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.”

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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.

[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

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.

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[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.

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!

A semana passada, uma pessoa do Oceanário de Lisboa perguntou-me se as pessoas ligadas a instituições como a Greenpeace e o Fundo Internacional para a Protecção da Vida Animal (IFAW), como é o meu caso, viam ou não com bons olhos o trabalho desenvolvido pelo Oceanário de Lisboa.

Esse penso ser um estigma já ultrapassado, porque acredito que desde que sejam dadas as devidas condições para os animais serem mantidos em cativeiro, e existem vários indicadores de bem-estar que podem ser monitorizados, estes transformam-se autênticos embaixadores do mundo oceânico, que permitem a milhares de pessoas (o oceanário festejou recentemente a visita do visitante 12 milhões) ter contacto com um mundo submerso que de outra forma seria totalmente impossível.

Mas uma coisa é a posição oficial da Greenpeace ou IFAW, outra é as pessoas que trabalham com eles, que nem sempre reflectem a posição pública da ONG, e que muitas vezes é algo extremista.

Penso ainda que existe uma diferença abismal entre uma instituição como o Oceanário de Lisboa e por exemplo, empresas como delfinários (onde se proporcionam espectáculos com golfinhos e outros animais, que fazem truques e acrobacias a troco de comida, para contentamento da audiência), em que nestes não é possível proporcionar um bem-estar adequado. Os golfinhos baseiam a sua vida na acústica, e para um animal que consegue distinguir uma bola com 6,5cm de outra com 7,5cm a 70 metros de distância, através de meios acústicos, uma vida numa piscina em que cada uso do seu sistema de ecolocação  se converte em tortura com o reflexo do som em todas as paredes do tanque onde estão cativos a entrar nos seus cérebros e a descarregar informação de confinamento. Estes em cativeiro deixam mesmo de usar o seu sistema de percepção sensorial.
Claro que a solução não é libertar estes animais, visto que muitos deles, já nascidos em cativeiro (que é um evento não muito comum, difícil de acontecer naturalmente e de manter as crias vivas até à idade adulta), não se adaptariam ao meio natural.
Contudo oponho-me à captura destes animais, do seu ambiente natural para piscinas de entretenimento, para satisfazer a um público que fica com uma ideia totalmente deturpada do comportamento natural destes cetáceos, da sua fisiologia, ecologia e  dignidade.

O papel do Oceanário de Lisboa, bem diferente de um delfinário, e de instituições similares na actualidade é vital para a conservação e consciencialização social para os problemas que assolam os oceanos e as criaturas que vivem e de ele dependem.

“O Oceanário celebra a vida na Terra através de uma visão deslumbrante da vasta e complexa diversidade de seres vivos que habitam este Oceano Global, evocando o papel vital que este exerce na saúde e evolução planetária.”
Francisca Menezes Ferreira in “Pavilhão do Oceanos – Exposição Mundial de Lisboa de 1998″

As pessoas quando vêm acreditam, quando lêem, nem sempre. Ou é uma realidade tão distante que não se conseguem relacionar. É esse o papel do oceanário, aproximar realidades, e deslumbrar-nos, sempre que olhamos para aquele enorme tanque.

E esta é uma história de que como este papel é importante.

“O Pollock do Alasca (Theragra chalcogramma) caiu de “a melhor escolha” para “uma boa alternativa” para os consumidores, na última avaliação da espécie pelo Monterey Bay Aquarium, que publica a lista/cartão Seafood Watch usado por milhões de restaurantes quando encomendam peixe.”

E com as falhas na governança internacional a todos os níveis que esta tenta actuar resta-nos a nós, através de instrumentos como este fazer uma escolha, e que essa seja um futuro melhor para nós e as gerações vindouras.

Informações e inscrições em http://www.cbjj.com.br/inscricaoeuro10.htm

CURSO DE REGRAS
Está previsto um curso sobre regras de jiu-jitsu no dia anterior ao evento.

Exmos(as) Senhores(as),

Venho convidá-los para as palestras proferidas pelos professores Sidney Holt
e Daniel Pauly nos dias 28 e 29 de Janeiro no Campus de Gambelas da Universidade do Algarve. Os professores Holt e Pauly são os investigadores que maior influência tiveram na gestão mundial dos recursos marinhos nos últimos 50 anos. As palestras são de entrada livre.

I invite you to the lectures by professors Sidney Holt and Daniel Pauly on January 28th and 29th at Campus de Gambelas, University of Algarve. Professors Holt and Pauly are two of the most influential scientists in the management of the world living marine resources in the last 50 years. Entrance is open to all.

Adelino Canário
Director of CCMAR

Programa / Program

CV – Sidney J. Holt
CV – Daniel Pauly

CCMAR – Centro de Ciências do Mar
Universidade do AlgarveCampus de Gambelas
Edifício 7 – Gabinete 2.87
8005 – 139 FARO
http://ccmar.ualg.pt

O projecto SUSTAINAMICS – Modelação Participada para a Avaliação Integrada da Sustentabilidade, que aborda o desafio “Como criar uma visão holística dos problemas que afectam a sustentabilidade dos ambientes marinhos e costeiros em Portugal?”.

Foi organizado pelos Centro de Investigação em Ambiente e Sustentabilidade (CENSE) da FCT/UNL e Centro de Investigação e Estudos de Sociologia (CIES) do ISCTE; e teve lugar no Auditório António Silva Leal na Ala Autónoma do ISCTE (Instituto Universitário de Lisboa).

Foi um exercício interessante. Presentes estavam pessoas de vários sectores da sociedade (relacionados com a pesca, transportes marítimos, almirantes, gente do governo, gente de ONGs, académicos, entre outros), divididos por 4 mesas temáticas distintas. Governança, sobre-exploração de recursos, problemas das zonas costeiras, e ordenamento do território marítimo.

Foi-nos pedido então para relacionarmos causas e consequências que intervinham nas temáticas apresentadas, com repercussões positivas ou negativas. Ou seja, a falta de fiscalização levava a uma maior sobre-exploração de recursos, e assim por diante. No final foram feitas apresentações sobre cada uma das temáticas e foram dados 5 votos, para que cada um dos envolvidos pudesse assinalar nos esquemas as causas e/ou consequências que achava mais pertinentes.

O segundo workshop irá ter lugar no final Janeiro ou inicio de Fevereiro de 2010.

Para saber mais: aqui e aqui

Informação em http://www.dcea.fct.unl.pt/cense/

Then during the Rip Curl Pro Search, surf championship, in Peniche (October), Portugal, I had the chance, thanks to Melanie Salmon and George Duffield (producer of the movie) of screening it to a small audience, and see their faces of astonishment for the facts lay down before them.

Last November, the Portuguese Platform of Non Governmental Organizations, PESCA (meaning fishery in Portuguese), hosted a great event at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon, followed by a debate on the state of fisheries, worldwide. Present at the discussion was the author the book that inspired the movie, Charles Clover; César Deben from the European Commisson; representatives from NGOs and Portuguese fisheries. It was very interesting, and I was impressed by Mr. Clover direct and intense responses at the EU politician present, basically saying that “what your are doing is not enough, do better, do it now!”. Superb!

About the movie:
I was blown away by it, and felt a few shivers down my spine, when confronted with the facts and concrete reality of today’s oceans, our responsibility towards them. Fish is running out, and we (humans) are not slowing down to get every last one of them! The United Nations state the ocean as property, not of fisherman, not of any company or multinational, nor from an entity but from the citizen, like you and me. It is time to claim them back, care about them and allow it to heal, recover, and so we can still use the resources it offer us, on a sustainable way, and perpetuate its uses into the future.

Now, it is clear, we have reached the limits of what the ocean is capable of providing; the end of a finite resource that will run-out if we do not take appropriate measures, NOW!

“Scientists predict that if we continue fishing as we are now, we will see the end of most seafood by 2048.

The End of the Line chronicles how demand for cod off the coast of Newfoundland in the early 1990s led to the decimation of the most abundant cod population in the world, how hi-tech fishing vessels leave no escape routes for fish populations and how farmed fish as a solution is a myth.

The film lays the responsibility squarely on consumers who innocently buy endangered fish, politicians who ignore the advice and pleas of scientists, fishermen who break quotas and fish illegally, and the global fishing industry that is slow to react to an impending disaster.

The End of the Line points to solutions that are simple and doable, but political will and activism are crucial to solve this international problem.

We need to control fishing by reducing the number of fishing boats across the world, protect large areas of the ocean through a network of marine reserves off limits to fishing, and educate consumers that they have a choice by purchasing fish from independently certified sustainable fisheries.”
Read more here!

Greenpeace developed a Seafood Red List. Using it you can power yourself to change things around by your ultimate decision-making as a consumer. If there is no market, there is no industry for it, pretty simple.

The problems of the ocean are easy to forget, with calm seas, blue skies, a gentle breeze, a wonderful sunset the problems beneath the surface, are far from sight, thus far from mind.

We need to save the oceans from harm sway. If we want to see the Tuna, Shark, Cod, Salmon, Shrimp and so many other species, strive and recover and the endangered stamp they have been “awarded” taken away.

It is time for something; we humans are normally afraid, CHANGE.

CHANGE in fishing methods;
CHANGE in fishing practices;
CHANGE in fish consuming habits;
(to allow fish stocks to recover)
CHANGE the way we think about the oceans;
(and the need of Marine Protected Areas off limits to fisheries)
CHANGE our MIND and CLAIM the oceans back to us!

This sentence to me marked that meeting and period, when Japan uses corruption end to meet his aims, with no regard to nature and the livelihood and heritage of the next generations, using resources for profit or stubbornness, if that resources goes extinct, it doesn’t really matter. The IWC61 itself was a big hole full of nothing, and especially big governmental mouths full of empty words and no actions, no resolutions and no whales saved during that meeting.

Mr. Mark Simmonds summed it up very well when he wrote on his blog: “So where were we – ah yes in the gloom of a vast meeting chamber of a big international meeting room where ‘nothing is decided until everything is decided’ … or possibly just ‘nothing is decided’”

I was profoundly sad and as it has been usual during the last period that I’ve attended the IWC and done actions and contributed to the movement devoted to end whaling, I was feeling what I like to call a “post-action depression”. Happens after a very intense period of work and by the end of it nothing has been accomplished. Our struggle was in vain, and it has been since Japan started whaling in the southern ocean sanctuary, to recruit countries to their side, and established a stalemate inside the IWC, meaning that nothing changes year after year.

But some light is shinning ahead, maybe it is a tunnel end, or not…

In the beginning of the year I wrote an entry titled “And if the crisis would solve the whaling issue?” where I wondered that even though “we cannot really forecast what will happen, and do nothing but wondering about it [while we keep fighting to make whaling history], the fuel prices will fell dramatically, the Japanese whaling industry and hardware is getting old and they been having repeated misfortunes lately. The Oriental Bluebird, the refueling vessel that would go down to the Antarctic lost its registration and Panamá flag and is now registered in Japan requiring more staff and funds etc.”

Now it seems that my thoughts were not so astray.

The eminent change it is not only due to crisis, but to a number of given situations lead by it. Political change in Japan itself; shortly after taking office last October the Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama confide his dislike for whale meat saying that “I hate whale meat”.

Even thou the government at the time was showing no signs of discontinue the policy followed by his antecedents; buttressing up an unnecessary, unsustainable and uneconomic industry that has no place in the 21st century, now things seem to be changing.

IFAW was also focusing efforts inside Japan and with other NGOs such as Greenpeace urged the new Prime Minister to rethink about Japan stance on whaling and its national fleet.

The end of whaling in the southern ocean seems a possible reality now! I have withstand long conversations with Milko Schvartzman from Greenpeace International, and his belief was that if we are to save whales, the frontline of resistance must be inside Japan, our activism our efforts must come from within. Us on the outside are like little helpers, and can do just up to some point. My dear friend Sidney Holt also shared that vision; he always says that whaling has to be so economically unbearable that it is abandoned.

Now it seems that crisis will also affect whaling. We hope!

Information arrived to me via the Greenpeace International website with the topic: End of Japanese whaling might be in sight.

On it you can read:

“A major review of Japanese government spending could spell the end to whaling in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary.

Commissioned to cut wasteful programmes by Japan’s new government, a review committee has proposed massive cuts in subsidies to a body which funds the so-called whaling research programme.

Without government subsidies, the whaling programme would be doomed.

The Spending Review Committee recommended that the Overseas Fisheries Cooperation Fund (OFCF), which gives loans to the Institute for Cetacean Research (ICR) to run the discredited science programme, have all of its funding revoked, except monies needed for loans in 2010.

The OFCF claims it needs 70.4 billion yen (around US$780 million) for various programmes, including whaling, in 2010. The Review Committee and Cabinet Office will determine by early next year if the proposed operations for 2010 are actually “necessary” or should also be cut.

The Institute for Cetacean Research, which runs the whaling programme, has failed to repay government loans for several years now, as demand for whale meat has plummeted and the cost of whaling increased. Practises which would have lead to bankruptcy for any commercial firm have been the target of outspoken criticism not only from Greenpeace Japan, but from the business press and even the former spokesperson for the Japanese Foreign Ministry, Tomohiko Taniguchi. Taniguchi lamented the financial propping up of a programme that caused endless headaches for Tokyo abroad and generated revenues worth “less than one-tenth the value of the country’s annual market for toothbrushes.”

With the change in government at the recent election, a new focus on reducing  spending and cutting wasteful programmes.

Two Greenpeace activists, Junichi Sato and Toru Suzuki, have spoken out against the cost of the whaling programme and the fact that only a handful of fat-cat bureaucrats really profit from the programme. Last year alone it cost 8 billion yen, or nearly US$90 million, to run the annual Southern Ocean whale hunt. Of that, 1.2 billion yen, or more than US$10 million, came from government subsidies. The rest is in theory covered by the sales of whale meat.”

Still I’m not 100% convinced and I’m afraid that what Japan does is to resize their fleet, keep its recruited countries in sufficient number to take away a 75% majority to the pro-whale bloc inside the IWC thus preventing them from taking resolutions to vote that are binding; and keep on whaling. Other perspective if for Japan to hold its status as it is until the Small Working Group (SWG) negotiations are finished, and accomplish its goals and face-saving.

But I’m optimistic; the actions lead by Junichi and Toru had a big impact, not only in the media but also, because there was some tight control over meat coming from the Antarctic, some Japanese whalers stopped from going boarding for the Antarctic whaling season. Because, without the extra money they were making from meat they kept for free, after returning from the Antarctic, it was not worth to embark on that voyage. For this reason Japan had to start hiring and training whalers from Korea and other countries of Southeast Asia, making whaling even more expensive. Also the toll they get with their recruiting programme in order to have enough support inside the IWC and control roughly 50% of votes is so big that I wonder until when can it keep up, with an industry that doesn’t contribute to the Japanese economy health, and in fact it is a drag and forces Japan to spend taxpayers’ money, rather than making profit.

Now we need to keep up with our work, in my opinion we should even direct more actions and efforts inside Japan, and watch as a economical crisis and the necessity of cuts on public spending, take whalers from the southern ocean sanctuary forever, as it should be!

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