Toxic or Not, Commercial Whaling Is Back on the Table

[Judi Lynn]

Posted: March 30, 2010 12:48 PM
Toxic or Not, Commercial Whaling Is Back on the Table
Peter Christian Hall

The only global organization that has ever tried to control whaling may be on the rocks. The International Whaling Commission, says a U.S. official, "might just fall apart" at its June meeting in Morocco if delegates fail to reach consensus on overhauling the 63-year-old voluntary organization.

An IWC collapse would dissolve what's left of a legally unenforceable 24-year moratorium on commercial whaling, leaving Japan and fellow whalers to hunt freely.

The whales' edibility is a prime issue. Even if they could accept limited coastal commercial whaling, environmentalists are unwilling to let Japan continue whaling in the so-called Antarctic sanctuary, where whale meat is less tainted by mercury and other industrial wastes. The fact that it's risky to devour meat from northern whales and dolphins offers an incentive for Japan to give up the hunt--so long as the Antarctic is off-limits.

"We're trying to prove we've made the environment so toxic they can't eat them," explained Louie Psihoyos to an audience at New York's Asia Society weeks ago, after screening The Cove, his Academy Award-winning expose of how Japanese villagers trick, trap, and slay dolphins. Hunting in the South Atlantic provides Japan with whale flesh that at least meets national health standards for mercury intake.

Since there seems to be no way to stop Japan from killing cetaceans (whales, dolphins, and porpoises), the Obama Administration is poised to compromise on commercial whaling in order to secure broader, more effective regulation by the IWC. If Japan chooses to cooperate, that is. Its recent success at thwarting protection for depleted, sashimi-bound Atlantic bluefin tuna during a UN wildlife session does not augur well.

IWC meetings are rancorous affairs at which neither side wins the three-quarters majority needed to change anything. Founded by whaling nations, the IWC was taken over by whaling opponents in the 1980s, since which time Japan has used foreign aid to recruit support from Caribbean and Asian countries. (Dominica dramatically reversed its pro-whaling position last year.)

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