in the world
and living in one of the richest countries on earth - are as
dependent on whaling for their survival as the Eskimos and
Inuits... We, the country of oil, the Croesuses of today's
world, are trying to make the world believe that we cannot get
by without 635 small whales, a few thousandths of our fisheries
income. They provide a few hundred men with seasonal work for a
few months. And rich Norway cannot manage to find them any other
occupation. We expect the world to believe that."

The fact is that, although coastal whaling vessels are indeed
smaller than those that destroyed the Antarctic whale stocks,
some of them are still big and powerful enough to roam thousands
of miles in the open ocean, with freezing equipment and the
usual hardware carried by a modern ocean-going ship.

As for being traditional: modern Norwegian minke whaling didn't
actually start until the late 1920s, and had its origins in the
harpoon fisheries conducted by the people of the Bergen region
for basking shark and bluefin tuna. These fisheries also took
northern bottle nose whales - a source of industrial oil, pet
food and feed for foxes bred for their furs - and, when the
sharks and tuna had been all but eliminated, the bottle nose
whalers moved out over the entire North Atlantic, to Scotland,
the Shetland Islands, West Greenland, Labrador, and north to
Spitsbergen as the whales became harder to find. On these
voyages, novice gunners were allowed to practice by shooting at
easier targets - minke whales which approached the ships.
Ultimately the bottle-nose whales were destroyed as well, and
were given Protection Stock status by the IWC in 1977.

The issue of "traditional/small-type" Norwegian coastal whaling
was never discussed at a full Commission meeting. Once it became
clear that they would be unable to strike a deal along these
lines, the Norwegians put aside their plans and ultimately
turned instead to scientific whaling.

Japanese "small-type coastal whaling"

Since 1985 the Government of Japan has sought, and failed, to
have the IWC give special consideration to its coastal minke
whaling.

When the IWC first applied its rules governing commercial
whaling to coastal minke whaling operations in the mid-1970s,
the minkes off the coast of Japan were included and Japan
accepted the arrangement without question.

In time, of course, the commercial whaling moratorium itself
came to apply to those whales. It was only the year before the
moratorium was actually to come into effect that the Government
of Japan thought to raise in the IWC the possibility that these
operations weren't really commercial after all, but had more in
common with aboriginal subsistence whaling operations, which are
exempted from the moratorium.

Japan has pressed this issue every year since, and from 1988 has
sought a specific quota - or "interim relief allocation" of 210
minke whales from the Commission.

The requested quota is from a stock of whales the status of
which is uncertain but which may well be below the IWC's present
protection threshold. The proposed catch limit is more than
double what the last assessment of the stock's status, in 1986,
determined was the maximum possible "replacement yield".

Japan has refined its arguments since they were first raised in
1985 to take emphasis off the "aboriginal/subsistence" aspects
and to underline instead the "traditional/cultural" aspects.

The claims that the coastal minke whaling is somehow
indispensable to the communities involved and to their cultural
tradition have been examined by various non-governmental
organisations, most recently by a Japan-based group, Elsa Nature
Conservancy, in 1989. The object of the organisation's study was
Ayukawa, the largest coastal whaling town and the centre of the
move to resume coastal whaling.

This study pointed out that the element of "tradition" was
negligible, the coastal minke whaling having been started in
1933 by entrepreneurs from other regions; that the whaling makes
a minimal contribution to the economy of the town; that the
habit of eating whale meat in this area was established only
recently and that its consumption is decreasing; and that little
"culture heritage" exists. Equally importantly, the Elsa group
found that the town government is engaged in developing
alternative plans to replace whaling altogether as an economic
activity in the town.

The Japanese Government insists that whaling is traditional and
that whale meat is necessary to culture. But although whale meat
was eaten in some fishing villages as long ago as the 1600s, it
had never been a significant source of protein except in a few
years immediately after the Second World War.

In fact, Japan's modern-day coastal and Antarctic operations
have no relation to the traditional whaling of the past, but
instead have their roots in fast-growing and highly profitable
business enterprises of the 20th century.

Nevertheless, the Government continues to press the
"traditional" whaling argument in the IWC, even in 1989
subjecting the IWC to blackmail. The Government revealed to the
IWC that domestic catch levels for Dall's porpoises, Bairds
beaked whales, and pilot whales - species of cetaceans the
catching of which is not regulated by the IWC - had increased
dramatically the previous year, to the extent of probably
endangering the future existence of at least some local
populations. The Japanese Commissioner informed the Commission
that those catches might be reduced if the IWC would agree to
set a quota for minke whales.

Since the 1989 IWC meeting the Japanese Government has gone even
further by circulating a letter to all Commissioners stating
that if the IWC does not, at its 1990 meeting, give Japan the
quota it wants, it will be "unable to find any reason to
persuade the communities which have been engaged in the small-
type coastal whaling not to catch minke whales", presumably in
an unregulated hunt.

Operating outside the IWC: Pirate whaling

In the 1970s and early 1980s - at the peak of whaling by
countries that were not members of the IWC - whalers operating
under "flags of convenience" roamed the seas with the assistance
of Japanese funding, technology and personnel, killing whales
regardless of IWC regulations, and always with the guarantee of
a market for their ill-gotten goods in Tokyo.

In the same period Japan established a number of "client"
industries in countries that were not at the time IWC members
and thus were able to operate outside the Commission's rules and
regulations.

Pirate whaling ships would often be registered under the flag of
one country, crewed by nationals of another (such as South
Africa, Norway, Japan, or Taiwan), and owned by a company in yet
another. This company was itself generally a front for a larger
corporation, such as the Taiyo Fishery Co., in Japan.

The most famous illustration of the deceit and blatant
profiteering of pirate whaling is the story of the Sierra. From
its beginnings as a Dutch Antarctic whaling ship in 1960, the
Sierra went through several name and flag changes before it was
finally sunk in 1980 in Lisbon. Its pirate whaling activities
are reported to have begun in 1968 off the coasts of Angola and
Namibia and shifted to the Canary Islands in the mid-1970s after
the ship was bought by a dummy company for Taiyo in
Liechtenstein.

Throughout the 1970s the Sierra was also supported by private
Norwegian interests. The captain and harpooner were Norwegian
nationals, a Norwegian bank held the ship's mortgage from 1972,
and the vessel was supplied with harpoons and grenades produced
by a Norwegian munitions firm.

Altogether thousands of whales, mostly Brydes, were killed in
the Atlantic by the Sierra. Catches were reported to the Bureau
of International Whaling Statistics, but there is no way of
knowing if these were accurate records, and the reporting
eventually ceased as the Sierra tried to operate in a more
clandestine way.

Another pirate operation was discovered in Taiwan in the late
1970s. Four 600-ton pelagic factory catchers were involved,
taking Bryde's whales without a quota and in violation of IWC
regulations. The meat was smuggled into Japan as if it were a
legal product from the Republic of Korea, by then a member of
the IWC. Japanese customs officials eventually closed the
operation down, leaving an estimated 53000 tonnes of frozen
whale meat still unsold in Taiwan. The owner, a Mr. Chu, even
approached individual Commissioners to ask that a "one-off" sale
be allowed. As recently as last year frozen whale meat from
Taiwan has been discovered being smuggled into Japan; it appears
to be the meat from this earlier pirate operation.

The most recently documented pirate whaling operation was that
of the Faith 1, a whale catcher/factory ship based in the
Philippines and controlled, directed and apparently owned by a
group of Japanese nationals. Between 1983 and 1986, the Faith 1
killed unknown numbers of Bryde's whales (at least 85 in 1985
alone), violating the 1979 ban on pelagic factory ships, the IWC
catch limit, the ban on cold harpoons and, in the final season,
the commercial whaling moratorium and, by exporting its whale
meat to Japan, the CITES convention (see below) to which the
Philippines is a signatory. It ceased operations in 1986.

Although there have not recently been reports of outlaw
activities, as long as a lucrative market exists for whale
products the incentive for illegal operations remains.


Evading controls on the trade in whale meat: CITES reservations

For the past quarter century the motor of the worldwide whaling
industry has been the supply of whale meat to the Japanese
market. This was the object of the pirate whaling operations and
led to a number of new countries being brought into the whaling
business.

The IWC had partial success in curbing the trade in products
from pirate operations by passing resolutions in the late 1970s
urging Member States not to trade in whale meat from non-member
states nor to transfer whaling technology or materiel to such
operations.

But the greatest hopes for being able to stop trade altogether
in meat from threatened whale species lay with the Convention on
International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). Since coming
into force in 1973, CITES has grown into one of the largest
international wildlife conventions in the world, with more than
100 signatories globally.

All species of great whales are now listed on Appendix I of
CITES. This means that neither the animals themselves nor
products derived from them can enter international trade -
unless the countries concerned exempt themselves from the
listing by filing a reservation.

Under CITES, "introduction from the sea" (i.e. bringing into a
country a species or products from a species caught on the high
seas) is considered as international trade. So Japanese minke
whaling in the Antarctic, while being carried out by Japanese
for Japanese markets, falls within the CITES restrictions.

Japan and Norway both maintain reservations to the Appendix 1
listings of various species, including those they are most keen
to begin exploiting commercially again. Japan is exempted from
the trade ban on minke, fin, sperm, Bairds beaked, Bryde's, and
some populations of sei whales. Norway holds reservations on the
listing of sperm and minke whales, as well as some populations
of sei and fin whales.

Iceland is not even a party to CITES, and as such is not bound
by any restrictions in the trade in whale meat.

Trade in scientific whale meat: Icelandic smuggling

Because Iceland is not a Party to CITES and because Japan is
exempted from the ban on trade in fin and sei whales, Iceland
has been able freely to export meat from its scientific catch to
Japan. But in doing so it has not always respected the rules of
the countries through which the meat passed in transit.

Twice during Iceland's scientific whaling period its shipments
of whale meat were confiscated for having entered a transit
country in contravention of national laws and CITES regulations.

In March 1987 Greenpeace alerted West German authorities that
seven containers of Icelandic whale meat had arrived in the free
port of Hamburg, en route for Japan. The containers held 140-175
tonnes of fin and sei whale meat, but the shipment was
misleadingly labelled on the outside containers as "frozen
seafood" and was not accompanied by the proper documentation.
The shipment was confiscated.

Iceland was given more than one chance to provide the required
information, but ultimately the answers provided were not
satisfactory and the authorities refused to release the shipment
back into transit. In May that year the meat was returned to
Iceland, with Iceland having to bear all storage and shipment
costs. It was also announced that future shipments of Icelandic
whale meat through Hamburg would not be allowed. Iceland was
thus forced to find a new route for its scientific whale meat.

The new route surfaced a year later when Greenpeace discovered
an illegal shipment of 196 tonnes of Icelandic whale meat in
Helsinki, destined to be transferred by rail through the Soviet
Union to Japan. Finnish law prohibits the import or transit of
whale products, and Finland, like West Germany, is also a party
to CITES. No special permit for import or transit accompanied
the shipment as required, and, again, the meat was confiscated
and returned to Iceland.

Spurious arguments for killing whales: Fish-eaters beware

In recent years the whaling countries, particularly Norway and
Iceland, have sought to argue that the killing of whales is
actually necessary to maintain viable stocks of fish for
commercial fisheries. This approach is euphemistically described
as "multispecies management". Left uncontrolled, the argument
goes, whales will reproduce so quickly and extensively that they
will destroy the fish stocks. Natural "balance", it is
proclaimed, needs to be maintained at the hands of humankind.

Such arguments are usually accompanied by estimates of huge
quantities of fish that are eaten each year by a whale
population, and comparisons of those quantities with the sizes
of the commercial fish catches.

However, for all the talk, no scientific evidence has ever been
presented -- to the IWC or to other organisations -- to back up
these assertions. There are a number of reasons why these
arguments are flawed.

To state that whale stocks would increase rapidly and
considerably after whaling stops is to admit that whaling had
reduced them in the first place. An exploited population that
has not been depleted would, with a pause in whaling, increase
only slightly and slowly, if at all. Even a very depleted whale
population could, at most, increase at about 5% a year, and
possibly as slowly as 1 or 2%. As the population increased the
rate of growth would slow down, as with all wild animals. At
that slow rate it would take decades before one could begin to
hope to see whether or not the fish populations were
deteriorating.

If the whale population has been depleted, and if whales largely
"control" the amount of fish in the sea, then there must have
been, during the depletion of the population by whaling, an
enormous increase in the abundance of fish. There is no evidence
for this in any known case.

The data that whaling scientists have presented in support of
their contentions have always been based on flawed assumptions
about the food requirements of marine mammals, estimates of
which have themselves been arrived at by imprecise means.

Even if whales do eat large quantities of fish, in no case do
they eat exclusively the species on which commercial fishermen
rely: they eat fish which compete with those commercial species
and they eat other marine organisms. Furthermore, fish are not
only eaten by whales: most are eaten by larger fish, by older
individuals of the same species, or by other predators, such as
sea birds.

One of the most ridiculous pieces of conjecture so far made was
in a Norwegian report submitted to the 1989 Scientific Committee
meeting regarding the analysis of stomach contents of the minke
whales killed the previous year under scientific permit. Basing
their calculations on the fact that in the stomach of one whale
they found 80 litres (60 kilogrammes) of fresh herring, the
authors concluded that minke whales in the North Atlantic
consume more than half of the entire Norwegian catch of herring
each year. They might equally well have argued that, because the
stomach of one of the other whales was empty except for a few
litres of sea-water, minkes exist on air and water alone!

Trite though this study may seem, there is clearly a much more
serious motivation behind it. Greenpeace has obtained a copy of
a Norwegian Government-funded report released in April 1990
entitled "Impact analysis of multi-species marine resource
management". The report explores the possible income and
employment gains that might come to the Norwegian economy if
marine mammals were reduced to the lowest possible level;
extinction is one of the options considered.

Whether or not this particular report, simplistic in the
extreme, is taken any further, the very fact that such an
approach was thought to be worth investigating is disturbing. It
reveals a clear conflict of interest between the majority of IWC
Members, who are working for a conservationist management regime
that benefits whales, and the Norwegian Government, which may
feel that it would have everything to gain if marine mammals
were reduced further or even exterminated.

Obstruction of the IWC's efforts to manage whaling: Withholding
data 

Article VII of the 1946 Convention requires "prompt
transmission: to the relevant body (previously the Bureau of
International Whaling Statistics in Sandefjord, now the IWC
itself) of "notifications and statistical and other information
required by the Convention in such form and manner as may be
prescribed by the Commission".

In the case of "small-type whaling operations", such as
Norwegian minke whaling, Section Vl of the IWC's Schedule (the
list of operational rules) specifies the information required.

The purpose of these regulations is evident: to ensure that the
Scientific Committee has access to full and precisely recorded
information on whaling operations, without which it cannot
properly carry out its work.

Until only very recently, Norway consistently failed to provide
the detailed catch information required under the Schedule and
in so doing of course also failed to ensure "prompt
transmission" of information. Specifically, Norway provided
summaries only of some of the required information, and failed
entirely to submit other information - regarding sizes of each
whale caught (which would give information about their ages) and
time of catch within each season.

It wasn't until a number of IWC Commissioners expressed their
concerns at the 1986 Annual Meeting that Norway began to be
forthcoming with its data. Since that time, the information has
been supplied gradually, some of it more than 30 years overdue,
with the last of it made available only in late 1989.

The failure to provide required data was not only a violation of
IWC regulations. It demonstrably impeded the work of the
Scientific Committee in its efforts to assess the status of
minke whales in the Northeast and Central Atlantic.

Similar problems have arisen with Icelandic catch per unit
effort data, and with results of the North Atlantic Sightings
Surveys, which are not conducted under the auspices of the IWC's
International Decade for Cetacean Research as the Southern
Hemisphere sightings cruises have been.

Japan, too, has continually withheld required effort data from
its coastal minke whaling operations, submitting information in
summary form only. Despite repeated requests the information was
still being withheld at the time of last year's Scientific
Committee meeting.

One potentially important set of data is that obtained by scout
boats attached to Japanese pelagic expeditions, sighting all
whale species. Japan has regularly provided summaries of these
data, together with barely credible "interpretations", but in
such form that the Scientific Committee cannot make its own
interpretations.

Cruise tracks of the ships are not available, nor fine breakdown
by areas and short time periods (weeks, months), as would be
necessary, and Japan has failed, as in the case of its coastal
whaling effort data, to respond to repeated requests.

Most recently estimates of tiny residual numbers of blue and fin
whales in the Antarctic, from the six years of minke research
cruises, were questioned by Japan because, it was said, the
scout-boat data showed there were large numbers of fin and blue
whales in waters north of the main area of the research cruises.
Even then Japan refused to provide the data to the Scientific
Committee, and instead announced it would allow its own
scientists to work with a foreign scientist well-known for his
constant bias towards the political position of Japan.

A Dutch proposal in 1980 to deny quotas to countries not
supplying required data had enough support amongst IWC Members
to pass in the Technical Committee that year, but it was feared
that such a proposal would raise too many legalistic problems
and so was adopted as a non-binding resolution in Plenary.

The resolution, entitled "Resolution to encourage the provision
of all required data by whaling operations", noted "the concern
expressed by the Scientific Committee, the Infractions sub-
committee and at the present Annual Meeting about the failure,
or delay, on the part of some operations, to provide all the
data required". It urged Member States "to implement measures to
ensure compliance by whaling operations under their jurisdiction
with section Vl of the Schedule to the present Convention" and
to prohibit the use of any vessel or land station whose
operators failed to report the required information.

A year later the Infractions sub-committee recommended that "the
Commission asks the Secretariat to remind Contracting
Governments of their obligations under the Convention and note
that non provision of data could, in itself, be considered as an
infraction."

In spite of these and other more recent pleas, data is still
being withheld, and there is no sign of a commitment from the
whaling countries to respect this requirement better in future.

Obstruction of efforts to improve the management procedure

The IWC has been engaged since the mid-1980s in the development
by its Scientific Committee of an alternative management regime
to replace the one under which the IWC has set commercial
whaling catch limits since 1975. Scientific work in the late
1970s and early 1980s had uncovered flaws in the existing
procedure such that, when it was applied, it could not protect
exploited whale stocks from depletion. A consensus had therefore
developed in the Scientific Committee and Commission that a new
and safer procedure was needed.

This work has come under the umbrella of the so-called
Comprehensive Assessment of Whale Stocks, the priority task of
the Scientific Committee. Norway alone objected for years to the
pursuit of the management procedure work in this context and
thus impeded its development in the early 1980s. Since then,
Norway, alone among the remaining whaling countries, has not
contributed in any substantive way to this effort.

The results of the Comprehensive Assessment were originally due
by 1990. However, partly as a result of the diversion of effort
in the IWC Scientific Committee required because of scientific
whaling, that work is not now expected to be completed before
1991. Although Norway's own pursuit of a scientific whaling
programme contributed to the delay, it was Norway that insisted
in the Scientific Committee last year that steps be taken to
ensure that there was something in place - however temporarily
and preliminarily - by 1990.

Under this pressure the rest of the Scientific Committee
explicitly cautioned the Commission last year that "if shortcuts
are taken at this stage in an attempt to complete a
foreshortened development process by the 1990 Commission
meeting, this would seriously compromise the development of a
satisfactory management procedure." The Committee went on to say
that if it was requested by the Commission to recommend an
acceptable interim management procedure for use in setting catch
limits in 1990, "any interim procedure so developed might be
considerably inferior to the one envisaged at the end of the
development process... [and] would significantly delay the
finalisation of the preferred process."

Norway's position has been to ignore this clear scientific
advice. The Norwegian Commissioner stated to the 1989 Commission
meeting that his delegation "assumes that a management procedure
will be available at the 1990 Commission meeting to deal with
such stocks which the Commission may consider for commercial
whaling." He further stated, directly contrary to the advice of
the Committee, that the "Scientific Committee should deal with
the question of a procedure which could be applied already next
year [1990]..."

Unlike Norway, Japan has actually been engaged in the Scientific
Committee's work to develop a system of management to replace
the present, highly inadequate one. It is too early to comment
on the different approaches taken by the various groups of
scientists active on this question. But it should be noted that,
in contrast with a number of delegations that spoke out strongly
for the need of a high protection threshold in any management
regime - as high if not higher than the one presently used by
the Commission (stocks are protected if found to be less than
54% of their original size) - the Japanese representative argued
at last year's IWC meeting that no protection level was needed
at all, or that, if introduced, it should be lower than at
present.

It is this sort of careless approach that resulted in the
devastation of whale populations worldwide. The catastrophe that
befell the blue, fin and other species in the Antarctic may well
reach eventually to the minke if such an approach is ever again
allowed to prevail in the IWC. 


REFERENCES

Abe, Osamu.
"An Investigation of Small-Type Whaling in Japan: the past,
present and future of Ayukawa", Elsa Nature Conservancy, Tokyo,
1989.

Birnie, Patricia.
International Regulation of Whaling: From Conservation of
Whaling to Conservation of Whales and Regulation of Whale-
Watching (Vols. 1 and 2), Oceana Publications, Inc., New York
1985.

Bureau of International Whaling Statistics, various issues.

Furre, Berge.
"The Bay [minke] whale and the fearless old whaling people",
Norsk Natur, number 3, June 1984. [Journal of the Norges
Naturvemforbund -translated from the Norwegian].

Green peace.
"Outlaw Whalers", various issues.

Green peace.
"Scientific Whalers? The History of Whaling under Special
Permits", 1985.

Jonsgard, Age.
"Norwegian and International Regulations in the Norwegian
Whaling for Minke Whales, Balaenoptera acutorostrata, and Small
Whales." Rep. lnt. Whal. Commn. 27, 1977, pp 400-401.

Nordoy, E.S., S.D. Mathiesen, and A.S. Blix.
"Food Selection and Energy Uptake in Minke Whales (Balaenoptera
acutorostrata)", SC/41/ NHMi7, 1989.

Reports of the International Whaling Commission, various issues.

Solvik, Ole-Vidar,
"The minke whale, Balaenoptera acutorostrata (LacepedeJ in the
North Atlantic." A thesis for the University of Oslo, 112 pp,
unpublished.

Waterlife Association.
"Opening Statement for the 40th Meeting of the International
Whaling Commission", 1988.