Despite hopes in this year's International Whaling Commission (IWC) meeting to resolve the most pressing issues in the area at this point, little progress seems to have been actually made. Talks have now come to a standstill, as discussions between pro- and anti-whaling nations find no resolve. Nations such as Iceland, Norway and Japan argue for the right to maintain their fishing industry afloat with this activity, despite the fact that commercial whaling is expressly forbidden under a 1982 UN charter. In spite of these restrictions, Norway and Iceland have recently began to sell whale meat to Japan, which is marketing it for the general population.
The only opposition that these nations get is from environmental groups such as Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd. Governments that would otherwise oppose whaling, such as that of Australia, cannot engage in drastic actions to stop the phenomenon, without running the risk of breaking off commercial ties with the nations they are protesting against. The southern nation has extensive business relationships with Japan, so the only thing it can do is support Sea Shepherd despite protests, and provide the environmental group with safe harbors to refuel.
At an earlier meeting this year, Japan announced that it was only willing to reduce its yearly whaling quota to 650 minke whales, which is just about two dozen whales less than it has captured this year. Admittedly, this year saw extensive interference from the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society's flagship, the Steve Irwin, which harassed the Japanese whaling fleet throughout the whaling season, and chased it out Australia's southern waters. The fleet caught little over half of its 900+ minke whale quota.
In addition, the Asian nation said at the meeting, which took place a few weeks before the official IWC one, in Madeira, that it also looked for approval on setting up minke quotas for four of its coastal communities, of which officials said that they had whaling as a part of their cultural background, the
BBC News reports. However, environmental groups are very irritated by this demand, and say that there is no way of monitoring the way Japan conducts this hunt, as it mostly takes place in its territorial waters, where international ships have no jurisdiction.
Since 1982, when commercial whaling has been banned by the United Nations, Japan has set up its bogus Institute of Cetacean Research (ICR), which manages the nation's whaling fleet. Representatives of this institution say that the country only goes after the whales to study them, but critics helpfully point out the fact that you don't need to kill about 1,000 whales per year to study them. Additionally, Australian officials share, modern innovation has endowed us with GPS locators and DNA-reading devices, so actually killing the whales is barbaric, cruel and unnecessary.
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