Whaling Agency Faces a Possible Shift

Some species have made gains in recent years: Minke whales, for example, now number in the several hundred thousands. That is the species whale hunting countries generally pursue: Iceland killed 39 minke whales in the past year, Norway took 639, and Japan harpooned 853 minke and 10 endangered fin whales.

Both Japan and Iceland hunt whales under the "scientific research" exception allowed under the IWC, while Norway has rejected the international moratorium altogether and hunts commercially. Whatever the commission decides, Japan has announced that it plans to increase its take and start hunting humpbacks, as well, next season, while Norway plans to nearly double its minke whale catch.

William Aron, a professor of ocean science and fisheries at the University of Washington who represented the United States at the IWC's meeting in 1977, said the moratorium reflected political beliefs, not scientific necessity.

"The moratorium was not proposed as a moratorium forever and ever," Aron said. "It was not reached out of science. It was reached because there were a lot of people who believed the propaganda that these were special animals and, no matter what happened, they should not be killed."

Yoshimasa Hayashi, a member of Japan's House of Councillors who comes from the whaling village of Shimonoseki, said that Japan is killing more whales but that the animals' resurgence justifies it.

"Maybe we are catching those numbers, it's true, but the recovery numbers are huge," Hayashi said in an interview. "The Japanese people are wondering: Why are whales only focused on in this manner? Beef, pork, chicken are all animals; people eat them."

Proponents of whaling raise the cultural argument repeatedly, saying they should have the freedom to hunt whales as a matter of tradition. Halvard Johansen, a senior official at Norway's Ministry of Fisheries and Coastal Affairs, said written accounts show that the Norse have hunted whales since the 900s.

"To be ruled by the cultural preferences of the Anglo-Saxon world would be very difficult," Johansen said in an interview.

But Wetstone -- whose group last month launched a series of anti-whaling subway ads in Washington, put up billboards in New York's Times Square and along Los Angeles's Sunset Boulevard, and ran television ads in seven cities -- rejected that line of reasoning.

"There are certain cultural norms, like cannibalism, that are in violation of our basic approach to maintaining our civilization and our natural world," Wetstone said. "If we cannot save them, it doesn't bode well for the rest of our natural world," he added, referring to whales.

As this month's meeting of the whaling commission approaches, advocates on both sides are working to round up as many votes as possible. Some environmentalists say the fishing aid Japan provides the small nations it has recruited to the commission influences their votes. Caribbean media reported in November 2001 that Japan gave $17 million to Antigua in exchange for support on whaling.

But Morishita denied any link, noting that countries such as India, Brazil and Peru receive aid from his country but oppose whale hunts. "If we were to try to connect the policy and the aid, they should be on our side, but they are not," he said, noting that the United States has brought its own allies, such as Israel, into the IWC. "It is simply not connected."

Anti-whaling countries are embarked on their own lobbying campaign. New Zealand's conservation minister was scheduled to meet last month with officials in Tuvalu, Kiribati and the Solomon Islands to try to persuade them to oppose any return to wide commercial whaling. Australia's minister for the environment is making a similar trip to several Pacific nations.

"All we have are arguments, strong arguments, but arguments may not be enough to win the day here," said Geoffrey Palmer, New Zealand's IWC commissioner. "It would be a very big signal of a bad sort if the like-minded nations lost a majority on the commission. . . . We think the tipping point is very close."