In 1979, three years before the historic moratorium decision, the
IWC agreed to an Indian Ocean sanctuary. Fifteen years later, in 1994,
Greenpeace was instrumental in securing an additional sanctuary in the
Southern Ocean which covers all the waters around Antarctica, so
ensuring that there can never be legal whaling again in the feeding
grounds of three quarters of the world's whales.
Now plans for two further regional sanctuaries are being put forward.
Australia and New Zealand are proposing that a sanctuary be created to
cover the South Pacific and Brazil is suggesting that another is
established in the South Atlantic.
Such sanctuaries make sense. Toxic pollution, climate change, ozone
depletion and the effects of prey depletion resulting from over-fishing
all threaten the health of whale populations. In the light of these
new threats whales must be protected from the commercial hunting that
devastated one population after another.
In addition sanctuaries help encourage whale-watching (a truly
sustainable alternative to whaling which now generates an income of half
a billion dollars world-wide each year and is still growing) and benign
research into whales and the environment.
