Whaling wars: a fight for life

How many whales are left? Very few, compared with the 6.2 billion humans. MATHEW DEARNALEY on whaling and the battle to save the giants of the sea.

Whales. Conservation Minister Sandra Lee idolises them as magnificent, intelligent creatures that have roamed our oceans for more than 30 million years and must continue to do so as natural heritage icons.

But to the Japanese Fisheries Agency's international head, Maseyuku Komatsu, minke whales in particular are "cockroaches of the ocean".

He says they eat too many of his fish and need weeding out after multiplying from previously endangered populations.

He accuses Sandra Lee, among others struggling to retain a 15-year-old world moratorium on commercial whaling, of cultural imperialism in trying to tell Japanese what not to eat.

Japan may be New Zealand's third-largest trading partner, but it is our prime foe at the International Whaling Commission's 53rd annual slugfest in London this week, with Sandra Lee in full fighting form at the head of this country's delegation.

Table-thumping is common at such gatherings, but this year's is steeped in more controversy than usual after Mr Komatsu's admission that Japan effectively bought the votes of a raft of small countries, including six Caribbean states, with aid money.

How is Japan using its voting bloc?

Japan is unlikely to overturn the whaling moratorium if it forces a vote this week, but yesterday it again stopped New Zealand and Australia gaining the 75 per cent support needed to create a new sanctuary over 20 million sq km of the South Pacific.

"It wasn't a vote, it was an auction, and Japan was the highest bidder," said a spokesman for the International Fund for Animal Welfare.

One consolation was an agreement by the impoverished Solomon Islands, under lobbying from both Anzac Prime Ministers, to abstain rather than follow a suspected earlier plan to vote against the sanctuary in gratitude for Japanese aid.

There were fears that Japan could have exploited the Solomons' vote as a crack in an otherwise solid mandate Sandra Lee took to London from the 16-member South Pacific Forum in favour of sanctuaries to add to the 50 sq km of Southern Ocean already off-limits to whalers.

Japan also claims that Te Aho Kaimoana, the Treaty of Waitangi Fisheries Commission is opposed to the sanctuary. But commission chief executive Robin Hapi says its reservation is purely to protect customary rights rather than to support wholesale whaling.

He says a contracted communications adviser for the Waitangi commission, former Government press secretary Glenn Inwood, is on leave without pay while doing work at the London meeting for the Japanese Fisheries Agency.

The 42-member whaling commission passed a "good conduct" resolution condemning any coercion of countries to win votes. But this did not stop Japan making an unsuccessful bid to weaken the seven-year-old Southern Ocean sanctuary.

A sanctuary covering the Indian Ocean remains intact, 22 years after becoming the world's first, but a Brazilian proposal to establish a similar zone in the South Atlantic was blocked yesterday at the same time as the South Pacific one.

How many species of whales are there?

Whales are mammals called cetaceans, which ecologists say returned to the sea 40 million years ago and assumed fish-like forms.

The world has around 80 whale species, and almost half of them can be spotted around New Zealand's coast, many on seasonal migrations from their subtropical breeding areas to rich Antarctic feeding grounds.

Whales breathe air through blow-holes rather than gills, but cannot survive on land. Those that get beached soon die when the great weight of their bodies crushes their internal organs.

There are two groups: the 13 species of baleen whales with no teeth but a type of strainer through which they suck their food, and more than 66 species of toothed whales, including sperm whales, orca or killer whales, dolphins and porpoises.

The largest animal on the planet is the majestic but gravely endangered blue whale, a baleen which can grow to more than 30m long and weigh up to 130 tonnes - the same as 30 elephants.

Other baleen species include minke, humpback, sei, fin and right whales - the latter given their name in the 19th century for having the misfortune to be the right whales to catch.

Do whales eat too many fish?

Not according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which says most of the world's fish are eaten by other fish, and that humans are the main cause of declining fisheries.

The agency says direct competition between marine mammals and fisheries is limited in the Pacific as more than 65 per cent of food consumed by whales and other cetaceans is species not eaten by humans. Blue whales consume four tonnes a day of Antarctic krill, small shrimp-like crustaceans, before fasting for four or five months in their northern breeding grounds.

How many whales are left?

This is always an area of deep controversy, with claims and counter-claims that whaling nations and conservationists cook the books to support their various positions.

The whaling commission issues figures for only seven species which it says have been assessed in detail, producing a total population of about 1.8 million for these. They include 933,000 minke whales, a relatively small species 6m to 7m long, and 780,000 even smaller Atlantic pilot whales.

Japan claims there are also about two million sperm whales, although they are notoriously difficult to spot and the World Wildlife Fund's estimate is just over 500,000.

Populations of other large whale species remain dismally low, and the commission's scientific committee now believes its estimate of 761,000 minkes in the Southern Hemisphere may be three times too high. If so, this would depress its assessed whale total to 1.3 million, compared with the world's human population of 6.2 billion.

The commission estimates that only 400 to 1400 blue whales remain from a pre-whaling population of about 250,000 which once ruled southern waters.

It has not published a figure for southern right whales, but the Conservation Department says only a few thousand remain, including about 150 breeding around New Zealand's subantarctic Campbell and Auckland Islands.

What is the history of whaling?

The Basques of northern Spain are believed to have been the first to hunt whales as an industry, trading whale products in the 11th century. They were followed by the Dutch and British, and later by the Americans, Norwegians and many others.

Northern right, humpback and sperm whales were early targets. Moby Dick was a fictional example of the sperm whale, killed for its oil, which was used for lighting and industrial purposes, unlike the edible oils extracted from the blubber of baleen whales.

The industry was transformed in the late 19th century by steamships, which allowed the pursuit of faster blue and fin whales, and by explosive harpoons.

When stocks began dwindling in the Northern Hemisphere, the hunt spread to Antarctic waters, where the whales gathered to feed in summer.

Japanese whaling developed separately in the meantime as a coastal industry.

Whalers and sealers were among the first Europeans to reach New Zealand, setting up whaling stations in the south in the late 1820s.

By 1839, about 200 whaling ships worked New Zealand waters, and one theory for the origin of the word Pakeha is that it meant stinking pa, a reference to sailors responsible for bringing the stench of slaughtered whales ashore in the Hokianga.

Maori joined the whaling vessels as crew, but in pre-European times tended to be more interested in carving bones from dead whales than hunting the creatures for meat.

Whaling off New Zealand's coast ended in 1963 when stocks collapsed. The only commercial activity allowed under the 1978 Marine Mammals Protection Act is the observation of sperm whales in a $20-million-a-year tourist industry off Kaikoura.

What is the International Whaling Commission?

New Zealand was one of 14 founding members of the commission, set up in 1946 under the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling.

Its establishment followed mounting concern through the 1930s that several species of great whale, including the grey and blue varieties, were being hunted close to extinction.

But the commission's initial role was to set catch limits rather than to end whaling, and more than 66,000 whales were killed in the peak season of 1961-62, by which time it was becoming increasingly difficult to find enough to harvest.

Blue and humpback whales became protected species over the next few years, but there were only about 10,000 Southern Hemisphere humpbacks when they were surveyed in 1988.

Of three original populations of grey whale, only those in the northeastern Pacific have survived.

The commission, which leaves it to member countries to impose laws and sanctions against their own citizens consistent with its deliberations, imposed a moratorium on commercial whaling in 1986.

Which countries belong to the whaling commission?

Membership is open to any country formally adhering to the 1946 whaling convention.

Each country has an equal vote, regardless of its size, which is why the smaller members are so assiduously courted by supporters and opponents of the moratorium.

New Zealand and other anti-whaling countries such as Australia, Britain, the United States, France and India were suspicious of the sudden re-entry to the 42-member forum this year of countries such as Senegal, Gabon, Panama, Morocco and Peru.

Even the Solomon Islands, despite abstaining on the South Pacific sanctuary vote, sided with Japan in supporting an unsuccessful bid by Iceland this week to rejoin the commission. Iceland was allowed only observer status, after saying it wanted an exemption from the commercial moratorium.

Two Icelandic whaling vessels were sunk in Reykjavik in 1986, when their valves were opened by members of the radical environmental group Sea Shepherd, and the country has respected the moratorium in recent years.

Why are some commission members still whaling?

The 1946 whaling convention left two gaping loopholes which have allowed Japan, Norway and the former Soviet Union to kill more than 18,000 whales since the beginning of the moratorium.

Any new control measures require a 75 per cent majority, and a member state can lodge an objection within 90 days of a resolution, to avoid being bound by it.

Norway objected to the moratorium and in 1993 resumed commercial whaling of minkes. It said initially that this was just for domestic consumption, but this year announced a resumption of whale meat and blubber exports, a trade against which 21 airlines have imposed a cargo boycott.

There were also revelations that Russian vessels were catching hundreds of whales without reporting them.

Japan resumed whaling in 1987, allegedly for scientific research under another exemption clause in the international convention, although tail meat ended up being sold in Tokyo for about $350 a kilogram.

It catches about 440 minkes a year in the Southern Hemisphere, and has recently risked trade sanctions from the United States by issuing permits for vessels to hunt smaller numbers of sperm and Brydes whales, from the northeastern Pacific.

Mr Komatsu, the outspoken Japanese fisheries head, insists whale populations are strong enough in many places to withstand some hunting, but conservationists say figures are still too incomplete to allow commercial whaling to resume.

Why is Japan so keen to expand whaling?

This is not clear - few Japanese can recall ever eating whale meat, and only four of the country's villages are even partly dependent on whaling.

But whale meat accounted for most of Japan's protein diet after its economy was crippled in the Second World War, and its leaders feel affronted by what they see as Western cultural imperialism which they fear could spill into other international forums.

Is any other whaling allowed?

The commission approves limited catches by indigenous communities if they can establish customary rights to whaling, and a need to eat the meat for subsistence.

Annual catches of up to 140 grey whales are allowed off Alaska, for example, and up to 197 minkes off Greenland. The tiny Caribbean nation of St Vincent and the Grenadines is allowed two humpbacks annually. Japan failed to gain the commission's approval last year for a small number of coastal villages to catch 50 minkes.

New Zealand's whaling commissioner, former Opposition leader Jim McLay, says Maori would be unlikely to meet international criteria for aboriginal whaling.

Maori have rights to take bones and teeth from dead whales. Former Waitangi Fisheries Commission chairman Sir Tipene O'Regan outraged conservationists last year by saying they should not deprive his people of resources by rescuing stranded whales.

Why do New Zealand and Australia want to set up a new sanctuary if there is a commercial moratorium on whaling?

Sanctuaries are meant to offer whales permanent protection, even from so-called scientific whaling, and to remain if the commercial whaling moratorium crumbles.

Pro-whaling groups are trying to set up management bodies to rival the commission, causing conservationists to fret that whaling is drifting rapidly back out of effective international control.

New Zealand knows it is unlikely to win the numbers needed for a full South Pacific sanctuary, but is encouraging island nations to follow French Polynesia and turn their territorial waters into a chain of whale-friendly zones.