BlueViews - The BlueVoice Blog

Introduction

Sunday, May 27, 2007 - Hardy Reports from International Whaling Commission
By Hardy Jones

I’m blogging from a Delta flight between Atlanta and Anchorage, Alaska where The International Whaling Commission (IWC) opens Monday. At stake are the lives of thousands of whales.

The votes will be close. The Japanese have bought more than a dozen small nations and thus threaten to open the doors to legal whaling for the first time in twenty years. Since 1987 Japan and other nations like Iceland and Norway have only been able to conduct whaling under an article in the IWC treaty that allows for scientific whaling. Of course Japan has exploited that loophole to do pseudo-science and then sell the meat from the whales they have “researched” by harpooning and cutting them into steaks.

I’ll be reporting on the votes as they shape up – hopefully in time for those concerned with the whales to make their feelings known though emails – perhaps to those nations who have, for a pittance – been purchased by Japan. Many of these nations depend heavily on tourism and it may be that those who plan to visit some of these lovely Caribbean and South Pacific Islands may think twice when they know of their ugly connection to the slaughter of whales.

This year’s meeting of the (IWC) promises to be one of the most crucial and hard fought ever. The twenty-year moratorium on whaling, which went into effect in 1987 and was the cause of joyous celebration among those of us who love whales, is set to expire.  And several nations, along with their prostitute allies, will be seeking to open the world to legal whaling.

The IWC is a perverse organization – a huge room full of men and a few women sitting down to determine the life or death of whales swimming thousands of miles away in the Antarctic or in the North Atlantic.

The most odious plan Japan has brought forth is to kill humpback whales in the Antarctic. The issue will be raised Wednesday. We will follow this closely as it represents spitting in the face of tens of thousands of people around the world who not only love these whales in aggregate but know them personally, individually and marvel each year when the whales return on their migrations to Moorea, New Zealand, Australia, Tonga, Rurutu, Raritonga, New Caledonia and other areas of the Southern Ocean.

For me personally the idea of killing whales is an abomination. It seems self evident that these creatures, so magnificent and so long subject to wholesale slaughter, ought to be protected in every practicable way possible. I cannot find a place in my mind for commonality with those who treat them as huge slabs of meat. And yet these people exist. The answer to how they can pursue this unholy vocation lies in two attributes: greed and lack of empathy – the lack of ability to project their minds into the minds of other creatures.

BlueVoice is will be presenting arguments that whaling ought not to be conducted – documenting the worldwide glut of whale meat, the decline in consumption and corresponding fall in price of whale meat, the fact that whale meat is being put into pet food and even being forced on school children and the elderly. And we are distributing to every delegation video of the years of footage we have of the brutal slaughter of dolphins and small whales in towns such as Taiji.

I attended my first IWC meeting in 1980. There have been many victories but they are not permanent. Eternal vigilance is not only the price of freedom but of protecting whales, dolphins and the rest of life on earth.

back to the top