Whales and Wiener Dogs

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.

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.

A group called Agenda 21 scuttled this Norwegian whaling boat (Foto: STOCKSHOTS.NO)

Depending on your perspective, Agenda 21 are either eco-terrorists or righteous eco-warriors. But either way, the group is claiming responsibility for scuttling the Norwegian whale-hunting vessel Skarbakk on April 23. It appears that members of the group entered the boat at Henningsvaer in the Norwegian Lofoten Islands and flooded the engine room. Firefighters arrived in time to save the boat from sinking, but not before the ship’s machinery and electrical systems were ruined.

There seems to be little real English-language reporting of the incident (that I can find). Perhaps more though will be available in the coming days. As of right now, some of the better English-language info I can find comes, not surprisingly, from Sea Shepherd, which posted a brief blog entry here on April 27 (you have to scroll through entries until you get to this particular post).

There are a number of interesting items, however, in the Sea Shepherd blog post:

Sea Shepherd seems to know exactly how the sabotage was carried out. “With a monkey wrench they disassembled the salt-water intake valve (used for cooling the main engine). They then opened the valve and flooded the engine room.”

They also explain the strategy behind the attack. “This scuttling represents losses for the ship’s Norwegian underwriters and for Japanese investors who were partners with the owner of the Skarbakk…This brings to 6 the number of illegal whaling boats sabotaged in Norway. These regular attacks have kept insurance premiums at exceptionally high rates. All whaling vessels in Norway have to pay war insurance premiums to operate their whaling vessels.”

And…they don’t really go out of their way to disassociate themselves from this “Agenda 21″ group:

Agenda 21 is a covert group that takes its name from the 1992 United Nations Conference on the Environment. Captain Paul Watson said at the conference that if Norway did not comply with international conservation law that Sea Shepherd would sink their ships. Captain Watson supervised the sinking of the Nybraena in 1992 and the Senet in 1994 [the first two ships that were scuttled]. After that the covert and anonymous organization Agenda 21 based in Norway took over the responsibility of enforcing international law against illegal Norwegian whaling operations.

“We don’t know who they are, and we have no forewarning of their plans,” said Captain Paul Watson. “But we do applaud their efforts, these laws must be enforced and Norwegian whalers are in blatant violation of the worldwide ban on commercial whaling. We are happy that Agenda 21 took over this task back in 1996 with the scuttling of the Elin-Toril [the third]. If I knew who they were, I’d give them a medal. It’s always better when these things are taken care of by citizens in their own country and the Norwegians who are battling the whalers are like the resistance fighters who once took on the Nazi’s in Norway - brave men and women trying to defend lives from war criminals. In today’s whale wars, those who slaughter the whales are criminals and no different than elephant poachers in Africa. Except in Africa they shoot the poachers

If you can read or understand Norwegian, there’s some text and video about the incident here.

Here’s the full text of the note Agenda 21 left behind:

“APRIL 24, 2009
HENNINGSVAER, NORWAY - WHALING SHIP SUNK

ON THE EVENING OF THE 23RD OF APRIL WE SNUCK ONTO A NORWEGIAN WHALING SHIP MAKING REPAIRS IN THE LOFOTEN ISLANDS IN
PREPARATION FOR THE 2009 WHALING SEASON. TO DELAY THE KILLING SEASON AND TO PROTEST THE CONTINUED ILLEGAL EXPORT OF WHALE MEAT TO JAPAN WE DISASSEMBLED A VALVE AND FLOODED THE ENGINE ROOM. UNFORTUNATELY LOCAL FIREFIGHTERS WERE ABLE TO RESPOND JUST MOMENTS BEFORE THE SHIP SETTLED ON THE BOTTOM BUT NOT BEFORE THE SHIP HAD ALREADY BEEN COMPLETELY FILLED WITH SEA WATER AND THE DAMAGE DONE. FOR BOTH FISHERIES INVESTORS IN TOKYO AND INSURANCE UNDERWRITERS IN OSLO INVESTING IN THE NORWEGIAN WHALING INDUSTRY CAN ONLY LEAD TO SUNKEN PROFITS. AS A DIRECT RESULT OF A GROWING INTERNATIONAL TRADE IN ENDANGERED SPECIES WE CAME TO HENNINGSVAER. WE SAW THE SKARBAKK.

WE SANK THE BASTARD. -AGENDA 21″

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.