Impasse at talks leaves
whales high and dry
The 2009 meeting of the International
Whaling Commission (IWC) in Madeira,
Portugal, has ended in deadlock.
No consensus could be reached on Japan’s
proposal that it be allowed to resume
commercial whaling in its own coastal
waters — banned since 1986 — in exchange
for reducing its quota of whales killed for
‘scientific research’ in Antarctic waters.
Scott Baker, a researcher at Oregon State
University’s Marine Mammal Institute in
Newport, told the meeting that the number
of coastal whales killed as ‘by-catch’ in
fishing nets, and sold on Japanese markets,
is under-reported. His team found that
by-catch numbers approach 150 minke
whales a year, roughly equivalent to those
killed in Japan’s North Pacific offshore
whaling programme. A 2007 study
(C. S. Baker et al. Mol. Ecol. 16, 2617–2626;
2007) found similar coastal by-catch
depletion in South Korea.
The IWC also postponed a decision
on Denmark’s request for Greenland’s
indigenous Inuits to hunt 10 humpback
whales a year.
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