Sunday Times investigation over Japan bribery over Whaling! A MUST SEE!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=jugR9VnzDIA

“Under a cloud of corruption allegations the IWC is taking a safe course, opting for a cooling off period that protects the moratorium and other IWC conservation measures,”  said Patrick Ramage, Director of IFAW’s Global Whale Campaign. “Had it been done here, this deal would have lived in infamy.”

The proposal, three years in the making, proposed a compromise between whaling and non-whaling nations which regularly clash at annual IWC meetings. Among the most hotly debated components of the proposal was a plan to overturn the worldwide ban on whaling, in place since 1986, by allowing legalized hunting of whales by Iceland, Norway, and Japan – the last three countries still hunting whales commercially. Japan, Norway, and Iceland have illegally killed nearly 35,000 whales since the inception of the moratorium.

“This was an intense three year effort but one conducted behind closed doors and focused on defining terms under which commercial whaling would continue rather than how it would end,” said Ramage. “The proposal it produced could not withstand public scrutiny and ignored the overwhelming global support for permanent protection for whales. Any future process of negotiation should not leave the views, expertise, and perspective of the global NGO community sitting outside.”

High-level talks over a global whaling peace deal are to be sent behind closed doors, in an abrupt move said to show that a bid for compromise is close to failure.

The decision to suspend the International Whaling Commission’s annual meeting shortly after it opens later today was agreed in private at the demand of the acting IWC chairman, Anthony Liverpool, Fairfax Media has learnt.

It has surprised lobbyists, as well as some IWC nations who, after months of closed door talks, wanted the controversial deal finally to be argued in the open.

The suspension also prevents the peace talks from being derailed on the floor of the  meeting by rising disquiet over Japan’s vote-buying scandal.

The British marine environment minister, Richard Benyon, had planned to raise reports of Tokyo’s largesse, including payments to support the attendance of Mr Liverpool who comes from Antigua in the Caribbean.

About 65 IWC members, including an unprecedented number of government ministers, are in Agadir to work on the deal that offers Japan, Iceland and Norway new rights to commercial whaling.

In exchange, the whalers’ catches were to be reduced overall, and there was to be an end to loopholes such as the IWC’s discredited “scientific” whaling clause.

A key negotiator said of the meeting’s suspension: “This is one last attempt to see if there is any common ground. We will be split up into small groups, and we won’t be coming back until Wednesday.”

Patrick Ramage, the global whale program director for the International Fund for Animal Welfare, said Mr Liverpool had ordered the closed-door meetings with a view to fast-tracking the proposal when the formal session reopens on Wednesday.

“Whatever one’s view on the proposal, its adoption under the present circumstances will destroy any remaining credibility for the whaling commission,”  Mr Ramage said.

Source: theage.com.au

The chairman of this week’s international summit on whaling is being secretly funded by a Japanese company to stay in a luxury hotel.

Anthony Liverpool will open the crucial International Whaling Commission (IWC) meeting in Morocco tomorrow which could vote to lift a 24-year ban on commercial whaling.

He has accepted free flights and the £4,000 cost of staying at a hotel with a private beach during the meeting. The hotel bills of five other countries’ delegates are also being paid.

The payments will increase concern that Japan is bribing delegates to secure support for whaling and may be in breach of the IWC convention which says: “The expenses of each member of the commission … shall be determined and paid by his own government.”

Richard Benyon, the minister for fisheries, will raise what he called “these very serious allegations” at the IWC meeting.

On Friday Liverpool, the Antiguan IWC vice-chairman who will stand in as chairman at the meeting, said he did not know who was paying for his trip. “I am just aware of getting support through agencies,” he said.

However, inquiries have shown that his bill at a hotel in Agadir is being paid by Japan Tours and Travel of Houston, a company said to be linked to Hideuki “Harry” Wakasa, who has previously been identified as the middleman who makes secret payments to the pro-whaling Caribbean countries.

International trafficking in wildlife is estimated to reach well into the billions of Euros annually – a black market rivaling the size of the international trade in illegal drugs and weapons.  Every year thousands of elephants are illegally slaughtered in Africa and Asia to meet a growing demand for ivory products.

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) has three levels of protection for threatened species[1].

The highest level of protection is afforded to the more than 800 Appendix I species designated as being in immediate danger of extinction[2]. With very few exceptions, commercial trade in Appendix I species is banned. These species include the highly vulnerable species like elephant, tiger, gorilla and marine turtle, along with a large number of additional wild cats, parrots, parakeets, cockatoos and macaws.

Species listed on CITES Appendix II are recognized to require protection from trade, but not to the point of a ban. While trade may be allowed in Appendix II species, any international trade or transfer of such an animal or its derivative products requires an export permit issued by the authorities of the nation where the animal product is located and in some instances an import permit issued by the country where the animal product will be received. In theory, these restrictions on trade in Appendix II species are designed to regulate trade in order to ensure that these species are not exploited to the point where they require Appendix I protections.

Appendix III species, while not facing specific global threats, are listed by individual countries wishing to enlist assistance in protecting species located within the borders of their countries[3].

The rise of the Internet has revolutionized the way we exchange ideas, information and merchandise. This success is largely due to its ability to facilitate communications and new commercial and social connections around the globe. No wonder this pervasive and powerful technology has become the world’s largest “shop window.” Some of the characteristics of this virtual store – always open, unregulated and anonymous – have also made it a conduit for the illicit trade in wildlife, a trade that officials estimate may be worth in excess of US$20 billion annually.

The rapid rise in global Internet usership, the diverse interests and activities of Internet users and the introduction of new technologies and applications are just three of the developments that challenge the ability of national and international law enforcement to keep up with the innovations of Internet-savvy criminals.

Currently, national laws aimed at regulating wildlife trade to ecologically sustainable levels are poorly developed and insufficient to deal with the nature of Internet trade. Even where laws exist, enforcement is often inadequate or simply not focused on trafficking in wildlife. Meanwhile, the Internet provides an unprecedented platform for a burgeoning, undocumented trade in endangered animals, alive and dead. This new global marketplace distances the consumer from the trail of bloodshed that winds through the World Wide Web back to our most cherished wild places.

Since 2004, the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) has investigated the Internet wildlife trade. These studies have revealed high numbers of wildlife products exchanged on a daily basis. In 2004, IFAW uncovered a brisk ivory trade on the internet in the United Kingdom. In a 2007 follow-up report, IFAW focused specifically on the ivory trade on eBay, and found 2.275 ivory items for sale on eight national eBay websites in a single week. As a result of this study and ongoing consultations with IFAW, eBay Inc. announced a global ban on cross-border trade in ivory products in June 2007 for all eBay national sites.

In 2008, IFAW undertook the largest investigation into the wildlife trade on the Internet the organization has ever attempted. The results of the investigation were published in a report entitled Killing with Keystrokes: An Investigation of the Illegal Wildlife Trade on the World Wide Web (KWK), and available at www.ifaw.org. The purposes of this investigation were to understand the volume and geographic scope of the global Internet wildlife trade, to identify key Internet wildlife trade markets, to determine the species most affected by the trade, and to identify significant issues and trends related to the online trade in the CITES-listed species.[4]

This report is aimed at furthering the 2008 investigation by providing an update from Portugal on this matter. Little is known about the dimension and seriousness of the wildlife trade on the Portuguese World Wide Web. This report is the first attempt to find out how large is the E-Commerce on in endangered species of fauna and flora is in Portugal.

In spite of the patchwork of laws and policies designed to address the problem of unregulated wildlife trade on the Internet, the vastness and adaptability of the World Wide Web (WWW), the anonymity afforded to traders, a lack of public awareness about regulations, and inadequate enforcement of existing national laws all continue to threaten wildlife around the globe. This investigation is aimed at providing information to the Portuguese Government, enforcement officials and Internet platforms in order to give them greater understanding of the situation, suggest methods in which to counter illegal wildlife trade, and aid further enforcement.

Official IFAW report release here
Read/Download report here

About IFAW (International Fund for Animal Welfare)
As one of the world’s leading animal welfare organization, IFAW has representation in 16 countries and carries out its animal welfare work in more than 40. IFAW works from its global headquarters in the United States and focuses its campaigns on improving the welfare of wild and domestic animals by reducing the commercial exploitation of animals, protecting wildlife habitats, and assisting animals in distress. IFAW works both on the ground and in the halls of government to safeguard wild and domestic animals and seeks to motivate the public to prevent cruelty to animals and to promote animal welfare and conservation policies that advance the well-being of both animals and people. For more information, visit www.ifaw.org.

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[1] CITES Secretariat. (2008). The CITES Species, from http://www.cites.org/eng/disc/species.shtml

[2] CITES Secretariat. (2008). How CITES Works. from http://www.cites.org/eng/disc/how.shtml

[3] CITES Secretariat. (2008). The CITES Appendices, from http://www.cites.org/eng/app/index.shtml

[4] IFAW, 2008. Killing with Keystrokes: An Investigation of the Illegal Wildlife Trade on the World Wide Web. 38pp

On my post “The [bloody] Cove”, I did mention this, but I was then corrected by Jorge Mateus, that the dolphins are alive. He also advised that I should be careful with what I post online, without due verification of the facts, and that the fact “call myself” a scientist bears a responsibility to have all facts correct, especially when I point out some flaws on other’s work.

I took that paragraph from the post straight away, to avoid leaving it floating on the web, with untrue information.

He is very right about this, and I will make sure I won’t repeat it, and I do thank him for his constructive critique.

Nevertheless I would like to take the case of Solomon Island dolphins, since I found some time to take his advice and get informed; and also about this “dolphinariums” business as a whole (again). And with it restore the truth on the subject.

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Before I get onto the Solomon case I would like to express my high spirits and cheer for The Cove winning the Oscar for Best Documentary!

It is also screening in Portugal. You can watch it at

Lisboa
UCI Cinemas -- El Corte Inglés
Cinema City Classic Alvalade

Setúbal
Zon Lusomundo Almada Forum

Porto – Vila Nova de Gaia
UCI Arrábida 20

However, screenings in Japan don’t go as smooth…The following text is from Ric O’Barry:
My only question is: what do they have to hide?

“(…) But there are threats on the horizon. Officials in Japan are threatening repercussions against university and community groups that dare to show The Cove. Dolphin-killing fishermen’s unions are threatening lawsuits against theaters that show the film. There are even some signs that I could face arrest in Japan, even though I’ve broken no laws whatsoever.

We wont give in to this pressure. Instead, I am making plans to spend months in Japan with our Save Japan Dolphins Team. I want to be wherever we can find an audience. Our message will particularly resonate with young people, to whom we need to reach out with the dangers of mercury-contaminated dolphin meat and the slaughter of dolphins they love as much as we do.”

———————————
But back to the Solomon dolphins’ case; just because they are alive, and I was wrong by saying they died during transport, doesn’t make it (the export of wild dolphins and the dolphinarium industry) more righteous in any way!

When I started to read more about the Solomon Islands dolphins, Chris Porter and the Solomon Islands Marine Mammal Education Centre and Exporters Limited (MMECEL), Directed by Robert Satu, found that the first outcry from the international community related to the shipping of wild dolphin from this small pacific islands were heard in 2003, when a shipping to Mexico was made.

Soon after 2003 shipments the government banned the export of wild dolphins, due to the international outcry. But Satu took it to court and won. Also the government – which changed since the shipments to Mexico – gave its blessing and a high-level delegation was at Dubai to mark the dolphins’ arrival.

What stricken me most about all this is 2 basic elements:
1) Both Dubai and the Solomon Islands are part of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). So, how this exportation did happen?
2) The scientific grounds and the welfare of the animals.

All international forums have their flaws and CITES is no different.

The order Cetacea (that bear all whales and dolphins) is found on the Appendix II of CITES (and many other species of toothed and baleen Cetaceans are also included on Appendix I).

The highest level of protection is afforded to the more than 800 Appendix I species designated as being in immediate danger of extinction[1]. With very few exceptions, commercial trade in Appendix I species is banned. These species include the highly vulnerable species like whale, elephant, tiger, gorilla and marine turtle, along with a large number of additional wild cats, parrots, parakeets, cockatoos and macaws.

Species listed on CITES Appendix II are recognized to require protection from trade, but not to the point of a ban. While trade may be allowed in Appendix II species, any international trade or transfer of such an animal or its derivative products requires an export permit issued by the authorities of the nation where the animal product is located and in some instances an import permit issued by the country where the animal product will be received. In theory, these restrictions on trade in Appendix II species are designed to regulate trade in order to ensure that these species are not exploited to the point where they require Appendix I protections.

William Rossiter from Cetacean Society International (CSI) described the loophole used by Chris Carter on CSI’s Whales Alive! - Vol. XVI No. 3 -- July 2007.

“(…) Porter’s plan relies on the CITES “non-determination finding” (NDF) that must accompany the export. The purpose of an NDF is to certify that the international trade in a CITES-listed species will not be detrimental to the population, backed up by credible data on the abundance and distribution of the listed plant or animal. No adequate data is known to exist for the Solomon Islands dolphins, according to many scientists CSI questioned. In late June Porter, finally admitting what everyone knows, hired a U.S. scientist to get some data, albeit a little late. Porter’s MEL [Marine Export Ltd] partners include Wildlife International Network Inc. (WIN), including Robin Friday, Mark Simmons, and Ted N. Turner, although Turner may have left. In Panama WIN calls itself “Ocean Embassy”, where their extremely controversial permit to capture 80 local dolphins for captive display and probable sale continues to fuel such a public fury that it might be on hold when you read this.

The CITES Secretariat cannot reject an NDF, but can recommend that the importing nation question or reject the exporter’s NDF. The dolphins now appear to be aimed at Dubai, which may follow the CITES expected recommendation and reject the import. Mexico did not follow CITES’ recommendation to question the data in 2003, embarrassing the nation with the results. The Solomon Islands were not a member of CITES in 2003, but joined in late June. (…)” [2]

Also, as explained by the Species Survival Network and WWF International:

“(…)There is a significant lack of scientific information on the stocks of T. aduncus (or any other dolphin species) in Solomon Islands waters, as confirmed by the chair of the IUCN Cetacean Specialist Group (CSG) in letters submitted to the CITES Secretariat and Solomon Islands government in June 2007 (IUCN CSG 2007a, b). The Scientific Committee of the International Whaling Commission also discussed the 2003 live captures of bottlenose dolphins in Solomon Islands, noting that “[n]o estimates of abundance, population structure or vital rates are available” and re-iterating its “recommendation that any live captures should be proceeded by a full assessment of status” (IWC Scientific Committee 2004). Consequently, these past and potential future exports represent a failure in the implementation of CITES Article IV, which requires science-based non-detriment findings before export of Appendix II species is allowed.(…)” [3]

Despite all the diligences made to CITES and the scientific indetermination surrounding the issue, Solomon Islands officially permit 100 dolphins to be exported per year. Rossiter explained the capture method used by the people of the Solomon’s in the CSI Whales Alive! - Vol. XVII No. 1 -- January 2008, he described that in order to reach that quota, local fishermen use primitive methods that injure or kill hundreds of dolphins, with many social units being destroyed. The selected survivors are then transported long distances in open boats to a captivity facility. But even there, they are far from save, being further culled by illness, death, or just being released in waters too far from their home waters to survive. “From the moment of capture all these dolphins are as good as dead as far as the survival of their populations in concerned.”[3]

They might also argue that isn’t necessary to use the precautionary approach since there are “plenty” dolphin in the Solomon’s, so they can be killed by the hundreds.

In Iki, Japan, dolphins used to be killed by the thousands, and they were in fact streaming by the coast, now a day that abundance is gone, most due to the captivity trade, that is so lucrative. But now they go buy them in Taiji, to furnish their dolphinariums. [5]

Solomon Islanders, say they know it better, and that catches are sustainable; while the world’s best scientists confirm that no one knows how many Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins live in Solomon Island waters, or what the local populations are like. They argue that “local knowledge” gives them the basis to estimate an adequate quota for exportation. Rossiter reasons further, “In truth, they do not care; the species is considered a pest in many areas, and has almost none of the value that spinner, spotted and other cetaceans have as meat, and for teeth valued for bridal dowries.”

According to the Solomon’s Fisheries Minister Nollen Leni, each dolphin on the Dubai market goes for US$200,000 (around 147,000€) revealing the value of the country’s “new million dollar” industry. If you multiply this unit value for the 100 dolphins they are allowed to sell per year. [6]

And quoting Robert Satu, the front man from MMECEL: “It’s big -- bigger than gold or logging” [7]

Rossiter puts it well when he reflects about the social reality of the Solomon Islands:

“Who can blame them? We are not wasting your time or our space with details of how the Solomon Islands dolphin market got where it is today, much less the government turnovers and intrigue, but it has been a sad, fascinating experience for us to study the struggles of a society plagued by social violence and unrest, three government upheavals since 2003, and the corrupting influence of outsiders with promises of lots of money for a locally worthless animal. Why should they care if their new market threatens the core of CITES?

The raw power of money both separates and links Dubai and Solomon Islands. Solomon Islands is resource-rich and money-poor, while Dubai is so oil-rich the nation’s explosive development to date proves that anything is possible if the cost is irrelevant. Both nations are equally unfazed by international concerns and equally efficient at keeping prying eyes away from their dolphins. Little did we know that the Solomon Islands_Dubai trade had been planned since 2004! We suspect shipments to Dubai and China are due, but have no clue when or where the dolphins will end up.”

The chorus of disapproval and examples detailing how ineffective CITES was on this matter goes forever. The main reason why CITES didn’t had any effect on this issue is simple. Solomon Islands and Dubai do not care about science; they care about profit and luxury!

They also don’t care about the dolphin’s welfare either, and even that it is true that some of the dolphins captured and maintained in pens for exportation in the Solomon’s reached Dubai, many die still in the Solomon’s.

An independent observer described the facility where the dolphins are kept: “Dolphins are kept in shallow pens so close to the sea that it’s hard to understand why they don’t try to escape by jumping the slim barrier.  But they don’t and instead lie traumatized, hungry and limp.   Their fate is shocking.   Many die of starvation and shock.  Others have been transported to Honiara, kept in holding pens for a few days, packed into open trucks travelling to the airport and put on planes (…)” [8]

Even days prior to the export to Dubai at least 3 dolphins were found dead near a holding pen. And other sources say that at least 30 other animals are buried in the vicinity. [2] [6]

It is hard to tell more precisely the amount of dolphins that die in those pens because if anyone tries to get close to them they are “attacked by the thugs who work for Chris Porter” [8]

That is how transparent they are on their work!

However, I must say it gives me a grim of irony every time I read the work education, related to any dolphin show, or in the case of the Solomon Islands, that same word attached to the export company name. It might be entertaining, it might be amusing, but it is not educational. There is nothing education about a dolphin doing tricks, over loud music in confinement and just because the trainer (and the audience) wants it too.

I got some tourists in the Canaries where I did some studies on dolphin-whale watching boat interactions who were very disappointed because they were expecting the dolphins to jump, do acrobatics, come to the boat to touch their hands with their flippers, and kiss them, because that is what they see on the dolphin shows! My reply was always the same, “here you see them for what they are, this is not a dolphin show” and I would go further and explain them why they shouldn’t go to a dolphinarium ever again…

And that same grim of irony expands they people tell me that, “dolphinariums in Europe and the U.S. are very different from the ones in Mexico and other developing countries”. To those I would encourage them to read an excellent piece by Naomi Rose, who I had the pleasure of meeting in Limerich back in 2004 during the IFAW forum on sustainability. It is titled The Solomon Islands Dolphins: The Myth of “Good” Marine Parks. [Read it here]

Back in 2002 even Portugal wanted to import 10 live wild dolphins to Zoomarine and the Lisbon Zoo from Guinea-Bissau. Interesting was the fact that Cuba went ahead and offered the same dolphins, before the activist against captivity could even react to the Guinea-Bissau case! It is a lot of money and many want a slice of that pie. [9] [10] [11] National Authorities didn’t allow the importation.

Bottom line is: Dolphins do not belong in captivity and we have dramatic examples of this that come to the media time after time. The most recent being Tillikum, an Orca from SeaWorld that killed its trainer Dawn Brancheau; this same Dolphin – orcas are dolphins, not whales – was involved in the deaths of 2 other people, the first death when Tillikum was property of Sealand, and other 2 after he was sold to SeaWorld. [12]

Bruce Bott, a diver who has studied whales for 40 years and recently completed a book about whale-human interactions, was briefly employed at Sealand and said the facility bears some responsibility.

Bott, who worked with the whales, but left before Tillikum arrived, said food withdrawal was regularly used when whales would not obey instructions.[13]

Not to mention the medication administrated to the dolphins trying to relieve them from the stress they endure due to confinement, that also lead to ulcers and other conditions.

However, there isn’t any record of an Orca killing any human in the wild, so you can take your own conclusions. Mine are the same of Louie Psihoyos “ the real killer is SeaWorld. By stressing this creatures in small tanks and forcing them do stupid tricks for spectacles of dominance they are committing crimes against humanity and nature”

Ric O’barry also commented saying that: “I trained “Hugo” the first killer whale in captivity east of the Mississippi -- back in 1968. I knew then that this was a very bad idea and I walked away from his tank at the Miami Seaquarium. I went public with my opinion but the bastards would not listen. They were blinded by the money!“

I will close this post with a final quote by Jacques Cousteau:

“There is about as much educational benefit to be gained in studying dolphins in captivity as there would be studying mankind by only observing prisoners held in solitary confinement.”

Here’s a video with some good comments on dolphin captivity.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=LM0Zct5Wlj0

[1] http://www.cites.org/eng/disc/how.shtml
[2] http://csiwhalesalive.org/csi07307.html
[3] http://www.ssn.org/Documents/news_articles_SI_exports_EN.htm
[4] http://csiwhalesalive.org/csi08105.html
[5] Comments by Hardy James, founder of bluevoice.org on 2009 Oscar Winner Documentary “The Cove”, Directed by Louie Psihoyos
[6] http://www.wildsingapore.com/news/20070910/071012-6.htm
[7] http://www.underwatertimes.com/news.php?article_id=10807251439
[8] http://australiansforanimals.org.au/solomonislands.htm
[9] http://www.amigospais-guaracabuya.org/oagcw098.php
[10] http://www.captiveanimals.org/aquarium/portugal.htm
[11] http://www.acsonline.org/issues/conservationRpts/Conservation0202.html#dolphins
[12] http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-6239677-504083.html
[13] http://www2.canada.com/scripts/story.html?id=2614181

After breakfast we headed to the university campus, where Sidney talked about Fish (never heard this topic by him before)!  His notes are also transcribed below.

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A talk at the University of Algarve, Portugal, 29 January 2010

Sidney Holt

Robber generations 2: Fishes and Fishing

I am devoted to a web-site named “Dr Mardy’s Quotes of the Week”.  Dr Mardy helps me fill the 45-minute vacuum of a scheduled talk.

I ended my talk yesterday, about whaling, with one from Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s second Inaugural Address, in 1937:

“We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics.”

I followed that by saying that my theme in both talks is that:

“…the Industrial Revolution and the Capitalist economy have given living generations the power and the incentive to deprive future generations of access to non-renewable and renewable resources, and to saddle them with enormous debts”. Nothing new in that. But in limiting my talks to my own experience I hope I might find some things to say, which if not brand new or original, are fresh to at least some of you.

Today I revolve around two quotations from my first boss and mentor, Mr Michael Graham. Graham was England’s charismatic Director of Fisheries Research in the years following the end of the Second World War. In 1949 he had written, in a remarkable little book, a treasure  –“The Fish Gate” – what he called The Great Law of Fishing:

“Fisheries that are unlimited become unprofitable.” Graham pioneered, pre-war, the scientific theory of fishing.

Last year the World Bank published another little book – not nearly so much fun to read as Graham’s masterpiece – entitled “Sunken Billions”. It reported a study by experts from the Bank, FAO and the University of Reykjavik of the state of sea fisheries globally.  Their conclusions are stark. The cost of taking the present annual world catch of about 80 million tonnes is five billion dollars more than its market value; the difference is made up by explicit and hidden subsidies of various kinds. But if the total size of the fishing fleets was reduced by about one half, and over-fished stocks given a chance to recover, in a few years the total catch would be about the same as now, and worth 50-billion dollars more than the cost of taking it.[1] I think their general conclusions are probably correct but, using the same data but slightly different methodology, I have concluded that if the fleets were reduced by as much as two-thirds the global catch in a few years would be substantially more than now and the net profit might be 100-billion dollars or more.

My son, Tim, who read an early draft of the notes for this talk advised that I should speak early on about fishes, which are interesting, then move on to boring economics and politics. So here goes!

As I’m sure most of you know there are two entirely different kinds of fishes: the cartilaginous ones – the sharks, dogfishes and rays, called elasmobranches – and the bony ones, called teleosts. The elasmobrabchs are vulnerable to us because they have very low reproductive rates and some of them bite and sting; I think all of them are marine.  Many of them are very tasty. The first marine fish thought to have become extinct as a result of over-fishing was the skate of the North Sea. Then recently some appeared again, so that’s all right? No it isn’t; it turns out that there are two very similar species, recognized as such a century ago, then lumped together, now separated again, and one of them really is nearly extinct.  The blue skate is one of the most delectable ones. It was a Portuguese friend – Dr Mario Ruivo – who first introduced me, in Paris, to raie au beurre  noir, we English just used to know it deep fried in batter!

So, taxonomy is still highly relevant to management. We had the same problem with respect to the baleen whales. What the whalers called sei whales turned out to be two species: the sei and the Bryde’s whale. Then it was discovered that what were thought to be small blue whales were in fact another, pygmy species. And most recently it has been discovered that there is not one, but three species or perhaps sub-species of minke whale – not surprising considering that the populations in the northern and southern hemispheres, and in the North Pacific and North Atlantic, have been physically separated for millions of years.

As for the teleosts, the group that I studied as a young zoologist: their life histories are very interesting.  Dr Alan Longhurst, a British biological oceanographer living in Canada and France, has noticed that many, perhaps most, marine teleosts are cannibals, feeding on their own young. They nearly all lay extremely large numbers of eggs, and the mortality of the larvae and juveniles is correspondingly high. Longhurst has suggested [2] this is done not so much to ensure survival of numbers (so accounting for the great annual variability of recruitment into many species, ranging from anchovies and sardines to cod and haddock) but to provide a food supply for the parents. The young feed on organisms that are much too small for the adults to eat and as they grow, moving on to bigger and bigger foods, they provide a steady nutritional stream for their parents. This life-style arises from the fact that in the sea there are no big plants, as on land (except for kelps in some coastal waters) and the small diatoms are eaten by small herbivorous animals, that are in turn eaten by slightly bigger carnivores, and they by even bigger predators.  Isn’t that neat?

Now let me return to my theme for the day. When I began my career in fisheries research and management the over-fished stocks were mostly ground fishes caught by bottom trawls. Small pelagic species such as herring and sardines were thought – even by most scientists – to be invulnerable because they were so numerous.  The herring had for centuries provided abundant food for the humans living near the North, Norwegian and Baltic Seas. Annual catches fluctuated and this phenomenon occupied the attention of scientists, especially in Norway, who thought it would be useful to be able to predict catches from one year to the next. There were no signs of long-term decline. But in a short presentation to the United Nations Scientific Conference on the Conservation and Utilisation of Resources (UNSCUR), convened in New York in 1949, Michael Graham had warned:

“The World does not stand still while scientists put their minds in order” [3]

Indeed! The Norwegian and Danish fishing industries were then already preparing their assault on young herring for the purpose of making fish oil and meal.  A few decades on and the herring was practically an endangered species. As to the value of predictions, long ago an American colleague – Dr Martin Burkenroad – stayed at my home in Rome. He had worked out a scheme whereby next year’s catch of shrimps – another resource with great recruitment variability – in the Gulf of Panama could be predicted. The only trouble was that the cost of making the prediction would be higher than the value of the catch! Furthermore, even if predictions were to be simpler, cheaper and better, it was unclear what real benefit the fishing industry or markets could gain from them.

My two older sons will never forget Martin Burkenroad. He lived in Panama and throughout his stay, in the Roman summer, he never took his overcoat or hat of in the house; he was cold. Martin died still believing that over-fishing is self correcting, because the fishermen give up when the catch rate falls too low; he was not convinced that increase in prices of scarce commodities would offset that.

[Diagram: catch value and cost against effort]

Until now most assessments of the states of fish stocks, on which management measures would be based, have been made by building a mathematical population model, estimating the values of its parameters and calculating sustainable catches as a function of either population size or, better, the fishing mortality (exploitation) rate. Even when allowance is made for data and structural uncertainties it has been shown – using simulations of the management process – that such a procedure usually leads to undesired depletion of the stocks; this important basic study was made by an Australian engineer, Dr William de la Mare, in the context of the management of whaling.[4] It led the scientists of the International Whaling Commission to spend years inventing, refining and testing a completely new approach. They had time because when the moratorium on commercial whaling was adopted in 1982 they had little else to do, having been released from the chore of calculating TACs of every whale population every year. Several teams of scientists tried to do this; there was a sort of competition, with rigorous ground rules, and it was won jointly by de la Mare, and Dr Justin Cooke (an English biologist living in Germany). The IWC’s Scientific Committee marginally preferred Cooke’s version of the so-called Catch Limit Algorithm (CLA) although Justin himself unusually said he preferred Bill’s.  Although accepted by the Commission’s decision-makers it has never been implemented because the IWC has not been able to agree on arrangements to ensure compliance with management rules, added to which is the growing inclination of many governments to oppose commercial whaling in principle. Both Justin and Bill have gone on to work on the application of their new approach more widely to fisheries problems, such as tuna and krill (the shrimp-like euphausid food of many of the whales), and others have also taken up the challenge.

The essence of the new approach is to find algorithms that are efficient in meeting specific criteria, regardless of whether a population model is good or bad, and to do this by modeling the management process and only the general features of the dynamics of the fish population. Thank goodness for computers that now make such modeling possible – along with climate change and the flow of ocean currents. Maximum Sustainable Yield, which few scientists believe in anyway, is not sought, nor is it attainable by this means. Instead the practicable objective is to obtain as high a cumulative yield (or average annual catch) over a prolonged but defined period, without in the attempt ever causing the fish population to be depleted accidentally below a defined threshold, with a defined probability.[5]

But I think the critical difference from the old way is that once an algorithm has been tested and adopted, its output in the form of proposed catch limits MUST be written into the regulations, and the process continued for many years. “Managers” – politicians and administrators and socio-economic bean counters – cannot interfere by purporting to negotiate with Nature. (The practice in the EU has for years been that the scientists offer a number that they think is safe and would be sustainable, the Commission suggests a bigger number to the Council of Ministers, who then approve an even higher number. No wonder so many European fisheries are in trouble! I and others have proposed to the European Union authorities that the IWC’s approach be followed for all fisheries in the on-going re-appraisal of Europe’s Common Fisheries Policy; references to my own contributions to this process are given in the footnote We shall see.[6]

That’s enough biology, now I’ll go back to my theme. When I worked in Unesco for a few years in the early 1970s a Maltese economist named Salvino Busuttil had a project to develop a draft UN Declaration or Charter on the Rights of Future Generations – of humans, that is; the as yet unborn. I worked with Salvino on that and we produced a draft Charter, but that fell by the wayside, mainly because our Third World colleagues said, understandably, that we had enough to do to ensure the rights of present generations. Professor Busuttil, now back in Malta and, like me, older and perhaps a bit wiser, has told me that his Fondation de Malte is launching a project for a UN Declaration of Human Duties, mirroring the Declaration of Human Rights of, with among such duties the requirement to care for future generations. I hope some of us live to see that happen, giving us a tool with, among other uses, the leverage to insist that we use living marine resources sustainably and take serious steps to conserve marine biodiversity and biological productivity.[7]

Now is the time for more quotations, four of them. Three of them are quotations about quotations, part of a potentially infinite regression; the fourth is about uncertainty, central to my theme:

“Life is made up of a series of judgments on insufficient data, and if we waited to run down all our doubts, it would flow past us.” That’s from US Supreme Court judge, Justice Learned Hand.

But now, let’s hear Michel De Montaigne:

“I quote others in order better to express myself”.

Then, Ira Gershwin:

“Ev’ry corner that you turn you meet a notable with a statement that is eminently quotable.”

And, lastly, my favorite, by a writer named Robert Byrne, whom I have translated from American into English:

“Collecting quotations is an insidious, even embarrassing habit, like ragpicking or hoarding rocks or trying on other people’s laundry. I got into it originally while trying to break an addiction to sweets. I gave up sweets and now I seem to be stuck with quotations, which are attacking my brain instead of my teeth.“

–

[1] World Bank (2009) The Sunken Billions: the economic justification for fisheries reform. 100pp. The World Bank and FAO, Washington DC and Rome, Italy. [The authors of this study were Rolf Willmann, Kieran Helleher and Ragnar Arnason. A digital pdf version is available as an ebook.]   Holt, S. J. (2009a). Sunken Billions – But how many? Fish. Res. 97: 3-10.  Holt, S. J. (2009b) The Evolution of the Objectives, Science and Procedures of Fisheries Management. Contribution to the 12^th Conference of the North Atlantic Fisheries History Association (NAFHA) Norfolk, Virginia.

[2] Longhurst, A. (2008) The Sustainability Myth. Contribution to Western Groundfish meeting, 16pp. Santa Cruz, Ca , USA

[3] For more about those times see Holt, S. (2008) Three Lumps of Coal: Doing Fisheries Research in Lowestoft in the 1940s. A talk to CEFAS, 29 April 2008. 19pp. PDF available from CEFAS, Lowestoft, Suffolk, UK, or the author.

[4] de la Mare, W. K. (1986a) Simulation studies on management procedures.Rep. Int. Whal. Commn 36: 429-50.

[5] For more on this see: Holt, S. J. (2006) The Notion of Sustainability. Pp43-81 in Lavigne, D. M. (2006) Gaining Ground. IFAW, Yarmouth Port, MA, 425pp.

[6] Holt, S. J. (2007) New Policy Objectives and Management Procedures for EU Fisheries. A Commentary and Suggestions. 55pp. A briefing paper prepared for the European Policy Office of the WWF. Brussels 26 January 2007.  A similar paper, containing mathematical equations and graphs, is Holt, S. J. (Jan 2007) New Policy Objectives and Management Procedures for EU Fisheries. A Commentary and Suggestions to The Greens/European Free Alliance in  the European Parliament. Also, Holt, S, J, (Nov.2009) Brief to the Commission of the European Communities on the GREEN PAPER: Reform of the Common Fisheries Policy (Document  COM(2009)163 final, 22.4.2009)

[7] This idea is developed in Holt, S. J. (2008)  Greed Enthroned: Shall Future Generations eat Fish or Whales? A lecture at Gresham College, London, Wednesday, 19 November, 20pp. For “ALL AT SEA – A GRESHAM DAY ON SUSTAINABLE SEAS”.

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Followed by Dan Pauly:

Dan Pauly was more technical with a focus on topics I never heard before. I knew some about his work from some personal reading and obviously the groundbreaking documentary, “The End of the Line”.

However he shaded some more light on my perception of the current state of fisheries.  Now we have to go further and further south (i.e. into Africa) to get more fish since we have depleted most of the fish stock close to the developed countries boundaries, also with the water warming up, due to climate change, and its acidification, fish will tend to migrate to different areas of the world, and the whole world’s ecosystems as we know them will change.

He also spoke on the impact of artisanal fisheries that even that being better economically and feeding more people than commercial fisheries they do have an impact on the world’s fish stocks depletion.

It is now clear that we have to change our dietary habits related to the species of fish we eat, if we want to save them, and also if we want to in the future keep eating them. For this we have power as consumers to chose what we eat, also governments have to create more Marine Protected Areas and enforce them via monitoring and legal implementation.

It was a very impressive presentation.

After we had lunch at the university and soon after that I had to leave, to catch my bus home. Unfortunately I couldn’t go and check Ricardo’s didgeridoos and I wanted the day before, said goodbye to Sidney, Tim, Dan, Emidgio and Margarida, and headed to the bus station.

I do thank the University of the Algarve, and specially Margarida Castro, for being a great host and made possible for me to attend that 2 days lectures, and spend some time with the Holt’s.

To them my deepest sympathy and thanks.

I was greeted by Sidney Tim and Margarida Castro, who invited me to come along and be present at Sidney’s and Dan Pauly’s lectures. She is a lovely lady, with a profound knowledge of the region and of many stories fisheries and aquaculture, very interesting woman!

It was really nice to see Sidney and Tim again after the International Whaling Commission (IWC) meeting in Maderia, last June.

We had lunch at a local café near the university, after checking the auditorium and a little of the campus, where I also met Adelino, Margarida’s boss, Janita (an expert on ictiology), and some others.

After lunch, we headed to the auditorium, where Sidney presented his speech.

I took some notes, so I could keep tabs and retain more of his words in my head! But then I asked Sidney’s own notes, transcribed below.

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Notes for a talk at the University of Algarve, Portugal, 28 January 2010

Sidney Holt

Robber generations 1: Whaling

1. Thank you for the invitation.

2. You will know from the programme that I am to give two talks on successive days, perhaps to diverse audiences. Their themes are essentially the same and they are connected. I’ll try to make them comprehensible even to those unable to attend both talks. I’ll say now, however, that I shall not discuss an issue that is close to my own heart, and which is perhaps the only reason one can give for believing that whaling should be ended, permanently – that is the extreme cruelty involved in it.

3. The theme is that the Industrial Revolution and the Capitalist economy have given living generations the power and the incentive to deprive future generations of access to non-renewable and renewable resources, and to saddle them with enormous debts. Nothing new in that. But in limiting my talks to my own experience – today with respect to whales and whaling, and tomorrow with respect to fish and fisheries – I hope I might find some things to say which, if not brand new or original, are new to at least some of you. In being so selective with respect to time and subjects I am aware, of course, that throughout what we call civilization, present generations have robbed the future. Greeks, Romans, Tudor monarchs all  destroyed forests to build ships for war and trade, polluted and diverted freshwaters, put mercury and lead into the environment. But not only is the scale of our destruction many orders of magnitude greater, it is more diverse, might be irreversible and we engage in it increasingly for fun.

4. For fun? Consider the response of our economic wizards to the current global crisis: “Please go out and buy things, even if you don’t need them or even really want them. That will get the economy going again and might even lead to some of the new unemployed getting jobs. Eat more, then buy an exercise machine to get rid of your excess weight’’. When I was growing up as a child in London my parents sometimes bought a chicken for dinner. Actually once a year, at Christmas. Now millions of people expect to be able to eat chicken practically every day.

5. So, to whales and whaling. First, a few statistics. In the 1930s the catch of baleen whales, by weight, in the Antarctic was about 15% of the global marine catch, and considerably more than that by value. In the forty years from 1931/32 to 1971/72 the total catch was more than 50 million tonnes. Catcher boats worked for more that 500,000 days for this, that is each took about 100 tonnes per day. Among these were 200,000 blue whales (nearly all killed before 1961/72), 300,000 fin whales and 100,000 sei whales (mostly killed in the ten seasons from 1961/62. ) I don’t have a comparable figure for the number of humpback whales killed in the Antarctic but many of them, from the same populations, were killed in the Southern Gemisphere outside the Antarctic, especially from land stations in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Chile.

6. Very few people NEED to eat whales. Industrial whaling for whalebone (baleen) whale species  (I’ll put aside the sperm whales for later if there is time), beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, were caught, at first mainly by Norwegians, to make money – very large amounts of it. The precious oil was mostly exported, and it was used for lighting and for making toiletries. Before World War 1 and during it, it was used to make glycerine as a raw material for explosives. Then German chemists devised a way to turn it into a substitute for butter, and that market kept baleen whaling going, especially in the Antarctic, throughout the inter-war period. Although Norwegian and British companies were the main beneficiaries of this development, Germany and Japan joined up in the mid-1940s. German interest was in the Nazi slogan “Guns, not butter”. Japan’s interest was more subtle: its factory ships brought whale oil to Rotterdam, where it was traded for convertible currency (and was transferred to Germany); the empty factory-tankers traveled to California where they picked up American fuel oil for their military machine, and took it back across the Pacific – an annual circumnavigation worthy of Ferdinand Magellan.

7. After World War II the American occupiers of defeated Japan decided that the starving Japanese people really did need to eat whales, and General McArthur personally authorised ships newly converted to whaling factories to go whaling in the Antarctic. At first this was said to be an emergency measure, for one year only, or perhaps two. That was a lie – the Japanese fleet was steadily increased until it eventually – in 1987 – came to monopolise whaling in the southern hemisphere. Monopoly is important because the technology (as well as the human skills) concerned with hunting, killing and processing whales is of a high order; not quite rocket science or atom-bashing but in some respects not far from those, more like building aircraft. Meanwhile British power in occupied Germany ensured that German companies did not go whaling, as they wished; the result was that the Germans practically ran the notorious “pirate whaling” expedition of 1950-1956, the Olympic Challenger, owned by Aristotle Onassis. The factory ship was registered in Panama and the accompanying catcher boats in Honduras; the company office was in Hamburg. Let me read you the commentary on that episode provided by the organizers of the eighth Cologne Whaling Meeting, held in November 2009:

What unfolded then, was a dramatic, international and very dirty action story, involving US secret agents, Norwegian and German transport trade unions, the German Federal Fisheries Research Institute, the Norwegian Whaling Association, the Peruvian navy, Lloyds of London, the Erste Deutsche Walfang Gesellschaft in Hamburg, bribery, treason, court action in Hamburg and Rotterdam, mutual confiscation of ships and whale oil cargoes, plus the diplomatic efforts of at least half a dozen maritime nations in Europe and the Americas. This was too much even for an unscrupulous business hardliner like Onassis. He sold his whaling fleet to Japan in 1956. At the end of negotiations with the Norwegian Whaling Association about the damages which the Norwegian industry had sustained through his fleet’s infractions of international whaling regulations, he conceded to the Norwegian side to keep their face and to release a faked message that he, Onassis, admitted the damage done by Olympic Challenger. Little concerned about his own reputation, ruined as it was anyway, he even let them spread the word that he paid a penalty of 3 million dollars intended to build the House of Whaling (hvalfangstens hus) next to the harbour of Sandefjord. With Onassis’s known sangfroid and toughness, however, it is more than likely that the Norwegian whaler owners in fact were forced to spent this money out of their own pockets.” [1]

The factory ship’s name was changed to Kyokuyo Maru 2 and it whaled under tha Japanese flag for another seventeen years.

8. Those engaged in what is known as pelagic whaling were conducting what was really a mining operation. In the 1930s, and again in the mid-1940s to 1960s, a notional limit was set to the total numbers of four or five species of baleen whales that could be killed in the Antarctic – the so-called Blue Whale Unit (BWU) in which the different species were graded in terms of their relative oil yields. But this limit never had a scientific basis, and was created mainly to limit production of oil in order to stabilise prices. In the later years, as whales diminished and competition for the survivors intensified, the BWU provided the basis for agreements among the whaling nations – UK, Norway, USSR and Japan – for shares of the what in fisheries jargon is now called the Total Allowable Catch (TAC).  The Netherlands was a fifth Antarctic pelagic operator, a newcomer, but, with a long tradition of whaling in the North Atlantic, and for several years a thorn in the side of the other whalers, especially the Europeans.[2] Through this period the British and Norwegians were mainly responsible for the near extinction of the blue and humpback whales and the depletion of the fin whales. Japan and the USSR added their help later, when killing relatively small numbers had a disproportionately big effect on the outcome – mainly in the 1960s. However, Japan  in the 1960s saw another opportunity and, with help from the USSR, depleted the populations of the smaller sei whale. Another smallish species – the Bryde’s whale, which lives in warmer waters – was depleted by the Japanese in the Pacific and by various pirate whalers serving Japan’s meat market, in the Atlantic. (By the device of declaring the Indian Ocean as a whale sanctuary both were prevented from doing the same in the Indian Ocean.)

9. In 1970, Japan and the USSR began the mining of the smallest baleen whale in the southern hemisphere, the minke; Brazil was allowed a few crumbs from their table (Norway continues to kill large numbers of a closely related species in the Northeast Atlantic). The declaration in 1982 of a moratorium on commercial whaling, of indefinite duration, coming into effect in 1986, put an end to the USSR’s effort (which had been conducted only to yield convertible currency by sale to the Japanese market). But Japan, having attained its monopoly aim – which had been perceived by the Norwegians as early as 1938 – was determined to continue, and has since then used a loophole in the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling, 1946, which allows any nation unilaterally to award its nationals Special Permits to kill unlimited numbers of any species of whale, anywhere, provided it is declared to be “for scientific purposes”.  Under that provision Japanese whalers have killed increasing numbers of minke whales every year, especially in the Antarctic but also more recently in the North Pacific. Now they are being given permits also to kill fin and humpback whales.

10. The “scientific whaling operations’’ make profits, or at least break even, by large government subsidies barely disguised as support for scientific research. The rest of the income comes from the sale of frozen whale meat, which is – luckily for the industry – a practical requirement of the ICRW loophole. Meanwhile the Government subsidises continuing efforts to increase meat sales in Japan in support of increasing catches, though this is proving to be more difficult than the industry expected.  The Government of Japan has also, for a decade or so, taken steps to try to ensure that the IWC takes no other conservation-oriented steps that would require a three-fourths majority vote for their enactment. Through Japan’s  “vote consolidation programme”, fuelled mainly by the overseas aid budget, enough new countries have been brought into the IWC to provide a blocking one-fourth vote.[3] That game was so successful that the whaling lobby was encouraged to try for a simple majority, and nearly succeeded a few years ago. The intention was to overturn various decisions and initiatives by non-whaling nations, such as establishing a standing Committee on Conservation, establishing more “sanctuaries” for whales in which commercial whaling is not permitted,[4] adopting resolutions calling for cessation or limitation of scientific whaling, and promoting whale-watching as a way of using whale resources benignly.

11. A profitable and sustainable industry could perhaps be feasible on a fairly small scale when the depleted baleen whale populations have largely recovered – some, especially the humpback and possibly the blue whales, are known to be increasing and presumably so are the fin whales, which were long the backbone of the Antarcic industry and, originally numbering more than half-a-million animals, were not reduced so close to extinction as the other large species.  But recovery to at least, say, half their original numbers, will take many decades, and the whalers are impatient, so are seeking excuses for resuming large-scale whaling before recovery has progressed much further. The gimmick being used to that end is a plausible claim – totally unsubstantiated by research – that whales are eating so many fish of interest to humans, that they must be “culled”. A related claim is that minke whales have long been benefiting from krill over-abundance arising from the reduction in the numbers of the bigger species, and so have vastly increased in number, so are impeding the recovery of the blue whale – which has a similar diet – so they must be culled first. These gambits are the jemmies with which to escape from the globally accepted twin imperatives of sustainable use of wild living resources and the precautionary principle.

12. Meanwhile the IWC’s Scientific Committee has devised a much improved management procedure for calculating safe catch limits – an activity in which the three still-whaling countries – Japan, Norway and Iceland – played practically no part. This was accepted by the Commission itself but not implemented, pending agreement on water-tight arrangements to ensure compliance with regulations. As yet there has been no agreement on such arrangements, despite ten years of effort, and the Commission has put the entire negotiation on a back-burner.

13. Meanwhile, the one factory ship, the Nisshin Maru  is getting old and distinctly unreliable. It is also too small for large-scale processing of the larger whale species and does not have the processing equipment for the production of the variety of by-products that often make the difference between profit and loss. Discussions are rumoured to be on-going concerning investment in a larger and better replacement. If that goes ahead there would seem to be little practical impediment to Japan expanding and continuing Antarctic and North Pacific whaling for several more decades. Or a pure business decision might be taken to end it, encouraged by growing reluctance of the state to continue and expand the current level of subsidy. In that case we should expect to hear that the decision has been made for reasons of compliance with international wishes and broad public sentiment. Some kind of quid pro quo will surely be demanded; the most likely one is agreement for the continuation of small-scale minke whaling in the Northwest Pacific.

14. I promised to say something about the sperm whale, the Moby Dick whale. That is better news.This species is by far the largest of the toothed whales and is a very special animal. For one thing it has the largest brain of any species ever on the planet, and not just because its body is big. The sperm whale can dive deeper than any other marine mammal, possibly matched only by the smaller but formidablebottlenose whalesThere is, as far as we know, just one species, with a global distribution from the tropics to the polar regions. It has a remarkable communication and sensing system, using its head as a sound producer and collector. Each individual announces its own, individual name. It contains a unique kind of oil, which was why American whalers, especially hunted it throughout the 19^th century. The oil also has special properties as a lubricant that led to it becoming a strategic asset through the 20^th Century, especially to the USA and the USSR. American supplies came mostly from land station operations under other flags, world-wide. The Soviet pelagic fleets caught them especially in the Southern Hemisphere. Vegetable and synthetic alternatives were also found for sperm oil. The social structure of the species – males are much bigger than females and the dominant individuals keep “harems” – make it very difficult to devise safe ways of managing sperm whaling. Although they remained more numerous than all the baleen whales except the minke, even after two centuries of intense exploitation, the species was protected, in 1981, by a special moratorium, to which there no standing objections nor plans to continue killing them in the name of science. Towards the end the most valuable product from sperm whales was ivory from its teeth; the carved teeth are famous as scrimshaw International trade in the ivory and the oil is banned. A few are still killed by native islanders in Indonesia, who eat the meat – but as they are high-level predators their flesh is contaminated with persistent pollutants.

15. Tomorrow I’ll say more about the IWC’s Revised Management Procedure, as a model for improved fisheries management. But I’ll now close with two quotations. The first is from Jacques-Yves Cousteau:

Future wars will be between those who defend nature & those who destroy it.

The other, less aggressive, but still firm, is from  Franklin D..Roosevelt’s second inaugural address, in 1937:

“We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics.”

I that true or not true? Thank you, see you tomorrow.

—

[1] “The Arts and Crafts of Olympic Challenger. Souvenirs, company gifts, and whaler folk art from the Onassis whaling venture, 1950-1956” Notes for the special exhibition, by Klaus Barthelmess, November 2009. This document contains a bibliography of German engagement in the whaling industry, mostly papers by Barthelmess.

[2] Just as the Japanese people were short of protein in 1946 the Dutch were short of fats and oils, and had no funds to import adequate supplies. They were at odds with the Norwegians, who prohibited their nationals – especially highly skilled gunners – from working on foreign whaling ships. Unlike the other Europeans and the Japanese, the Dutch pelagic whalers were operated by a state-owned company. Having only one factory it was difficult for the company to subsist when Antarctic catch limits began to be reduced sharply in the late 1960s; other European nations simply reduced the numbers of their factories.

[3] “Japan’s ‘vote consolidation operation’ in the International Whaling Commission” Third Millennium Foundation, Paciano (PG), Italy, August 2007, 96pp.

[4] The Indian Ocean was declared a sanctuary in 1979, and the entire Southern Ocean in 1994. These were initiatives of Seychelles and france, respectively. Latin American states and South Africa want the South Atlantic to be a sanctuary, while Australia and New Zealand, among others, have sought to make arrangements for protecting whales in the South Pacific.

After his lecture we headed back to the Hotel where I took that free time to write some of my notes and talked with my new IFAW’s boss Paul Todd in relation to a one month project what I’ll conduct in February. It was nice and I’m looking forward to it.

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Margarida then came to take us out to dinner (in a very nice part of the old town), and when we met in the hall, 1900, there was some other people to meet, Emidgio Cadima (a Portuguese expert on Fisheries) and Daniel Pauly (an internationally renowned fisheries expert), both to be given a “Honoris Causa” Doctorate by the University of the Algarve. Also amoung the people going out to have dinner with us was a Sidney’s old friend and very important Portuguese figure, Mário Ruivo.

Dinner was excellent and I was delighted to be among all those extraordinary figures, Adelino, Karim (Margarida’s husband and also a lecturer at the university), a man I cannot recall the name, but who was from dorset and eaching the MSc students at the university and another couple people I missed the name (as usual!).
I was thrilled!

After that I had the chance to meet an old friend. Susana, his girlfriend is a MSc student at the University of the Algarve, and recognized me between the audience. It was very pleasant to meet her and then latter at night Ricardo “Freaky” “Exodon” Branco, a didgeridoo player that went to study in the same university and I in Wales, University of Glamorgan.
We had a couple of drinks and tomorrow I’m expected to meet him at lunch time to see his new didgeridoo project, quite excited about it!

Time to bed, tomorrow early, and full day!

I’ll stay with Sidney’s son, Tim Holt, also a good buddy, very kind for letting me share his room. Will take the bus from Lisbon at 0815 to arrive at 1130, and hopefully have lunch with the Holt’s.

Sidney has his first speech at 1400, with the title, Robber Generations 1 – The case of Great Whales.

Then on the 29th (Thrusday), Sidney will give a speech entitled Robber Generations 2 – The Case of Marine Fishes, at 1000. Following Dan Pauly will present the title Impact of global fisheries and global warming on marine ecosystems at 1100.

The event is hosted by the University of the Algarve.

More info here

I was astonished, dismayed, and angry, by all the footage, and some of my colleagues at the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) said that is was very hard even to watch. There is no special effects on the images, it is true blood and slaughter.

But a full year would pass by before I had the chance of seeing the full version. It was played at the room 303 of the Pestana Casino Hotel, the same venue where the IWC 61st meeting was being held. Then I realised that I started to see some of the main characters of the movie in different occasions and places.

The man who opened the door was Charles Hambleton, one of the cameras, but I recognized him from before. Back in 2006, he was also at the same beach I was in St. Kitts, he was holding a camera, and I was being arrested for “unlawful demonstration”, the term used on my deportation order. Yes I got deported from that Caribbean island.

Also the day prior to that, Ric O’Barry also did his demonstration holding a flat screen with images of the Taiji bay dolphin killing season rolling, in the face of the Japanese delegation, in the middle of a ongoing schedule of the IWC meeting.

Also in 2008, during the IWC meeting in Santiago, Chile, I met Captain Paul Watson, the leader of Sea Shepherd, Dave Rastovich and Howie Cooke, 2 of the minds behind Surfers for Cetaceans.

I watched the movie next to Junichi, a Greenpeace activist arrested and now waiting for trial, for exposing the true nature of the “research” endeavour Japan takes every year in the Southern Ocean, killing around 1000 whales.

In the end of the movie Junichi pointed out that Hideki Moronuki, Deputy of Fisheries for Japan, was not fired, as the film claims. This a policy of the Institute of Cetacean Research (ICR), he was reassigned to a different position. This is in fact very cleaver, leaving us, the activists and people working on the issue, never knowing who is where.

Is is behind doubt the best documentary I’ve ever seen! So arm yourself with knowledge and learn what you can do!

However, I must say I don’t get the critics to Greenpeace and the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW). We also (me having made part of IFAW in several occasions, and Greenpeace on others) make a lot of effort in trying for things to come around, maybe Ric O’Barry and Sea Shepherd, do things a little different or on other fronts, I don’t condemn them even though sometimes I even might disagree with some of their tactics, but ultimately we are working towards the same goal.

No one is perfect, neither is Ric O’Barry, Greenpeace, IFAW, Sea Shepherd, or all of them combined. I don’t really get the point of these pointing fingers …

Although I do agree that perhaps Greenpeace and IFAW could take a much more active position on this. However the work they have done inside the IWC has made possible in many fronts a better world for whales and dolphin. And I do know and have been working with passionate people that do whatever they can to stop whaling.

Better, not enough…
Still, 23.000 dolphins are killed or sold alive every year, coming from the cove of Taiji, and what keeps this going is the DOLPHINARIUM INDUSTRY! Every time you go and watch a dolphin show at a zoo or sea-life aquarium, you are actively contributing to the slaughter and suffering of these animals, there is no way around this fact!

But this is part of a bigger picture and to put a stop to these we need to work together, not away from each other and pointing finger out.

However I do understand Ric O’Barry claims, and can also relate to it.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sw5qgVp0jng

Ric O’Barry argues that all dolphins should be delivered to their natural habitat, the ocean.  I agree! No cetacean should be taken from the ocean to be put on a swimming pool, but if we learned anything from the Orca Keiko (main character on the movie “save willy”), is that the releasing of animals with long period of confinement back to the ocean, leads to almost certain death. However all dolphins capable of readapting to their TRUE and NATURAL environment (the ocean), should be released AS SOON AS POSSIBLE!

I would also propose a phase-out. No dolphin is captured for aquariums of any kind, and there would be no more reproduction in captivity. When the last captive dolphin dies, the industry dies with it. Ah, an no more dolphin circus-like activities, too, please! This blocks the mind of people, who watch the shows, it is an animal doing tricks for food, there is nothing emotional or educational on that.

I also agree with something that Ric O’Barry says that, Dolphins are whales, size doesn’t matter! In fact even on scientific terms there are no whales and dolphins, there are Mysticetis (Baleen whales) and Odontocetis (toothed whales). Dolphins and Whales are common-names, derived from the family delphinidae, a sub-group of Odontocetis. For example a Pilot Whale (Globicephala macrorhynchus) is not a whale is a dolphin, also The Orca (Orcinus orca), also known as killer whale, is not a whale is a dolphin, the largest of its family. So big that is has the same size of a minke whale (Balaenoptera bonaerensis), now the main target of Japanese whaling (since all larger whales were hunted to the break of extinction), but still Japan argues that some species are whales and other should not be under the mandate of the IWC.

Furthermore, Japan says that whaling and the killing of dolphins is part of their heritage and tradition, is this is so, why is that most of the Japanese population doesn’t know about it? All is it is a bogus claim and a fat lie.

Mercury poison, is all that is left after eating a dolphin from the bay of Taiji, the recommended total level of mercury in seafood, by Japanese standards should be 0.4 ppm (parts per million), analysis of meat from dolphins killed in the bay of Taiji account for 2000 ppm!!!

But the aim of the killings in the bay of Taiji is not the meat, that is a by-product, resulting from the dolphin not selected to be sold for dolphinariums around the world for 150.000 dollars each!

Is that’s their tradition, and heritage?

People say they relate to dolphins and feel connected with them in this way. What a stupid thing, they just want to please themselves with something they relate to, in their twisted mind, having a creature in confinement doing repetitive movements, no singular movements or free will, all trained for the purpose of pleasing someone that wants to kiss, touch and hug… is this you relate to? Think again!