Whales and Wiener Dogs

THIS film (about a whale watch in which a massacre occurs) is what’s going to save Iceland’s economy.

To almost no one’s surprise, the IWC meeting this week in Portugal turned out to be a complete waste of time. In fact, so much nothing was accomplished that the meeting actually wrapped a day early. The two sides - nations opposed to commercial whaling and pro-whaling nations (led by Japan, Norway, and Iceland) - agreed only to continue to disagree, giving themselves another twelve months to negotiate some sort of compromise.

During all this, Greenland, with support from Denmark, made a formal request to the IWC to hunt 10 humpback whales per year. The IWC dodged the issue by appointing a scientific committee to research Greenland’s request.

And the New York Times published an editorial on Sunday urging non-whaling nations to press harder than ever for a complete ban, saying that while many whale populations are recovering, they face a growing threat from other dangers like global warming, habitat loss, and commercial shipping and fishing. Their assertion that a ban on hunting is a vital component to the overall survival strategy of whales is a belief shared by many conservatonists.

The 61st annual International Whaling Commission meeting got started yesterday in Madeira, Portugal, and, for the most part, it looks like it’s shaping up to be a great big waste of time and money.

The IWC has spent the last 12 months exploring compromises that would allow relaxed restrictions on commercial whale hunting. Neither pro-whaling nor anti-whaling nations are likely to find this deal acceptable, and no significant votes are expected to be taken during this conference. The best anyone seems to be hoping for is another 12 months of stalling and failed compromising. The worst case scenario is that more and more nations bail on the IWC entirely and decide to regulate their own whaling industries.

Basically, anti-whaling western nations (USA and EU), plus Australia, seem to have a political and cultural mandate to end entirely commercial whaling. It seems to be a matter of debate whether or not these countries could call a successful vote to place further restrictions on whaling. Some commentators don’t believe they have enough votes to get the three-quarters majority needed to enact major policy change. However, others, like Greenpeace, disagree and think that the time is now.

Japan leads the pro-whaling nations, seemingly by the sheer force of its political and economic influence in the Pacific - even in Australia.

During all this, Iceland caught its first whale of the season, but the CEO of the whaling company responsible said it was likely that the EU would do what the IWC could not. He believes that the EU will require Iceland to stop commercial whaling as a condition of membership.

And Paul Watson claims he was almost arrested on his way to the IWC meeting, but the warrant had expired.

Recent Whale Beaching In Australia

Three Beached Whales, a 1577 engraving by Dutch artist Jan Wierix, depicts stranded Sperm whales.

Stranded whale at Katwijk in Holland in 1598.

At least 2000 whales per year die after beaching themselves, and while there are many potentially modern explanations for this, including sonar and global warming, it’s simply a fact that reports of mass whale beachings go back to antiquity and the pre-industrial era.

So the fact is, whales aren’t going to stop washing up on shore anytime soon.

Now let’s do the math…about 2000 whales wash up on shore each year. This happens mostly, in large groups, to toothed whales, and most scientists believe that the phenomenon poses no threat to any whale population.

The Faroe Islanders kill about 950 pilot whales per year. Whale meat is part of their day to day diet, and this tradition goes back nearly a thousand years.

Iceland plans to kill about 150 minke whales and 150 fin whales this year.

Norway and Japan have established limits of just over 1000 whales each.

But here’s the thing. Fuck Japan and Norway. And, for the most part, fuck Iceland, too. Their commercial (or, in the case of Japan, their “scientific”) whaling industries - which consist of slaughtering large, baleen whales - have nothing to do with subsistence or tradition.

So that leaves plenty of washed up, dead-anyways whales that could be distributed to places like the Faroe Islands and remote parts of Indonesia.

These Faorese could've been put to good use in South Africa this weekend.

At least one whale should be spared on account of the effort that went into this guy's "stop whaling" suit (AFP)

It’s whaling season’s opening day in Iceland, and some guy named Gudmundur Haraldsson is throwing out the first harpoon. “We hope to catch the first minke whale today,” said Haraldsson, one of the whalers on board the Johanna AR.

Gunnar Bergmann Jonsson, manager of the minke whaler association, told AFP, “The first batch of meat will be in stores by the weekend.” He went on to add that this should give everyone in Iceland enough time to blow up their car for insurance money so they could afford said whale meat.

Here’s an idea. I’m just throwing it out there. Whale watching, one of the more popular tourist activities in Iceland, alone will not solve Iceland’s crushing economic problems. Nor is whaling the answer. But perhaps some sort of combo of the two activities could right the ship. You know how in some restaurants you can pick the lobster you want out of a tank? Well, in Iceland you could go out on a boat and go, “Kill that whale for me! That’s the whale I want to eat!”

You think I’m crazy, but that’s what they told the guy that built Dubai. They said, “You’re crazy. People won’t go to Vegas with no casinos.” But now that place is full of people wearing $10,000 Gucci dresses under a burka.

More news from the world of whales:

Disturbing?...Yes

Disturbing?...No

• Is Iceland as fucked up as North Korea yet? Signs point to yes! From whale watching boats, you’ll soon be able to see whales get killed. (AFP)
• Including the “naked chicks with no fur against fur” genre in a list of 11 more Disturbingly Creative Environmental Ads just seems lazy…or confused…or both.(WebEcoist)
• First quarter visits to the New Bedford Whaling Museum up 8 percent YTY (Boston Business Journal)

Happy Earth Day 2009. Here’s some news from the world of whales:

• An Earth Day Message from Hayden Panettiere (Takepart.com)
• Having come up short in the Southern Ocean, Japan re-launches its whale boats closer to home. The goal is to kill 60 minke whales for “research” purpose (Euronews 24)
• “Whale,” a documentary about Japanese whaling premieres at the Japan Film Festival Los Angeles
• Fisheries Minister to Study Impact of Iceland’s Whaling (Iceland Review Online)
• Record number of North Atlantic right whales born off U.S. (Marine animal news)
• New Disney film ‘Earth’ opens on Earth Day and boasts world-class nature (3 out of 5 stars at NYDailyNews.com)
• The whale rescue team from Provincetown, Mass. earned its Obama bailout money. Hint: they save a whale. (WPRI)
• Dolphin conservation center to raise quality of animal care (News-Journal Online)

This fin whale, an endangered species, was reportedly the first whale taken by Iceland’s fleet in October, after the country elected to return to commercial whaling. (Ragnar Axelsson—AFP/Getty Images)

Right now, Iceland has more problems than you can shake a stick at: it’s recently suffered the largest (relative) banking collapse in economic history, and Vanity Fair says its people are hoarding cash and blowing up their cars for insurance money.

Bad international PR from commercial whaling probably isn’t helping matters very much either.

Iceland returned to commercial whaling in 2006. One of the last acts of the collapsed, outgoing government was to approve fin and minke whaling for five years. Now, new Fisheries Minister Steingrimur Sigfusson, says Iceland would like to ban commercial whaling as soon as next year.

Sigfusson, who is also the country’s finance minister, says of whaling in his country:

“I’m very concerned that such large-scale commercial whaling can be very risky in terms of total interests for Iceland.”

“I hope we get some understanding from the outside world that we were faced with the decision of a former government that we could not immediately overturn, at least not for 2009, on any substantial basis. But that doesn’t mean that such a substantial basis can’t be established.”

“I distinguish between the traditional small-town coastal whaling, and I fully support our right to do that in a self- sustainable way as we have always done. But commercial industrial whaling is another thing.”

No shit, that’s the title of the movie, and as stupid as it sounds, the trailer looks pretty awesome. I have no idea if it’s got any actual whales in it, but it does have Gunnar Hansen, the guy that played Leatherface in the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre. (Get it? It’s an homage…)

A traditional whaling crew and boat in Alaska (Office of United States Senator Ted Stevens, R - Alaska)

Peter Garrett, Aussie Environment Minister, wants to reform the International Whaling Commission (IWC). He says, “Australia will only support changes within the International Whaling Commission that bring us closer to our goals to eliminate whaling for good.” He expressed frustration that Japan, Iceland and Norway continue to hunt for commercial or scientific reasons, while much of the rest of the world would like to see the whale fishery abolished entirely.

The IWC was established in 1946 to “provide for the proper conservation of whale stocks and thus make possible the orderly development of the whaling industry.” However, some of the IWC’s relatively recent rulings were to establish a moratorium on commercial whaling in 1986 and to create the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary in 1994.

Here’s some more stuff about the fallout from these two decisions that I’ll just cut and paste straight from wikipedia:

As the moratorium applies only to commercial whaling, whaling under the scientific-research and aboriginal-subsistence provisions of the ICRW is still allowed. Since 1994, Norway, has been whaling commercially and Iceland began hunting commercially in September 2006. Since 1986, Japan has been whaling under scientific research permits. The US and several other nations are whaling under aboriginal whaling auspices. Norway lodged a protest to the zero catch limits in 1992 and is not bound by them. Anti-whaling countries and lobbies accuse Japan’s scientific whaling of being a front for commercial whaling. The Japanese government argues that the refusal of anti-whaling nations to accept simple head counts of whale population as a measure of recovery of whale species justifies its continuing studies on sex and age of population distributions, and further points out that IWC regulations specifically require that whale meat obtained by scientific whaling not go to waste. Japan, on the other hand, has raised objections to U.S. aboriginal subsistence whaling, generally seen to be in retaliation to anti-whaling nation’s (including the US’s) objections to aboriginal subsistence whaling for several Japanese fishing communities, which traditionally hunted whales until the imposition of the moratorium.

In May 1994, the IWC also voted to create the 11.8 million square mile Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary. The vote to adopt the sanctuary resolution was twenty-three in favour, one opposed (Japan) and six abstaining. (source: wikipedia)

The IWC is currently meeting in Rome to discuss, among other things, a proposal which would allow Japan to hunt whales in its coastal waters in exchange for reducing, or ending, it’s scientific whale research in the Southern Ocean.